[New-Poetry] Donald Finkel Tribute

Sat Mar 8 19:04:17 EST 2008

Jom -- that would be great. There's no way that I could have stayed 
away. I was Don's student at Bard, when he was first starting out -- his 
first book, The Clothing's New Emperor, had just been released. I've 
always sent him my poems, and he's always exactly identified the soft 
spots. Anything I've done as a teacher, has been to try and live up to 
his example -- his and Don Justice's.

Here's a late poem, written not long before the descent into 
Alzheimer's, eerily prophetic:

Burden

Nouns were the first to slip away.
Was it because they were easier to forget,
or the most dispensable?

Funerals back then were milling
with nouns whose names he'd forgotten,
if he'd ever met them.

Evidently, somewhere out there
a swarm of improper nouns
had prospered and multiplied.

Odd nouns came knocking every day
looking for work, till the old bard
left off answering the door.

Verbs were beasts of another persuasion.
For a while some stayed behind,
pacing the halls or curled on the living room sofa.

But they had to be fed. Some nights
they sank their claws in his thigh
when they were hungry.

As the last syllable crept away,
he felt a peculiar lightness,
like the wisp that rises,

from a smoldering wick—
as if words were the burden
he'd been bearing, all his life.

jforjames at aol.com wrote:
> Tho sad news, thanks for sending this Tad. I've not kept in contact 
> with Don over the years, but he was one of first real poets I knew and 
> admired. The students he had a Wash U in St. Louis, almost to a one, 
> loved working with him. And I think was what he brought to the 
> table..they were all in this endeavor called poetry together.
> I may try to join you out there in St. Louis.
> Finnegan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org>
> Sent: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 1:07 pm
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Donald Finkel Tribute
>
> As those who've been posting here for a while may know, Donald Finkel 
> has been my lifelong mentor, friend, role model and inspiration. As 
> you may or may not know, this wisest and most generous of men is now 
> in the iron grip of Alheimer's. This April 7th, there will be a 
> tribute reading for him in his adopted home town of St. Louis. I'll be 
> going there for it. Here's a press release: 
>  
> *A Tribute to Donald Finkel* 
>  
> *Date: *Monday, April 7, 2008** 
>  
> *Time: *8 p.m.** 
>  
> *Location:* Duff’s Restaurant 
>  
> 392 N Euclid Ave 
>  
> St Louis, MO 63108 
>  
> *Admission:* Free 
>  
> *March 5, 2008:* The largest reading ever of St. Louis poets will take 
> place on April 7, 2008 at Duff’s Restaurant in the Central West End. 
> The reading is in honor of Donald Finkel, long recognized as the 
> leading figure among St. Louis poets. More than thirty poets are 
> scheduled to read three of their favorite poems by Finkel, who was 
> poet-in-residence at Washington University for more than thirty years. 
>  
> Poets scheduled to read include L.D. Brodsky, Michael Castro, David 
> Clewell, Jane Ellen Ibur, Shirley LeFlore, Curtis Lyle, Eugene Redmon, 
> Steve Schreiner, Howard Schwartz, Jason Sommer, Marjorie Stelmach, Nan 
> Sweet, Eamonn Wall, and Jane O. Wayne. Many of these poets were 
> students of Finkel over the years, and all admire and respect Finkel 
> as a great poet and a great man. 
>  
> Born in the Bronx in 1929, Finkel came to St. Louis in 1960 after 
> earning two degrees at Columbia University and teaching at the 
> University of Iowa Writers Workshop (where he met his future wife, the 
> poet Constance Urdang) and at Bard College. 
>  
> Finkel’s first poetry collection, /The Clothing’s New Emperor/, was 
> published in 1959, to be followed by /Simeon/ (1964), /A Joyful Noise/ 
> (1966), /The Garbage Wars/ (1970), /A Mote in Heaven’s Eye/ (1975), 
> /What Manner of Beast/ (1981), /The Detachable Man/ (1984), /A 
> Question of Seeing/ (1998). Finkel also published two retrospective 
> collections, /Selected Shorter Poems/ (1987) and /Not So the Chairs/ 
> (2003), and co-translated an anthology of works by contemporary 
> Chinese poets, /A Splintered Mirror: Chinese Poetry from the Democracy 
> Movement/ (1991). A recipient of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Award 
> and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award as well as grants from the National 
> Endowment of the Arts and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, Finkel was 
> also honored as a Guggenheim Fellow. 
>  
> He is perhaps best known for his book-length narrative poems -- 
> /Answer Back/ (1968), /Adequate Earth/ (1972), /Endurance/Going Under/ 
> (1978), and /The Wake of the Electron/ (1987). Tellingly, his 
> fascination with themes of isolation abound in these explorations, 
> from the endless cavern systems under Kentucky, which he prowled with 
> fellow members of the Cave Research Foundation, to the barren wonders 
> of Antarctica, which he was the very first poet ever to visit. 
>  
> As much as he has garnered recognition for his own body of work, 
> Finkel is revered for his contributions as a teacher. In a tribute 
> published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2003, former student David 
> Clewell wrote of his mentor: “I found in Don a teacher who seemed to 
> know exactly when to coax, wheedle, admonish and applaud -- when to 
> stay out of the way and when to get smack into it again. He taught his 
> experience as well as the craft.... He couldn’t help but teach his 
> passion for the art and his compassion for others involved in the same 
> exhilarating, frustrating task: trying to get some small part of the 
> world precisely right -- for a moment, at least -- in words.” 
>  
> -- Tad Richards 
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/ 
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/ 
>  
> The moral is this: in American verse, 
> The better you are, the pay is worse. 
>  --Corey Ford 
>  
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-- 
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/

The moral is this: in American verse,
The better you are, the pay is worse.
  --Corey Ford