Traveling Along Highway 90: A Poet’s Journey to Inspiration

The podium hides most of her body. Illuminated onstage, her black hair falls past her shoulders and blends in with her jet-black jacket. She clears her throat and begins reading her poem, “September Notebook.” The audience sits enraptured with the intensity of her voice as she explores the haunting connection between 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Her voice seems to hypnotize the audience.

            Nicole Cooley, a published poet and professor of English and creative writing at Queens College, reads from her newest collection of poetry, Breach, due to be published next spring by LSU Press. It captures the devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

Born and raised in New Orleans, Cooley never originally envisioned herself writing about her hometown. Yet, she soon changed her mind after driving along the Gulf Coast on Highway 90 in 2007, one year after Hurricane Katrina. Realizing, that she wanted New Orleans to be the backdrop for her next writing project, she wrote for three months and edited the work for a year and a half until she completed Breach.

            The Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans served as the setting of Cooley’s childhood. Her father, Peter Cooley, is a published poet and professor of English at Tulane University in New Orleans. From an early age, Cooley followed in her father’s footsteps as she discovered her passion for reading and writing.

            “My dad used to make me write a poem everyday. We would go to a doughnut shop or the mall. We would pick a word from the dictionary and just write. Sometimes it worked out. And if it didn’t, it was okay because it was good practice.”

Cooley always knew she wanted to be a writer and a professor. During high school, she attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts where she took creative writing classes that provided valuable training. She went on to receive her B.A. from Brown University, her M.F.A. from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop and her Ph.D. from Emory University.

            After receiving her Ph.D., she began teaching at Bucknell University but soon joined Queens College. Currently the 42-year-old Cooley is an associate professor of English and creative writing and director of the newly developed M.F.A. program in creative writing and literary translation.

            Cooley says she loves that Queens is one of the most diverse places in the world, and she uses this environment in her writing. She often writes on the train each morning during the hour-plus commute from her home that she shares with her husband and two daughters in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Cooley lives by the motto of always writing wherever she is, even when she has nothing to say. “If the worst thing you do that day is write a bad poem, then you’ve had a good day,” said Cooley in an interview after her poetry reading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndaB1qr5758 This link goes to the YouTube video of Nicole Cooley's poetry reading from CUNY's Turnstyle Reading Series.

Snow Cancels Schools and Schedules

A huge snowstorm lengthened morning commutes, delayed flights, and led New York City officials to cancel school as the storm ripped through the Northeast and blanketed New York City with eight inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service.

New York City Public School’s 1.1 million students got their first official snow day in five years.

“There are no words for how excited I was,” said Willem Joseph, a 10-year-old fifth grader at P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village, as he slid down a tiny hill on his bright red sled and crashed into a pile of snow in Washington Square Park. “When I woke up at 7:56, I just knew it was going to be a snow day since I usually have to wake up at 7:30 for school.”

“This is way better than school,” Ava Gural, an eight-year-old student at the Little Red Schoolhouse, said with snow in her brown hair, only one pink glove on, and rosy cheeks from the wind.  She didn’t have her own sled but used cardboard instead to slide down the hill.

Hardware stores overflowed with customers needing salt, shovels, and Ice Melt.

“This morning from the moment we opened we were very busy,” said Joseph Breit, manager of Brickman Outlets Ace Hardware in Greenwich Village.

            Others had no customers at all. Barry Fisherman, a 65-year-old ophthalmologist on Long Island, said as he walked through Madison Square Park that he had to close his practice for the day because his secretary and many of his patients could not make the commute.

Classes at the French Culinary Institute were also canceled because of the snow, which threw off 39-year-old culinary student Keith Fisherman’s schedule.

“We decided we might as well take advantage of the day off and grab some burgers,” said Keith as he went to grab a burger from the Shake Shack in the snow-covered Madison Square Park. 

Protestors Demand Changes in NY Housing Laws

Low-income tenants and activists gathered despite the cold on the steps of New York’s City Hall today to protest what they called landlord fraud in a series of rent increase loopholes.

The tenants and activists also released a report titled “The $20,000 Stove.” This report calls for the elimination of a program that lets landlords raise new tenants’ rents on rent-controlled apartments by 1/40^th the cost of improvements made on apartments.

Landlords are raising rents without showing documentation of the improvements, said Irene Baldwin, the executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, an organization of 93 affordable housing groups. Some landlords use the no-documentation loophole in the program to claim false improvements and raise rent prices without having to show proof, said Baldwin.

            “We need to crack down on this abuse,” said New York State Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried of Chelsea and Midtown. “Businessmen go to jail when they commit fraud. Landlords should go to jail too.” 

            After rent reaches $2000 each month, landlords can charge whatever they want because the apartment is no longer under rent control, said Baldwin.

“I hope changes come soon,” said Carmelo Robles, a 78-year-old volunteer for the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center, a non-profit organization promoting tenant rights for immigrants and low-income residents of West Harlem. “If nothing changes, pretty soon we will all be living on the streets.”

Current legislation to change the 1/40^th program will be voted on in the upcoming months in the New York legislature in Albany. If passed, the new legislation will require landlords to provide proof of any improvements and will also change the amount landlords can charge to 1/84^th the amount of documented improvements, said Stephen Levin, the Chief of Staff for New York State Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez of Brooklyn.

            “Right now landlords are in control, ” said New York State Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn. “But we will not rest until the days when landlords abusing tenants comes to an end.”