Reason #9 to Love Pittsburgh: Billy Nardozzi and Pittsburgh’s Literary Underground
by Adam Reger
Today I was paging through the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and saw this guy’s face in the section for paid announcements:
It was the second time I’d seen Billy Nardozzi and his poetry in the Post-Gazette, and I thought, “What in the world?”
I did some research, and apparently he’s a known quantity here in Pittsburgh: NPR wrote a piece on him in 2011. That followed a Post-Gazette feature from 2009 by Brian O’Neill, a great PPG reporter.
Nardozzi drops $50 to $100 every Tuesday to have his poems published, along with a photo of himself with that ridiculous mullet and, at the bottom of each poem, his phone number, with a note beneath it saying, “((( All Calls Are Welcomed ))).”
Some people do call him, he said, many with words of encouragement and thanks, and others with advice to cut the mullet. Both pieces take pains to make the point that, no, this is not ironic at all. You’d be forgiven if you thought it were an elaborate joke, because these poems kind of stink.
I could explain why in detail, but instead, here’s a Tumblr of the poems of Billy Nardozzi.
Reading about Nardozzi reminded me of The Dirty Poet, a Pittsburgh fixture whose poems tend to appear overnight, yellow 8 1/2 x 11″ yellow sheets of paper taped to poles in Squirrel Hill, Friendship, Bloomfield, and other neighborhoods. This Pittsburgh Quarterly piece talks briefly to The Dirty Poet.
I met The Dirty Poet once, setting out his poetry at great Pittsburgh bar the Brillobox. He said to me basically what he said to the Pittsburgh Quarterly: that he gets more feedback on his poetry from taping it to phone poles than he ever has publishing in small literary magazines. (He was a little snide when he heard I was a writer, and asked if I’d published anything. I said I had, which occasioned his little soapbox speech.)
This New Yorker blog piece also namedrops The Dirty Poet as it extols Pittsburgh’s literary scene. As good a job as the writer does, I feel there’s an obvious indicator of the depth and richness of Pittsburgh’s literary culture that Ms. Macy Halford missed: Pittsburgh has not only a literary scene but a literary underground, populated by writers who so burn to be heard they bypass the machinery of that literary scene and pay to publish their work, and sneak out in the dead of night to tape their work to traffic poles (or, go out at 9 p.m. to distribute it at bars). That is what I call a literary culture.
Hello there Adam!!! I must ask……Would it not be more appropriate to refer to me as The “Clean” Poet???….For I pride myself in writing about the human heart and its trials & tribulations.Just trying to stick to the “nice” part of life……..But
“I thank you just the same”
“For the mere mention of my name”
“And should we meet some-where”
“I shall buy the beer”
Thank you Adam
Billie Nardozzi
Green Tree
((( All Calls Are Welcomed )))
Thank you, Billie! You are my first celebrity commenter! Sorry I said your poems stink. Also, is the correct spelling of your name “Billie” or “Billy”?
J or Adam???
The correct spelling is Billie. And as I state in all poems “All Calls Are Welcomed” as well as comments being positive or negative. I respect them all, for it is someone’s honest opinion,and they “must not” be faulted for that.
And again my friend; Thank you for the read.
Billie Nardozzi
Wow! I am so pleased to be “speaking” with you, Billie, and I immensely respect your openness. Not many writers are as open to others’ opinions–usually, writers are a defensive group.
I was wondering what your writing process is like: do you sit down to write knowing this is going in this week’s PPG, or do you jot down ideas and lines as they come to you? And if you wanted to answer in verse, that would be awesome.
Best,
Adam
“Many ideas”
“Come to my head”
“And some of them get published”
“Or trashed instead”
“But let it be known”
“I never like to plan”
“I just “write” all day”
“You must understand”
“And I just go with the poem”
“That sticks in my head”
“And just try to keep my fans”
“Po-etically fed”
Thank you kindly Adam
Billie Nardozzi
((( All “criticisms” Welcomed )))