June 20th, 2008 bhenricksen
An article in the current New Republic, “The Country of the Damned” by Adam Kirsch (TNR June 25) awakened memories. Kirsch discusses the grip that the Southern Agrarian ideology held on Allen Tate, who for a time was thought of as one of our greatest poets. Along the way, Kirsch quotes some atrociously racist and anti-semitic remarks that Tate made in print in his younger days, one being a declaration in the early 1930s that certain blacks accused of a particular crime (I forget what it was) should be executed whether guilty or not. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 17th, 2008 bhenricksen
Of the better-known poets who contributed to From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright, I hear most often from Gibbons Ruark. In promoting the collection at libraries and bookstores, I’ve more than once chosen to read his contribution to the book, a poem called “With Our Wives in Late October.” Recently I emailed him to say how much people have appreciated this lovely and delicate poem. He responded to tell me that it was a conflation of a number of days spent with Jim and Annie during an autumn when they were neighbors. Here’s how it begins:
“Wandering with weather down the long hillside,
We come to the slender reeds in the water,
All of us who lazed by our own rivers
Summer and autumn.
Looking for redwings or leaves that were falling.
Light that was flying, the red wing of summer,
Never dreaming to be by one sure river
Gathered together.”
Gibbons ends the poem by describing the first stars of evening and “the loveliest faces of women.” It’s a wonderful tribute not only to James, but to Annie Wright and Kay Ruark.
Gibbons will have a poem in the June 25th issue of The New Republic.
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April 9th, 2008 bhenricksen
I live in Duluth, springtime’s last stop, so my wife and I looked forward to our short stay in the Twin Cities over the weekend. I’ve edited a collection of poems in honor of a great American poet, and we went 150 miles south to do a couple of book events and to see green grass. We called our trip The James Wright Mystery Tour, the mystery being whether anyone would show up for the events. From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright has contributions from some major American poets–Galway Kinnell, C. K. Williams, and others–and also from some fine poets with a more regional fame. A few in this latter group joined me to read both their own poems and Wright’s, and to talk about his importance to Minnesota. Wright had taught at our state university in the Sixties and wrote some of his best poems during those years. Read the rest of this entry »
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