by Doug Holder

I  have written more than a few poems for my friend Ed Galing, after getting the many letters he has sent me over the years. Galing‚Äôs letters are probably as good as his poems.

They are alive, spirited, like the scrappy street urchin Galing was in his early years. Galing can be needy, infuriating, hilariously funny, but most of all loveable. And that’s the way I characterize his poetry. Like Galing, it shoots from the hip, giving you it straight — with no chaser.

I find that, in contrast to a lot of the poetry I read today, Galing’s has a calculated ironic distance, almost as if the poet is afraid to display honest senti-ment or emotion.

Galing, at 89, is a poet who knows his allotted time is too short for posturing, cool detachment, and obtuse, in-accessible verse. After long years of writing and submitting his work, Galing has joined the ranks of major small press poets, such as A.D. Winans, Hugh Fox, and others. Like the poets just mentioned, Galing’s poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in the most obscure and the most well-known jour-nals across the country. When I pick up little magazines, I am never surprised to find Galing’s name.

I first encountered Galing‚Äôs poetry in a defunct magazine founded by the late Ralph Haselmann Jr., entitled Lucid Moon. Galing said he was described as the ‚Äúharmonica-playing poet-laureate of Hatboro, Pa,‚Äù his hometown.  I later discovered Galing‚Äôs work liberally spread over a wide swath of small press magazines, journals, and newspapers.

A no-bullshit, call a spade-a- spade style comes through in Galing’s poetry. He reminds me of my wisecracking, Jewish uncles from boyhood, always busting chops and spinning stories; he is what they would call a “mensch.” A Yiddish word, it means someone of consequence, someone to emulate. That’s Ed Galing.

Through a number of interviews I conducted with Galing, I became aware of the hardscrabble life reflected in his poetry. Galing said he started to write poetry as a young person during the Depression. Galing’s family was on general relief, and they lived in spartan conditions on the Lower East Side of New York City and the gone-to seed environs of South Philadelphia, he said.

Galing said his high school English teacher, Dr. Ginsberg was supportive of his work and pushed him to read the classics. Galing said he took to poetry early on. “Poetry could say something in a few words that prose could only do in the thousands. Poetry allowed me to pour out my heart and soul,” he said.

Galing said he later utilized his early years as fodder for his larger body of work. In his most recent collection, “Buying a Suit on Essex Street” (Iniquity Press), Galing writes about his boyhood urban retreat — the fire escape on his tenement building over the bustling immigrant filled streets of the Lower East Side.

Fire Escape

Mine was on
the fifth floor
A small iron
Cage
Outside the front
window
Looking down on
Essex Street
Lower East Side:
Down below I
could see pushcarts:
Crowded streets,
people pushing and
shoving,
Screams and mutterings:
shouts of despair:
Up here, when I sat
outside the window
in my fire escape
refuge
I was six years old:
and already I knew
what it felt
like
To be caged in
like some wild animal.

Galing said he remembers vividly the cornucopia of sights and sounds of the Lower East Side.

“There were the cries of the merchants and the hundred of people pushing and shoving. There was a flavor to those streets I won’t forget. I think it shaped my life. There were the rooftops, the wash on the lines, the garbage on the streets, and the gang fights.”

Galing also experienced the bitter taste of anti-semitism, he said. He learned from the predominantly Christian world that the Jews killed Christ, and Santa Claus wanted no part in him, he said. All this left an indelible impression on him, he said.

Galing has written many poems concerning anti-semitism, as he experienced it. As an occupation solider in Europe shortly after World War II, he witnessed the death camps at Dachau. “All of these events shaped my sensibility and my poetry. I found anti-semitism everywhere, in the Army, the Navy.”

Galing saw the horrific ovens in the camps, and was enraged at the denial of these atrocities by many Germans he encountered, he said. Galing said he, through the Lucid Moon Press, published a small book about his wartime experiences, complete with photos. In spite of these experiences, Galing did not become misanthropic, he said. “ This affected me as a man. I wanted to use my words to benefit mankind. I wanted to show that love is important to life.”

To this day, Galing visits Jack’s Deli in his old stomping grounds of South Phillie, and entertains the patrons with his harmonica playing, he said. Now that his wife is a resident in a nursing home, he visits her daily, and shares his poetry and music with the other residents as well, he said. Galing said he makes no concessions to the computer age and still corre-sponds with fellow poets by hand written letter. He types his poems out on an old typewriter, he said.

What matters to Galing are the people in his life that he has touched and who have touched him, he said. “I have two grandsons, three grandchildren, and I am married to a wonderful woman. What is there to know about Ed Galing? Just a simple man, trying to write poetry, and perhaps trying to hear a good word about my work.”

And, just like his old man before him, Galing keeps working at his craft, a craft which has been his life.

Visit Ed Galing’s website at www.edgaling.blogspot.com
This article originally appeared in Rattle Dec. 2006.

Ed’s wife has passed since.