Lloyd Schwartz
Intimate
Visits
I was lucky—I knew a great poet, and she was kind to me.
The first time we were introduced I told her I loved her
poems. “Thank you,” she replied, then turned and walked away.
Years later, I thought writing about her could be my rescue.
But having come to know her deep sense of privacy, I asked her if she would
mind. “I’m afraid there’s not much to write about,” she demurred. I told her to
let that be my problem. Then she asked, “But would you finish it?”
Was she being motherly? Fearing disappointment? Or expecting
it?
Then she asked if I would like to meet with her—to help if I
had any questions.
So I came to her apartment, for exactly one hour at a time.
And she would tell me stories. About how hard it had been for her to get published.
About what she had written under a pseudonym. Or published anonymously. Or who
her poems were really about. Things, she said, she’d never told anyone.
Once I asked if she would explain a certain line. Her
answer: “But it’s obvious.” Her sign that I could never again ask anything directly
about her poems.
One day she was expecting the books she had put in storage.
Anyone who’d help unpack them, and brush away the insect powder (she had
allergies), could keep any of the books she didn’t want for herself.
I wanted them all.
(Years after she died, I slid her Modern Library Giant Freud
off a shelf, and a piece of onion skin—a bookmark?—slipped from between the
pages. An intimate note she’d written to her lover in the hospital, whose
family had tried to destroy all their letters. “[Your doctor] doesn’t seem
to realize the boredom of hospital life for you, when you are not asleep, that
is—but I DO.”)
On one of my visits, we were interrupted by her doorbell.
An unexpected delivery. We sat together on her couch as she unwrapped the
package—a book she was in. She opened it to “her” page: a poem of her own along
with one she had chosen by another poet. And on a facing page, a recent photo—a
full-page picture.
I told her, not lying, that I thought she looked beautiful—thoughtful
and elegant—though her hair was a little wild and her cheeks a little puffy
from her medications.
Without a word, she took the book and disappeared.
After how many minutes, she finally returned, and handed me
the book, which I then continued to peruse. But as I leafed through the pages,
I couldn’t find her photo. That page was gone. The photograph was gone. With remarkable
precision she had torn it from the book.
Lloyd Schwartz, born
in Brooklyn, is a poet, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, and noted Elizabeth
Bishop scholar. He earned degrees from Queens College (CCNY) and Harvard. His
poetry—featured in The New
Yorker, Poetry,
and Best American Poetry—explores
intimate and familial themes. Schwartz has published several collections,
including Who’s on First? (2021) and Little Kisses (2017), and
edited major Bishop volumes. Also a classical music critic for Fresh Air and the Boston Phoenix, he has
received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships. Schwartz is a former professor at UMass
Boston and the current Somerville Poet Laureate.
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