[New-Poetry] Donald Finkel Tribute

[TheOldMole]

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