SUBSCRIBER WOW: THE BOOK OF LONGING

A New York street festival teaches me about being hot and being cared for.

This week New York is hosting the Down to Earth Festival, a series of free public arts performances going on all over the 5 boroughs of New York. I’m doing some reporting on it for the Brooklyn Rail. One event that had both fascinated me and made me nervous was a thing called “Poetic Consultations.” A group of artists of various kinds—poets, actors, musicians, dancers—were going to set up shop down at the South Street Seaport for three hours one afternoon, then again the next day for a couple hours at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. Anyone who wanted could wander up and talk to them about whatever. They would listen and then offer something to the individual, a sort of artistic prescription of help.

What did that mean? It wasn’t even in Brooklyn, but I had to find out.