回复 1楼ujinjin的帖子Meet the Man Who Writes Poetry for Strangers in the Park
By: Brianna Holt September 30, 2019
Last week I strolled through Washington Square Park in New York City with my friend Samra. We had just shared a Thai meal nearby and couldn’t forgo the wonderful weather as we headed back to the train. The usual street performers, frisbee throwers and skateboarders marked their territory with their crafts. A woman shouting “sign up to vote” was drained out by a violinist playing in the middle of the square. With all that was going on, my eyes fixated on a large cardboard sign. "ASK ME FOR A POEM" it read, in thick black Sharpie. Samra and I headed over.
Peter Chinman, better known as The Park Poet, asked me for a topic. “Love,” I told him. Immediately realizing that word could mean anything, I vented to him about a short yet fulfilling relationship I once had with another poet. Behind his thick-rimmed glasses, I could see he was paying attention to my tale, finding rhyming words to put my story into prose. Within a few minutes, the 29-year-old writer handed me a sheet of paper with a shockingly well-written poem about a lost love. I sent him $20 on Venmo because he works on donations.
Chinman has been working as The Park Poet since April 2017. Writing anywhere between 20 to 60 poems a day, mostly on the topics of the beautiful absurdity of having a body, the limits of language and death in its richness, he’s been making a living and growing a following from his full-time freelance gig. We caught up with Chinman to learn more about crafting poems for strangers.
ONE37pm: When did you first get into poetry?
Chinman: I was around 19 years old and loved books—but had no exposure to poetry, beyond the sort of things they make you memorize in high school, “Two Roads Diverging,” and “Shall I Compare Thee,” etc. I do remember loving “The Raven,” but definitely poetry seemed like a dead, archaic medium.
But then in college, friends and professors and lovers started turning me on to the good shit. Someone lent me a book of Jack Gilbert's poems, The Great Fires, and that hit me hard. I stole a copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies from a Barnes & Noble and read that until it fell apart. It felt like my world was splitting open. These poets were expressing things that I didn't know were possible to express. I wanted to do what they were doing.
What were you doing before you became The Park Poet?
Chinman: I graduated college in 2012 and moved to Austin, Texas, with the band I'd been in since high school. We rented out a house, and I committed myself to getting good at guitar. I fell in love, worked a shitty serving job at a sports bar, and the band moved back to Boston. The woman I loved started medical school in San Antonio. Our drummer and bassist decided to leave the band, which, at the time, felt like such a huge betrayal. Only Francis and I were left, so moved to a little beach house in Scituate, Massachusetts, where we knew no one.
That's where we really started to get into a good groove. There were no distractions. We each worked just a few days a week online and were cranking out music with our free time. We got to a point where we were starting and finishing a song every two weeks. I was waking up at dawn, doing yoga and journaling for an hour or two every morning. It was lonely and severe but so good creatively. I think isolation is one of the hardest but most important gifts to give yourself as a young artist.
We spent two years there. I would run away to San Antonio in the winter to be with the woman I loved. And then it all fell apart. I got dumped and was so broken up I couldn’t make music. Then we found out we had to leave the beach house. I had some friends from college who were moving into a brownstone in Brooklyn and suggested I join them, and so I did. I self-published a book of poems—At the Marsh House—from all the journaling I'd been doing. I was still just working a dumb, online customer service job and had no idea what I was going to do with myself, until I got the idea to try writing poems in public.
What was the scariest thing about leaving your job and starting your own business?
Chinman: It feels very exposed sometimes. If it rains for a week, I can't work for a week. I have to make sure I save up to get through the slow months in the winter.
Who are your two favorite poets and why?
Chinman: I love Anne Carson—she wields language in a way that is both so severe and so tender. Walt Whitman is a big spiritual daddy for me. His ecstatic, manic moments drop open the trapped door inside me and suddenly I am the universe in its unfurling.
What is a normal day like for you?
Chinman: I usually wake up and have a slow morning reading and writing. If the weather's decent, I'll get to the park sometime in the afternoon and stay usually until after it gets dark. During the summer, I'll stay out until 11 or 12 sometimes, just writing. I usually write around 20 to 60 poems, depending on how busy the day is.
Tell me about the most interesting interaction you’ve had while writing poetry for someone.
Chinman: I’ve had so many beautiful interactions. One time this guy who seemed to be carrying around all his world possessions came up to me for a poem and in exchange gave me the pet fish he'd been carrying around in an open glass bowl. "I'll just lose him anyway. I lose everything," he told me. Another time I wrote wedding vows and officiated a wedding for a couple who had just met. The woman was supposed to fly out the next day but ended up skipping her flight and staying in New York and moving in with the guy.
What’s next for The Park Poet?
Chinman: Mostly I just want to keep writing the best poems I can. Business-wise, I have a Patreon, where people pay $5 a month to get a poem every morning. I'm trying to grow that more. I'm thinking about getting into tattooing poems on people. I'm also thinking about getting into embroidering poems on clothes. Park Poems, Year Three, will be coming out next spring. I think I'd like to leave New York City at some point and live someplace more embedded in natural geography. I want to be able to go hiking and have a garden.
What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own business?
Chinman: People can tell when you're trying to trick them, so don't. Don't sacrifice your humanity for the sake of your brand. Ideas are worthless if you don't act on them.
回复 3楼ujinjin的帖子 Washington Square NewsWashington Square News
When in Washington Square Park, have you ever seen the man circling the fountain wearing the straw hat and a handmade sign slung over his back reading, “Ask me for a poem?” That’s Peter Chinman, better known as the Park Poet.
Chinman, now 27, began writing poetry back in college after hearing that sonnets were the hardest form of poetry to craft. His infatuation with poetry led him to transition from chemistry to English at Pomona College.
Post-graduation Chinman worked a remote job in customer service, barely leaving his apartment. One day, Chinman went into Central Park high on marijuana and with a notepad, taking people’s one-word inspirations and conjuring up poems on the spot. Seven months ago, Chinman took on the Park Poet as his full-time job, and he’s been wandering parks ever since.
“People give me one word, and I write the poem from there,” Chinman said. “I usually try to come up with something original, but when they give me ‘love’ I just want to give them one of my heart-wrenching love poems to show what is real love.”
Chinman tries to keep his poems on the lighter side as he takes only about five minutes to compose each poem. Catch the Park Poet around Washington Square Park before he retreats for the winter.
就他这段话，他是有天赋的。 I love Anne Carson—she wields language in a way that is both so severe and so tender. Walt Whitman is a big spiritual daddy for me. His ecstatic, manic moments drop open the trapped door inside me and suddenly I am the universe in its unfurling.
I love Anne Carson—she wields language in a way that is both so severe and so tender. Walt Whitman is a big spiritual daddy for me. His ecstatic, manic moments drop open the trapped door inside me and suddenly I am the universe in its unfurling.
By: Brianna Holt
September 30, 2019
Last week I strolled through Washington Square Park in New York City with my friend Samra. We had just shared a Thai meal nearby and couldn’t forgo the wonderful weather as we headed back to the train. The usual street performers, frisbee throwers and skateboarders marked their territory with their crafts. A woman shouting “sign up to vote” was drained out by a violinist playing in the middle of the square. With all that was going on, my eyes fixated on a large cardboard sign. "ASK ME FOR A POEM" it read, in thick black Sharpie. Samra and I headed over.
Peter Chinman, better known as The Park Poet, asked me for a topic. “Love,” I told him. Immediately realizing that word could mean anything, I vented to him about a short yet fulfilling relationship I once had with another poet. Behind his thick-rimmed glasses, I could see he was paying attention to my tale, finding rhyming words to put my story into prose. Within a few minutes, the 29-year-old writer handed me a sheet of paper with a shockingly well-written poem about a lost love. I sent him $20 on Venmo because he works on donations.
Chinman has been working as The Park Poet since April 2017. Writing anywhere between 20 to 60 poems a day, mostly on the topics of the beautiful absurdity of having a body, the limits of language and death in its richness, he’s been making a living and growing a following from his full-time freelance gig. We caught up with Chinman to learn more about crafting poems for strangers.
ONE37pm: When did you first get into poetry?
Chinman: I was around 19 years old and loved books—but had no exposure to poetry, beyond the sort of things they make you memorize in high school, “Two Roads Diverging,” and “Shall I Compare Thee,” etc. I do remember loving “The Raven,” but definitely poetry seemed like a dead, archaic medium.
But then in college, friends and professors and lovers started turning me on to the good shit. Someone lent me a book of Jack Gilbert's poems, The Great Fires, and that hit me hard. I stole a copy of Rilke's Duino Elegies from a Barnes & Noble and read that until it fell apart. It felt like my world was splitting open. These poets were expressing things that I didn't know were possible to express. I wanted to do what they were doing.
What were you doing before you became The Park Poet?
Chinman: I graduated college in 2012 and moved to Austin, Texas, with the band I'd been in since high school. We rented out a house, and I committed myself to getting good at guitar. I fell in love, worked a shitty serving job at a sports bar, and the band moved back to Boston. The woman I loved started medical school in San Antonio. Our drummer and bassist decided to leave the band, which, at the time, felt like such a huge betrayal. Only Francis and I were left, so moved to a little beach house in Scituate, Massachusetts, where we knew no one.
That's where we really started to get into a good groove. There were no distractions. We each worked just a few days a week online and were cranking out music with our free time. We got to a point where we were starting and finishing a song every two weeks. I was waking up at dawn, doing yoga and journaling for an hour or two every morning. It was lonely and severe but so good creatively. I think isolation is one of the hardest but most important gifts to give yourself as a young artist.
We spent two years there. I would run away to San Antonio in the winter to be with the woman I loved. And then it all fell apart. I got dumped and was so broken up I couldn’t make music. Then we found out we had to leave the beach house. I had some friends from college who were moving into a brownstone in Brooklyn and suggested I join them, and so I did. I self-published a book of poems—At the Marsh House—from all the journaling I'd been doing. I was still just working a dumb, online customer service job and had no idea what I was going to do with myself, until I got the idea to try writing poems in public.
What was the scariest thing about leaving your job and starting your own business?
Chinman: It feels very exposed sometimes. If it rains for a week, I can't work for a week. I have to make sure I save up to get through the slow months in the winter.
Who are your two favorite poets and why?
Chinman: I love Anne Carson—she wields language in a way that is both so severe and so tender. Walt Whitman is a big spiritual daddy for me. His ecstatic, manic moments drop open the trapped door inside me and suddenly I am the universe in its unfurling.
What is a normal day like for you?
Chinman: I usually wake up and have a slow morning reading and writing. If the weather's decent, I'll get to the park sometime in the afternoon and stay usually until after it gets dark. During the summer, I'll stay out until 11 or 12 sometimes, just writing. I usually write around 20 to 60 poems, depending on how busy the day is.
Tell me about the most interesting interaction you’ve had while writing poetry for someone.
Chinman: I’ve had so many beautiful interactions. One time this guy who seemed to be carrying around all his world possessions came up to me for a poem and in exchange gave me the pet fish he'd been carrying around in an open glass bowl. "I'll just lose him anyway. I lose everything," he told me. Another time I wrote wedding vows and officiated a wedding for a couple who had just met. The woman was supposed to fly out the next day but ended up skipping her flight and staying in New York and moving in with the guy.
What’s next for The Park Poet?
Chinman: Mostly I just want to keep writing the best poems I can. Business-wise, I have a Patreon, where people pay $5 a month to get a poem every morning. I'm trying to grow that more. I'm thinking about getting into tattooing poems on people. I'm also thinking about getting into embroidering poems on clothes. Park Poems, Year Three, will be coming out next spring. I think I'd like to leave New York City at some point and live someplace more embedded in natural geography. I want to be able to go hiking and have a garden.
What advice would you give to someone looking to start their own business?
Chinman: People can tell when you're trying to trick them, so don't. Don't sacrifice your humanity for the sake of your brand. Ideas are worthless if you don't act on them.
How do you take your coffee?
Chinman: Hot and black.
Washington Square NewsWashington Square News
When in Washington Square Park, have you ever seen the man circling the fountain wearing the straw hat and a handmade sign slung over his back reading, “Ask me for a poem?” That’s Peter Chinman, better known as the Park Poet.
Chinman, now 27, began writing poetry back in college after hearing that sonnets were the hardest form of poetry to craft. His infatuation with poetry led him to transition from chemistry to English at Pomona College.
Post-graduation Chinman worked a remote job in customer service, barely leaving his apartment. One day, Chinman went into Central Park high on marijuana and with a notepad, taking people’s one-word inspirations and conjuring up poems on the spot. Seven months ago, Chinman took on the Park Poet as his full-time job, and he’s been wandering parks ever since.
“People give me one word, and I write the poem from there,” Chinman said. “I usually try to come up with something original, but when they give me ‘love’ I just want to give them one of my heart-wrenching love poems to show what is real love.”
Chinman tries to keep his poems on the lighter side as he takes only about five minutes to compose each poem. Catch the Park Poet around Washington Square Park before he retreats for the winter.
咱俩有一个脑梗了。
诗不懂，但至少比歪哥年轻帅气，这是真的。 而且，人家明显对诗更那什么来着？ “贵在真诚” 吧。
刚度。。。
闻听此言，我在去一次韩国和直接去街头做个homeless poet之间，摇摆焦灼。。。。。
就他这段话，他是有天赋的。 I love Anne Carson—she wields language in a way that is both so severe and so tender. Walt Whitman is a big spiritual daddy for me. His ecstatic, manic moments drop open the trapped door inside me and suddenly I am the universe in its unfurling.
什么意思？
那个前几年还在唱。。。 我来纽约第一年，就认识他了。 还给他拍了些照片。 一晃这么多年了。
可以直接去韩国街头做homeless poet
你这说的混乱了啊，到底是走美容嫩肉鲜美风，还是沧桑落寞失意风啊？
我来翻译一下吧，哈哈。
“真的吗？太可爱了！”
不懂日文，作为曾经的日漫脑残粉听出来的是这个意思，对不对啊？
对～
几分钟就可以写，当然有水平。至少说明他可以不限时间，在刹那间把自己的存在感拔到一个形而上的高度，然后刹那间再回到现实世界，他的这种“观照”可以随时发生。
看到一个人就能写，说明他积累特别多，所以我说他有自信。
有些诗人不行，写之前需要一个长时间的思考和打磨，甚至还需要刻意离群索居，去寻找自己的小心灵。
哈哈O(∩_∩)O
哈哈哈太狠了！