“All eager-lipped I kissed the mouth of Death.”
–U.S. poet Gwendolyn B. Bennett

I found this quote intriguing; my head buzzes with quotes, and sometimes a line lands for a while and makes sense. This quote settled in, maybe because it’s time for me to take stock of the dead poets of 2007.

Gwendolyn Bennett, though often overlooked, left us back in ‘81. She slipped out quietly, too quietly, but in her long life — she was I think 78 when she died — she contributed much to the culture of Harlem. Among her many fine writings was her poem “Heritage,” published in Crisis in November 1923.

Some sample lines:
“I want to feel the surging
Of my sad people’s soul
Hidden by a minstrel-smile.”

End of the year, I survey those poets we lost, some who came to my attention specifically when they died… ah, some sad stories, but some distinct victories too, especially in the many beautiful words.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but there was a study out a few years back that put forth the idea that poets die younger than other writers. Sooner than all other categories of writers, poets live and die with this spooky aura, for whatever reason.

Since West Virginia poets these days more than ever connect with poets from across the country and around the world, in that spirit, I note that three iconic authors — Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron — died within the last year. I saw Page One stories, retrospectives, television programs about them. Also, I recall that Tillie Olsen of “Tell Me a Riddle” and “Silences” fame died on January 1, 2007. One could argue that her story “I Stand Here Ironing” is an important prose poem. Her significance is huge. John Leonard of The Nation said: “When she wrote “Tell Me a Riddle,” Tillie Olsen, like William Blake, covered paper with words ‘for the angels to read.’ ” Though these writers were worthy of much praise, 2007 presented a long list of dead poets per se, some relatively obscure perhaps intentionally. Some of them were also teachers, some opinionators, artists all. They must’ve written out of some compelling need to simply make poems, as Samuel Coleridge said: to put “the best words in their best order.”

Here are some of the dead poets of 2007, some old, some young, a list not nearly exhaustible, the notations becoming more abbreviated as I saw the collection growing unmanageably long. If you know of any others — and there must many — please let me know.

Often at the time of a poet’s death, I have found an occasion to restudy, reread, take stock somehow in an unexpected way.

In an earlier post I wrote of the death of Joseph P. Gatski, 51, of Morgantown, W.Va., his relative significance arguably great or small in life, greater than some would allow, grown somehow larger in death. Some of his friends are sending me a copy of his book (more on that later).

Diane Middlebrook, award-winning poet, biographer, teacher and feminist. Dec. 15, 2007, cancer. Perhaps best known for “Anne Sexton: A Biography.” Born April 16, 1939.

Sylvester Pollet, 68, a University of Maine creative writing instructor and poet. Cancer, Dec. 20, 2007. Pollet was assistant editor of the National Poetry Foundation, and he edited and published 100 single-sheet collections of poems between 1994 and 2006. He called the compilations “Backwoods Broadsides,” sometimes referred to as “a Who’s Who of mostly post-New American poetics,” publishing such poets as Jerome Rothenberg, Anne Waldman, Cid Corman, Robert Creeley, Diane Di Prima and others.

Vincent Ferrini, poet laureate of Gloucester, Mass., and renowned in literary and local circles for his radical opinions of America and passion for life. Dec. 24, 2007. Heart attack and pneumonia. Born June 24, 1913. Ferrini edited a little magazine called “Four Winds,” and he was assured a place in literary history when he was attacked by poet Charles Olson as misrepresenting Gloucester, Mass. Olson’s complaint was that Ferrini was a literary equivalent of the absentee-owner. “You are more like Gloucester now is/ than I who hark back to an older polis,” Olson wrote.
In an intro to a 2003 interview with Ferrini, Craig Stormont posited:
“I’m convinced that Olson made amends for his earlier attack by proclaiming Vincent a “Co-king” of Gloucester in “Ferrini – I”(1963). Vincent now holds the title Poet Laureate of Gloucester, and deservedly so.”
Olson died in 1970.
“The Whole Song: Selected Poems” by Vincent Ferrini.

William Meredith, 88. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. “Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems.” May 30.

Sekou Sundiata, 58. Grammy-nominated poet, recording artist. “The Blue Oneness of Dreams.” July 18.

Grace Paley, 84. Acclaimed poet and short story writer. Aug. 22. “Begin Again: Collected Poems.”

Mary Ellen Solt, 86, a leader in the “concrete poetry” movement. June 21 after a stroke. Her most popular work: “Forsythia,” which is written as a flowering shrub. “The design of ‘Forsythia’ is made from the letters of the name of the flowering shrub and their equivalents in the Morse Code. The text is part of the design.” (M.E.S.)

Paul Roche, 91. English poet, translator. Oct. 30. “All things considered: And other poems.”

Philip Booth, 81. July 2. Complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Taught creative writing at Dartmouth College, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and at Syracuse University. In addition to many books of poems, including “Weathers and Edges,” he wrote “Trying to Say It: Outlooks and Insights on How Poems Happen.” From his poem “Places without Names”: “What gene demands old men command young men to die?/The young gone singing to Antietam, Aachen, Anzio.//To Bangalore, the Choisin Reservoir, Dien Bien Phu,/My Lai. Places in the heads of men who have no/mind left….”

Jane Cooper, 83. Poet in residence emerita at Sarah Lawrence College. 1995 - 1997, official poet of New York State. Oct. 26. “The Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed.”

Here are some other poets who died in 2007, and among them we find writing giants, beautiful people, intriguing life stories brought to our attention exactly when their deaths were reported, people we had not always been aware of:

Russian poet Dmitri Prigov, leader of conceptualist school

Egon Bondy, a Czech poet

Marly de Oliveira, the Brazilian poet

Dutch novelist, poet and sculptor Jan Wolkers

Sarah Hannah, award-winning Cambridge poet, a teacher

Also:

Michael Hamburger
Julia Alison Casterton
James Michie
Bill Griffiths
Dike Omeje
Shirley Pell Yater
Preston Carter

Take some time and Google just one of these names. Find the amazing story behind the report.
Sarah Hannah, for example, who took her own life on May 23 at age 40, was powerful, ultimately fragile, a human being of the most intense kind, fervent, smart, talented, witty, direct, a presence on the Boston poetry scene I was not familiar with until I read of her death. I, from the little W.Va. village of Schultz, population 75, appreciate this too-short life posthumously, hear and read about this woman who was once a student of Annie Dillard’s at Wesleyan University. Dr. Hannah taught writing at Emerson College. The publication date of her second book, “Inflorescence,” was to have been in 2008, but was moved up after her death. Here’s a sample stanza, because she should be read, a snippet of her poetry to tantalize, from a poem called “Alembic”:

Memory’s a still, a ruthless contraption.
You cannot work it backwards.
A trace, anemic limb within a sprawling wood,
A random pool of silt through a funnel.
It’s not alchemy, it’s not miracle.
It’s criticism. Winnowing.
From three hundred thousand spawn, five minnows.
That one brilliant salmon who flew out of the stream.
You lived somewhere for many days.
What can you retrieve?

…
– Sarah Hannah
from the new book, “Inflorescence,” from Tupelo Press

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 8:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.