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Synchronicity: Tom Savage and Me

I was planning and looking forward to hearing Anne Waldman and Vincent Katz read some poetry at 192 Books—it would have been fun. But I do not move as fast as I used to, or time is moving faster to my slower and I’m not quite in sync yet. I shouldn’t have taken a nap, nor missed that bus. At 5th Avenue, I turned back, sadly, bitterly, self-reproaching, too late, half way there. I jumped off the M14 going west for the M14 going east, going home, and who is sitting there? Tom Savage! “Don,” he says excited to see me, “I’ve just written a poem with you in it. I have it in here somewhere.” Tom starts looking through his bag stuffed to the max with papers and books. “Take your time.” I said. Digging in, Tom finds and hands it to me: the poem in an envelope addressed to me!

Too late for one thing, on time for another, a few days later, I’ve read the poem and like it very much. I’ve scanned it as well for everyone to see. It is a poem about censorship. As Tom listens to Russian composers who were banned by Stalin (Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Mayakovsky, and Sergei Prokofiev), he writes what is timely.

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Tom Savage

If you follow this Youtube link, you can listen to the symphonies of Nikolai Mayakovsky.


If you follow this link, you can listen to Dmitri Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

If you follow this link, you can listen to Sergei Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony conducted by Valery Gergiev.

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