Hayden Carruth

[susanstinson]

Poet Hayden Carruth died September 30. He was eighty-seven.

In 1970, he edited an anthology, The Voice That Is Great Within Us: American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, which was my introduction to reading poetry for pleasure when it was assigned in the first poetry workshop I ever took, my first semester in college, fall of 1979.

Here's a picture of my copy, and some poems.




It's held together by scotch tape, and most of the back cover is gone. Tucked in the section of poems by HD, it's got a letter that I wrote to my love, but, for some reason never sent, first paragraph in Spanish (which we both studied for a little while), big brown age spots on the edges. I loved those poems, many of them, memorized some, felt thrilled by them, felt openings for things that I had thought that there were no words for, or things that had no place in poetry, saw all sorts of mess and mystery reflected. Memorized them, copied some of them over and over, copied their forms in my own work, put them in letters, read them aloud. Loved them. Love them.

When oneroom posted that Hayden Carruth had died, I remembered a poem by HD, one I memorized during that time. It's one of the things I appreciate about myself from thirty years ago, and about the teachers I found then, that I've still got some of the poems in my head I passionately worked to know then. Here's another, from the book:

LETHE

Nor skin nor hide nor fleece
Shall cover you,
Nor curtain of crimson nor fine
Shelter of cedar-wood be over you,
Nor the fir-tree
Nor the pine.

Nor sight of whin nor gorse
Nor river-yew,
Nor fragrance of flowering bush,
Nor wailing of reed-bird to waken you,
Nor linnet,
Nor of thrush.

Nor word nor touch nor sight
Of lover, you
Shall long through the night but for this:
The roll of the full tide to cover you
Without question,
Without kiss.

HD

And, by Hayden Carruth:
Endnote