This postcard was a gift from Bill Kushner to me. George Schneeman, who had painted it, sent it to Bill in 2002 from Siena, Italy where he and his wife, Katie, were living. George thanked Bill for giving his son, Elio, a good review in the Poetry Project Newsletter for his posthumous book, A Found Life, which had been published in an edition of 500 copies in 2000 by Telephone Press. Elio—a very sweet guy—died of a drug overdose at the YMCA on 23rd Street in NYC in 1997.
In April 2014, Bill and I had gone to Poets House to see an exhibit of Schneeman’s collaborative work with poets, a worthy retrospective. There was also a show of George’s paintings in Chelsea, and we went there too. There was a piece in the Chelsea show that I loved very much but could not afford.
When Bill and I walked back to his place later on, he went to a drawer in one of his great metal cabinets, dug around a bit, found the postcard and gave it to me as a gift. Bill was a good friend, a dear friend, a close friend, and I was touched by the gift, but worried by it too. Bill died a year later in August 2015. I think he wanted me to have this postcard.
