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A textured story of life and dreams

by Vicky Dickson

A fight at the end of his sophomore year in high school made Alan Shapiro a poet – though not right away. He came out of that fight with a badly broken nose, and the break required him to wear a hockey mask in his first varsity basketball game the following fall.

When diving for a loose ball in that game, Shapiro broke his wrist and put himself out for the season, which depressed him so much that he started writing poems, imitating songwriters he loved – Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, Richard Farina, Tom Paxton and the Beatles.

But Shapiro says that, “Only when I became a serious reader of poetry did I begin to write it seriously.”

Throughout his career, the UNC W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing has written seriously enough to have published 10 volumes of poetry and two memoirs. He’s garnered a host of awards and been admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

UNC W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing Alan Shapiro. Photo by Callie Warner

And he’s done what he loves: “Poetry has mastered me,” Shapiro says. “Every time I sit down to write, I feel as if I’m starting over, writing at the frontier of what I know how to do. …

“While I’m always dissatisfied with what I’ve written, I love the process. I love sitting down at the desk at 9 a.m. and looking up a moment later to discover that it’s 4 p.m., and that six or seven hours has gone by in a flash. To me, that kind of deep immersive experience is paradise.”

With that kind of love for poetry, and that kind of success, you might well wonder why the author’s most recent book, Broadway Baby (which will be released by Algonquin Books on Jan. 24), takes the form of a novel.

Shapiro’s (only somewhat facetious) answer? “I would like to have some readers.”

If there’s any justice in the book-buying world, Shapiro’s first novel should bring him quite a few.

Broadway Baby is the story of a woman’s life and dreams, and of the way that the dreams sustaining her bring suffering to her loved ones. It’s a novel to read carefully. Though Shapiro’s descriptions and conversations flow effortlessly, readers who fail to pay attention can miss much of the meaning that’s conveyed in sentences and paragraphs that evoke far more than they tell.

As when the 10-year-old protagonist studies her mother’s reflection in the window of a moving train at night: “Miriam stared at her mother’s bent head floating on the darkness, the yellow curls meticulously tight and flat against her high forehead, the diamond-studded reading glasses perched on the tip of her long nose, and the sealed look of her thin lips, the no-nonsense don’t–be-a-bother-to-me look that Miriam knew by heart.”

Or when that little girl, now grown into a life overloaded with turmoil and responsibility, is observed one night by her 11-year-old son, who’s just wet his bed: “He said, ‘Ma, I need you.’ She stared down at the cards her hands were flipping over and moving from column to column; it was as if her hands were independent of her body, moving by themselves. Next to the cards, there was a cup of coffee; next to the coffee, an ashtray with a cigarette lying against the grooved lip. Little curls of smoke were rising from it. ‘Go back to bed,’ she said in a flat voice, not even looking up.”

Inattentive readers might also fail to appreciate the humor that’s woven throughout the story. As the author points out, “Sometimes the most hilarious things happen at the most tragic moments. Life doesn’t respect the distinction between tragedy and comedy.” Portraying that type of humor in a way that isn’t cruel is a tricky proposition, but Shapiro pulls it off in spades.

Getting inside the head of a person of the opposite sex, with a different history, and telling their story in a way that feels convincing and complete is also no mean feat – a feat Shapiro accomplishes brilliantly in Broadway Baby.

Alan Shapiro will be at Flyleaf Books on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. to read from Broadway Baby. You can also catch him at McIntyre’s on Thursday, Jan. 26 at 6:30 p.m. Don’t miss the chance to hear from this exceptional writer.