In The Books in My Life, Henry Miller devoted a chapter to those he called "living books" - people who were flesh-and-blood manifestations of what we seek and find in great literature: humanism incarnate.
Debbie and I spent yesterday afternoon with just such a person, the poet Daniel Hoffman. I think Dan is the greatest living American poet. I was leafing through his collection The Center of Attention yesterday morning. I pulled it off the shelf, because I've had it for decades and figured, since I was going to be seeing him, I'd ask him to sign it. Anyway, you look through it and you realize how wide his range is - and this is just a gathering of short pieces - how he can bring an authentic poetic sensibility and astonishing technique to so many different subjects. This is a guy who can attend a literary soiree and get a poem out of it, who looks around and about at the world and finds poems - then shows them to us.
Dan lives in a house that dates to the 19th century, built of fieldstone and surrounded by trees, with a big porch, and rooms with high ceilings, filled with literary memorabilia. His conversation is filled with casual, unselfconscious references to his friend Cal - Robert Lowell to you and me - Marianne Moore, Richard Eberhart, Auden (who in 1954 chose Dan's An Armada of Thirty Whales for the Yale Series of Younger Poets), Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser. The list is endless. He has a room with a wall of shelves filled with volumes of poetry by poets he knew. Probably all of them are inscribed by the authors. While we were having lunch, he recited to us a beautiful, beautiful poem about picking wild plums written by his late wife Elizabeth McFarland - who, as poetry editor of the Ladies Home Journal, published work by just about every major poet around. Few people have done more for poetry in this country than she did. (I'm going to write to Dan tomorrow and ask if I could post her poem here, because it deserves a much wider audience than just Debbie and me.)
If this were a really civilized country, Dan's house would be a place of pilgrimage. Lots of people, I have discovered, are writing poetry these days. They should take some time to read as much of his as they can. The Academy of American Poets has some of them here: Daniel Hoffman.
I agree with you and wonder why it is that a poet like Gerry Stern is being published in almost all the journals and magazines, and winning so many awards (he was my teacher so I do believe he has earned them), but few readers know who Daniel Hoffman is. I think it must have to do with self promotion. Gerry is a social magnet with limitless energy. Perhaps Daniel Hoffman is one of the quiet poets (maybe I am projecting here as I am a recluse) who does not seek public acclaim. And to think that I probably drive right by his home on my way to Swarthmore's library every week--wish I had the nerve to knock on his door....
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