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Adios, John Ashbery
John Ashbery reading the full text of “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”—among the many of his poems that I’d wager people will still read with pleasure in 100 years.Read More
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Adios, James Tate
I had to sit a while with James Tate‘s passing, not because he was a friend of mine, but because it seems he’s always been there, and I couldn’t picture American poetry without him. That said, I wasn’t a Tate fan on the order of Bill Knott, who was older than Tate and destined to remain less recognized, but who nevertheless idolized his poetry.Read More
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Adios, Tomas Tranströmer
We knew he had suffered a stroke in 1990. We knew he was in poor health. Nevertheless, the loss of him inspires an ache in the chest, a melancholy cold wind in the mind. Tomas Tranströmer is gone.Read More
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Adios, Philip Levine
This notice came across my digital desk over the weekend, and I’m still feeling an especially sharp sense of loss. (Others have been feeling this, too. See here, here, and here.) Philip Levine was a skilled, humane, compelling poet. I met him only once, when he read in Denver in the 1980s. If I were a diarist I’d know the date, but instead I have to rely on the powerful memory of him reading from his first Selected Poems (1984) and Sweet Will (1985). Levine was a no-nonsense performer of his own work.Read More
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Adios, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez, 1927-2014 Sad news today in El País: the Colombian journalist and one of the greatest fiction writers in world literature, Gabriel García Márquez, has died at the age of 87. The following details are taken from the El País article. Born in the Colombian village of Aracataca on March 6, 1927, Márquez was the oldest of 11 children, seven boys and four girls. In 1944, at age 16, his parents sent him to school in Zipaquirá, near Bogotá, where he discovered the writings of Kafka, Woolf, and Faulkner.Read More
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Adios, Bill Knott
Bill Knott I just read in Coldfront that Bill Knott passed away on Wednesday due to complications from surgery. What a loss for his friends and for American “verse culture.” Bill liked to give the impression that he was leading a posthumous existence—ignored, washed up, inconsequential—when in fact he was well known (though no Mary Oliver or Robert Hass), creatively engaged (poetry, appreciations, screeds, visual art), and influential in ways that might inspire envy in other poets of his generation (he was born in 1940).Read More
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Adios, Wanda Coleman…
I was saddened to read, belatedly, about the passing of Wanda Coleman shortly before Thanksgiving. Her writing is sprawling and energetic, her presence in the L.A. poetry scene iconic. She was like a walking electrical substation, discharging her lightnings as she sauntered along. She could do anger, raw humor, scorn—but her ground note was joy. I owe her a debt of personal gratitude because she was the judge who chose a book of mine, Bed of Coals, for the Colorado Poetry Award back in 1995.Read More
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Adios, Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe I have little to add to the many obits, remembrances, assessments, and well deserved encomiums that have appeared over the past days in reaction to the death of Chinua Achebe. He was a towering figure, a genuinely courageous artist and activist. I read his great novel Things Fall Apart in 1973 after discovering that my mentor, the Irish-Canadian poet George McWhirter, had shared the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1972) with Achebe. George won for his first collection, Catalan Poems, and Achebe for his first collection, Beware, Soul Brother (his Collected Poems appeared in 2004).Read More
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Adios, Evan S. Connell
Evan S. Connell The death of Evan S. Connell hasn’t received much comment. The obituaries I’ve read (such as here, here and here) all seem to be drawn from an ur-version of obscure provenance. It’s easy to recite the outward details of a writer’s life, of course—birth and death dates, years of publication, special successes and awards. But at the center of all the facts stands the work, as rich as any produced in the past 60 years, and a man who never cared to write a tell-all or even comment much on his work.Read More
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Adios, Jake Adam York
A sad day in more ways than one. First, President Obama’s powerful speech at the vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. And then tonight the news that Jake Adam York passed away today from a massive stroke. Jake was just 40, a fine poet with three full-length books to his credit: Murder Ballads, A Murmuration of Starlings, and Persons Unknown. Each book evolved seamlessly from the one that went before. He was going from strength to strength, which many poets do not, and I always looked forward to reading his newest work.Read More