7 Places in the East Village That Impacted the History of Poetry

Today, it is home to designer jeans, but John Varvatos’s eponymous store on the Bowery is the former site of the famed venue CBGB, which originally housed punks in much more tattered stylings. Closed in 2006, CBGB was known as a home base for bands such as Blondie, Talking Heads, and the Ramones. Richard Hell, an early member of the band Television who departed to perform under his name, is credited with this sartorial trend. He often sported a ripped T-shirt with safety pins precariously holding the stitching together. Aside from his contribution to the world of clothing, however, he is known for – along with friends Patti Smith and Tom Verlaine – bridging the gap between poetry and punk. “Writing and reading is probably my main occupation, but I felt too isolated; I wanted more physical satisfaction. So, out of frustration with feeling doomed to irrelevance, we decided we were gonna make a band,” Hell told the Poetry Foundation. Varvatos has preserved the stage where Smith and Hell read verses, and tattered posters touting the CBGB bands adorn the wall.

Think poetry is boring? It wasn’t on January 10, 1968, when a tall, shaggy man entered St Mark’s Church, pulled a gun and fired two shots at the poet Kenneth Koch. The assassination attempt was a stunt (though Koch wasn’t in on it); the bullets were blanks meant to draw attention to a political cause, as The Nation reported. The lively reading was part of the burgeoning Poetry Project, founded two years earlier to host new and experimental poetry, and hosted by the church. In addition to Koch’s performance, St Mark’s Church, over its 350 years, has held court for many poets, including lectures from William Carlos Williams, Edna St Vincent Millay and Carl Sandburg. Patti Smith and guitarist Lenny Kaye combined forces for the first time here, which launched the spiritual beginning of the Patti Smith Group, while WH Auden was a member of the church itself.

Closed during the day, the Nuyorican Poets Café comes alive in the evening with poetry slams and open mics almost every night. Nuyorican, a portmanteau of New York and Puerto Rican, was originally a pejorative, but it was reclaimed by poet Miguel Algarín, who founded the space in 1973 as a sanctuary for those not granted access to the mainstream literary community. He wrote in the anthology Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (1994): “The philosophy and purpose of the Nuyorican Poets Café has always been to reveal poetry as a living art.” With its commingling of spoken-word, hip-hop and Latin jazz, and its ethos that anyone can give the form a shot, the café lives up to its mission. And, as Allen Ginsberg mused, it’s “the most integrated place on the planet.” The Nuyorican literary movement was created to give a new group of writers the chance to have their work heard, and the café continues that tradition.

In an untitled 1969 poem about a night of unsuccessful cruising, Allen Ginsberg concluded, “Back from the Gem Spa, into the hallway, a glance behind / and sudden farewell to the bedbug-ridden mattresses piled soggy in dark rain.” The Village has changed dramatically since then. Following the gentrification of the ’90s, you can rest assured bedbugs can’t afford Bowery rent, but Gem Spa is still serving its signature egg creams, a drink that combines seltzer, syrup and milk. For more than 20 years, the newsstand was mere blocks from Ginsberg’s 437 E 12th Street apartment, and it became a de facto hangout spot for poets, punks and hippies alike. Ted Berrigan, of the second-generation New York School of Poets, also captured the unique location in verse. In his poem ‘Many Happy Returns,’ he wrote, “Everyone, it seems, is somewhere else / None are lost, tho. At least, we aren’t / GEM’S [sic] SPA: Corner of 2nd Avenue & St Mark’s Place) / I’m right here.”

In a 1995 New Yorker profile, Harvard professor and renowned literary critic Henry Louis Gates, Jr described Bowery Poetry Club founder Bob Holman as “the postmodern promoter who has done more to bring poetry to cafés and bars than anyone since [Lawrence] Ferlinghetti.” This praise is high but deserved. Holman has been an East Village staple since the late 1970s when he coordinated readings at the Poetry Project and introduced slam poetry to the Nuyorican Poets Café. When he opened Bowery Poetry Club in 2002, its goal was to continue this tradition, and with its open mics and curated readings on Sundays and Mondays, its commitment to the art would make past poets proud.

During the reign of the Soviet Union, the KGB acted as its secret police. The East Village’s KGB Bar also once held a secret: it was a meeting place where Ukrainian Socialists would secretly meet and indulge in libations. The present-day bar, which opened in 1993, is known as a literary hub. Everyone from Joyce Carol Oates and Jonathan Franzen to Lemony Snicket has read here, according to AM New York. Monday night is when contemporary poets read, and the bar even has a literary magazine that prints stories, essays, poetry and more.

“I was sitting in mcsorley’s,” Modernist free-verse poet EE Cummings begins a 1923 tribute to this famous bar. He continues, “outside it was New York and beautifully snowing / Inside snug and evil.” McSorley’s, opened in 1854, is the city’s oldest Irish pub. Abraham Lincoln, a poet in his own right, stopped by for a drink, and Jack Kerouac was 86’d more than once. The concept of The Village Voice was discussed here, and eventually, its offices were close enough that editors would stop by after work, including co-founder Norman Mailer.