Poems in the station

A Noodle and A Bean…
I read about Lynn Gentry just before we left and I was worried I would be wasting precious NY time, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. So on the 29th of January, on Jason and my 3rd year anniversary, we went into Union Square station in search of a poetry busker.
It was pretty epic when we saw him sitting just behind the turnstiles. Although I had read he is often there in the evenings, to actually see him at his desk was lucky – NY really did love us – and I quickly went up joined the queue to get a unique poem.

In the queue I got chatting to a lady who wanted a poem about ‘life’ – she said she needed something uplifting as she couldn’t find love in the city anywhere. Born and bred in Harlem, she had never seen the poem-writer before and beamed at him while he wrote. I was next – I requested the title to be ‘A Noodle and A Bean’ and Lynn did the rest.
I love how he typed it on a typewriter amongst thousands of people running home from work or going out to party. Once he was in his zone, his eyes didn’t leave the page – he was in the flow. It felt special when he typed away for me and at the end he corrected a few things with a pen and added all his details. It’s so unique and absolutely priceless.

You pay what you like (I gave $10) and I got to chat to Lynn as well. He was impressed we had come all the way from Berlin to get a poem, but his story is much more interesting. He left Los Angeles on a trip to New York with his family, writing poems along the way to make money. Now most evenings he sits in Union Square Station and provides people with a little bit of happiness. He also makes music and has even made a film with a producer from Berlin.
The lady after me in the queue was delighted to have bumped into Lynn – she was from Bolivia, but had lived in Germany for 12 years, so we had a little chat in German. It was such a lovely experience to have a poem written for me in the middle of a busy train station and I recommend it to you all!
To find Lynn Gentry, go into the Whole Foods entrance of Union Square – he sits just behind the turnstiles most evenings.