LETTERS FROM HOME: REMEMBERING MORRY, THE BARTENDER-POET

Feb. 24, 1994

Dear Pat,

Do you remember Morry Herman? He was a bartender at the Jambalaya back when we were reporters at the Times-Standard. I wrote a story about him then because I heard he was a poet as well as bartender. The combination inexplicably made me imagine a bard of the bars, a California Dylan Thomas. Morry, bearded and a little formal despite the sweatshirt with the cutoff sleeves, stared at my romanticism.

He said he hated bartending, though it remained his primary livelihood until the end of his life, and most of all abhorred talking to the besotted patrons, ennobled as they were by alcohol to speak and act and without thinking. As I recall, he barely agreed to an interview. It wasn't a sunny story.

Morry himself was an Olympic drinker who could wordlessly hunker over a whisky glass all afternoon. When he spoke, the King's deftly chosen English tumbled out in modulated tones worthy of the classical stage. You had to listen.

Back when I was preparing to move to New Orleans and worried about finding work, Morry taught me how to move behind the bar in case that was the solution. "Tending bar is a dance," he said. I don't think he hated dancing.

In his 59 years, Morry served liquor at the Alibi, the Red Pepper, the Tiki Room, Toby and Jack's and other establishments, loved some women and fathered a daughter, published two books of poetry and co-authored a third volume titled "Something Inside of Which Flies."

Sometimes, though not often, he read at one of the Jambalaya's poetry nights. His sweatshirt would be replaced by a nicely pressed dress shirt buttoned at the top, and his eyes shone. He read poems that belied the cynicism I had at first encountered, undercut the despair of drinking every day.

Dropping by the Jambalaya on a trip north last weekend I learned he had been struck and killed by a car while walking home Halloween night. His obituary, written by the Jambalaya's owner, acknowledged his curmudgeonliness and the "something inside of him which flew."

A memorial poetry reading was held for him at the Jambalaya. I'm told all the poets came, and everyone received a copy of this Morris Herman poem:

Song the Cobwebs Things

Evening the egrets nest,

a white glow of wing flap

as if the darkening trees

for that brief moment before dark

were a bloom with flowers.

Morning frost, dead wood decaying.

On a desk in a dusty room

blank paper curls its edge

next to a faded photograph.

In waning moon a numb mind

dreams of a chant,

of the mask which would be a face,

of white flowers

becoming the clouds of totems,

totem clouds billowed by wind

framed in stars.

There's frog croak

from brackish water

and the moon

riding ominous clouds,

Somewhere in better weather

foxfire burns.

Love, Sam