In the maelstrom of energy flooding paper, press, and print about the sudden death of Kurt Vonnegut, I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on about his life. At 3 a.m. last night, I was running around the Internet linking to articles, gobbling up details of Vonnegut’s death, birth, slow literary beginnings, and 70’s cult following.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Ignoring the wailing Irish banshee, a screaming voice inside my head snapped, “Stop it! ! Go to bed! You haven’t read a Vonnegut book in years.”
“Okay, okay, I’m going,” I said.
Rising from my prone position on the couch, I grabbed the laptop precariously perched on my knees to keep it from crashing to the floor. And that’s when it hit me – I’d fallen prey to my own crazy Kantian schema about death, dying, and immortality.
In some odd twist of synchronicity, I wrote a post last Monday on The Uses of Sorrow – What Is It About Obituaries? Curious about the death of Molly Malone Cook, I found a long, engaging obituary in the Independent. It was overflowing with history and details of her life I didn’t know, and probably never would have cared about if she hadn’t died.
Isn’t it strange? We are drawn to write more about a person after they die, than we ever would have while they were alive. It’s part of the human condition. But amid all the writers, ex-hippies, beatniks, and bohemians bantering a slow death march around Vonnegut, I find myself wanting to say, “Enough already.”
Forget Vonnegut. Jane Kenyon lives on.
I don’t want to sound irreverent. I loved Vonnegut and read him voraciously (was it Stephen King that said adverbs are killers?) in my early college years. In 1972, Slaughterhouse-Five was the top film in Friday night screenings at McIntire Hall. We were still doing sit-ins for peace, streaking across campus, and protesting the Vietnam War (I wonder what’s changed?)
But back to living and dying.
Remember that back and forth on red Ravine last February about Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, Valentine & Donald Hall? It inspired us to put one of Jane Kenyon’s books, Otherwise, on our list of Hungry to be Read.
Last night I went over to St. Paul with a writer friend to see Galway Kinnell and one of his protégés, Josephine Dickinson, read their poetry. (I’ll write more about these moving poets in another post.) It was one of the most inspirational nights I’ve had in months.
Galway Kinnell read a poem from his new book Strong Is Your Hold, which I immediately snapped up and brought home with me. The poem is a tribute to Jane Kenyon. You could have heard a pin drop.
If you don’t get out and listen to other living, breathing writers read their work, you’re missing out on one of the greatest pleasures of writing – listening. As evidenced by the explosion of blog world, there are 11 trillion writers out there, all wanting their voices to be heard. I hold to my strong belief that there is room for all of us. If we are generous of spirit and support other writers, we’ll be supported, too.
I teared up last night when I listened to Galway Kinnell read his poem for Jane Kenyon (1947-1995). He went to that dark place writers go, that place where angels fear to tread.
I imagined Kenyon, immortal through his words, smiling down on the silent, rapt faces that dotted the crimson velvet rows and stacked ornate balconies of the Fitzgerald Theatre. I bet she was pleased.
Losing a great writer who influenced our lives, perhaps even our livelihood, leaves a big hole. When Galway Kinnell read How Could She Not, I knew that writing about the death of Kurt Vonnegut is our way of grieving.
We know we’ll never forget Vonnegut. Because Jane Kenyon lives on.
Friday, April 13th, 2007
###
How Could She Not
In Memory of Jane Kenyon, 1947-1995
The air glitters. Overfull clouds
slide across the sky. A short shower,
its parallel diagonals visible
against the firs, douses and then
refreshes the crocuses. We knew
it might happen one day this week.
Out the open door, east of us, stand
the mountains of New Hampshire.
There, too, the sun is bright,
and heaped cumuli make their shadowy
ways along the horizon. When we learn
that she died this morning, we wish
we could think: how could it not
have been today? In another room,
Kiri Te Kanawa is singing
Mozart’s Laudate Dominum
from far in the past, her voice
barely there over the swishing of scythes,
and rattlings of horse-pulled
mowing machines dragging
their cutter bar’s little reciprocating
triangles through the timothy.
This morning did she wake
in the dark, almost used up
by her year of pain? By first light
did she glimpse the world
as she had loved it, and see
that if she died now, she would
be leaving him in a day like paradise?
Near sunrise did her hold loosen a little?
Having these last days spoken
her whole heart to him, who spoke
his whole heart to her, might she not
have felt that in the silence to come
he would not feel any word
was missing? When her room filled
with daylight, how could she not
have slipped under a spell, with him
next to her, his arms around her, as they
had been, it may then have seemed,
all her life? How could she not
press her cheek to his cheek,
which presses itself to hers
from now on? How could she not
rise and go, with sunlight at the window,
and the drone, fading, deepening, hard to say,
of a single-engine plane in the distance,
coming for her, that no one else hears?
-from Strong Is Your Hold, Poems, by Galway Kinnell, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006
redravine.wordpress.com 
7:03 a.m., EST, Monday, April 16
Jane Kenyon is one of my favorite poets. I had not read this tribute from Kinnell. It is very beautiful. Equally as beautiful, particularly in its rawness, is Donald Hall’s volume of grief poetry about losing Kenyon called, Without. Following is the last poem in that volume:
WEEDS AND PEONIES
Your peonies burst out, white as snow squalls,
with red flecks at their shaggy centers
in your border of prodigies by the porch.
I carry one magnanimous blossom indoors
and float it in a glass bowl, as you used to do.
Ordinary pleasures, contentment recollected,
blow like snow into the abandoned garden,
overcoming the daises. Your blue coat
vanishes down Pond Road into imagined snowflakes
with Gus at your side, his great tail swinging,
but you will not reappear, tired and satisfied,
and grief’s repeated particles suffuse the air–
like the dog yipping through the entire night,
or the cat stretching awake, then curling
as if to dream of her mother’s milky nipples.
A raccoon dislodged a geranium from its pot.
Flowers, roots, and dirt lay upended
in the back garden where lilies begin
their daily excursion above stone walls
in the season of old roses. I pace beside weeds
and snowy peonies, staring at Mount Kearsarge
where you climbed wearing purple hiking boots.
“Hurry back. Be careful, climbing down.”
Your peonies lean their vast heads westward
as if they might topple. Some topple.
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The more I read about Donald Hall, the more I like him. I haven’t read Without but we did add it to our list of Hungry to Be Read. I imagine we’ll read it in tandem with Otherwise. I was reading more about Kenyon and she suffered from deep depressions. It seems to be the plight of many writers.
I loved hearing Kinnell read. He reminded me so much of Robert Frost. I found this website The Poetry Archive where there are snippets of great poets reading their work. I think it’s British. This morning I had breakfast with Langston Huges, Dylan Thomas, Rudyard Kipling, and Elizabeth Bartlett. Galway Kinnell was there, too.
Remember last year, listening to James Baldwin in that taped interview? I’ve listened to Louise Erdrich read her novels on CD, too. Nothing like hearing the author’s voice.
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For Kurt, whose wife Jill hung up on me in 1989 when an actress friend of mine gave me his phone number…she had been in a play of his and told him about my work he said I should call, I did and his wife hung up on me…
Everywhere I Go it Reigns
Silent.
Still the Son today – stretch a gauze across his face.
Stir remorse amid the clouds,
Unto me, I say – tiny hands of angels, millions swarm the skies to pull the curtain closed, yet to reveal dull surprise—
This mist shall send a message, the vapor spins a web – each thought we murmur, say, I say, I said with no regret.
For gathered in this scheme,
The dreams of Gods and men,
The surface shimmers new, a cleansing solace new.
For God’s breath – renounced, the fluid pure it flows,
He lives!
So close,
So vehemently to you,
But you’ve known this all along,
Reach out and feel his tears upon your palms
More than any psalm I say,
More than you this day,
A gift of love and harmony,
He sheds such concepts blue,
Place your face towards the skies,
You’re being there renewed.
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Sorry to hear about the hangup. Looks like you got a poem to Kurt out of it. It’s great to read your poem. It supports the write – Kurt will live on the same way Jane Kenyon does – through writing and poetry.
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[…] the time I wrote Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On I ran across this painting of Vonnegut on the Mike Schultz Paintings website under Recent Work, […]
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These writers have been more of an inspiration to me, and have often been in the recesses of my mind just when I have needed them to urge me on.
It is like a divining rod of sorts for poets and writers, this morning I awake wanting to find peonies. There is a great many place in NYC where one can find them.
But this is a lover’s return as I have just repatrieated back to the US after living in Cairo for three years and like so many things now, I am reclaiming bits and peices of life that I once knew, carried, hungered for, and devoured. Like these poets, whom I “met” studed some ten years ago. They came with me to Egypt nd little do they know how they supported me there.
And like Red Ravine, I found you mentioned last evening and passed on the click and the today here you are again, and wow the finds, the treasure, the community homecoming!
Galway Kinnel and that reading you so aptly describe was also mentioned to me last month by a friend who also saw him at the Fitz. I lived in the area there for 27 years and I marvel at how it is such a vibrant place.
Thank you for your comments and sharing these peoms that my rod vibrated toward this morining. I had to come a long way through the desert to find these, but this is familiar ground.
best and more best
ellen
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Ellen: Peonies. Yes, and their friends, the ants. We are waiting for their blooms on the side of the house here in Minnesota. I’ve never seen them in New York. Thanks so much for stopping by and for the kind words. It’s so good to hear you say you have found a community of writers here. What more could we ask for!
Your life sounds fascinating, travelling back from a time living in Egypt. Books make amazing friends. Old and comforting friends. And you lived in this area for 27 years? I can’t believe I was probably sitting in the audience at the Fitz with someone you knew.
Kinnell was wonderful. Poetry is grounding for me. I love to go hear writers read their work. But for some reason, poetry moves me on some other level. I like the sparseness of it. Few words say a lot.
I imagine there are tons of poets reading there in NYC. Do you plan on getting out to see any of them? You’ll have to keep us posted. I hope you keep visiting.
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[…] to posts: Forget Vonnegut – Jane Kenyon Lives On and Why Writers Don’t Write About […]
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[…] new and fresh for him. Insomniac and Sex vibrated across the room. And in his poem for Jane Kenyon, How Could She Not, you could hear the pain in his voice. Passion and […]
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[…] Kinnell was so taken with her work, he introduced her to his editor at Houghton Mifflin. And that’s how they came to be on stage together in St. Paul, Minnesota in early Spring 2007. […]
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