Yes, I Knew Derek Walcott

Poet Derek Walcott is in the news, the NYT reporting 30-year-old charges of sexual harassment forcing him out of a professorship at Oxford. He was the Hurst professor I studied with at Wash U. This was 1989, before his Nobel Prize.

How gruff Walcott was. Students had to go to his special visiting-professor apartment to meet with him. He answered the door reluctantly. He said some snappish thing as I walked in. I stopped, looked him in the face and said, "You're a tyrant."

He did a double take. Immediately he dropped the tyrant act, and we had a productive discussion. Later he told me my poetry was "damn good."

Normally I wouldn't have faced down Derek Walcott, except coincidentally he shares my birthday, 23 January, and I felt as if that were a key to his personality. What else I remember: his light-blue eyes. His white girlfriend. His urge to level things. I wrote a poem that made fun of a Hawaiian bar. He urged me to rewrite it, have yet more fun, and "destroy Hawaii!"Now circumstances conspire to level him. What goes around comes around.

What Your Cr.Wrt . Prof. is Thinking

-Wish I'd written that.
-This is freaking amazing.
-I just won't tell the class that no experienced writer would ever even TRY to write four essays (or a portfolio of poems) in 16 weeks.
-Man, the difference between the first draft and the third, like night and day!
-You're showing your depths and I really like that.
-I bow to your greater experience.
-I'm really sorry that you had to suffer _________. But it may help to write about it.
-LOL
-I know of something you've just got to read!
-I know where this might be published!

Donald Finkel, 1929-2008; Link to Interview

The poet Donald Finkel, a beloved artist and teacher and my MFA thesis adviser, died two weeks ago and I just heard. The memorial gathering takes place Dec. 12, 11:30 a.m., at the Women's Building on the Washington University Danforth Campus.

In 1994 I interviewed Don for The Riverfront Times in St. Louis. Because I knew him well it became more than an interview; rather, it's a portrait of the artist at the last major juncture of his career: the end of 30 years of teaching, and the beginning of "retirement." Click here to read the interview.

O he was wise.