12.15.2008 4:31 pm
Friends gather to honor Donald Finkel, Constance Urdang
Post-Dispatch Book Editor
On Dec. 12, about 200 friends, family and admirers gathered at Washington University to honor poet Donald Finkel, who died Nov. 15, and his wife, poet and novelist Constance Urdang, who died in 1996 Both had taught at the university and helped found its Graduate Writing Program.
Speakers included Tom Finkel, Liza Finkel, David Finkel, William Danforth, Mary Costantin, Wayne Fields, Howard Schwartz, Bob Duffy, and David Clewell. Schwartz, who says 200 or so people were there, shares his comments here:
By Howard Schwartz
I’m not sure where to begin, with Don Finkel the master teacher, which is how I first knew him, or Don Finkel, devoted father and husband, as I came to know him, or Don Finkel, mentor to so many, friend to multitudes. In any case, we have to begin and end with Don Finkel the poet. Last April 7th more than forty local poets came to Duffs and read Don’s poems to a full house for four hours. It was a transforming experience, intoxicating, and a revelation—our appreciation of his poetry, already considerable, substantially deepened.
Don was always exploring unknown realms: caves, glaciers, mysterious voyages, lame angels, and every manner of beast. And this impulse to explore remained just as powerful throughout his life. Did you know that Don’s last poems were astonishing biblical poems, giving his pithy takes on Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Lot’s Wife, and Jacob and the angel? And since he was already reimagining Genesis, one of his last poems was his own creation myth, “The Invention of Meaning.” Let me read it to you:
In the beginning was the hand
and the poem of the hand,
a breathless trope, a floating hieroglyph,
seamless as water.
and the poem of the hand,
a breathless trope, a floating hieroglyph,
seamless as water.
Then the hand spoke, and the hand said,
“Let there be meaning,” and the meaning sang,
“Let there be love,” and the hand
shaped itself another hand of clay.
“Let there be meaning,” and the meaning sang,
“Let there be love,” and the hand
shaped itself another hand of clay.
Now, where there had been
but one meaning, there were two.
So the hands wrestled all night
till they saw it was pointless.
but one meaning, there were two.
So the hands wrestled all night
till they saw it was pointless.
So together they shaped themselves
a cunning tongue, to arbitrate.
Now, where there had been two meanings,
there were three.
a cunning tongue, to arbitrate.
Now, where there had been two meanings,
there were three.
And the hands wrung one another,
abashed, and the tongue took over.
abashed, and the tongue took over.
Did you know that after Don retired from Wash U, he was the first visiting writer in our MFA program at UMSL? Not only did he teach the poetry workshop, magnificently, as he always did, but he created and taught a new course in translation.
Did you know that after Don could no longer write, he invented his own kind of sculpture, which he jokingly called dreckolage, and he made hundreds of them? This was a return to his original life plan–to be a sculptor. He sustained his creative impulse as long as he possibly could.
Don left us a lot. In addition to precious memories, there are fourteen books of poems, including his epic narratives to the ends of the earth strewn with fabulous quotations from his obsessive reading.
Don’s presence is so imprinted on me that I often dream about him. Once I asked him in a dream why he and Connie had moved after he had retired. Don told me he had written all the poems he could from that house and that he had to look for another place to live. Don has moved again. Wherever he is now, he will always be in our lives and in the living body of poems he left behind.
Don’s presence is so imprinted on me that I often dream about him. Once I asked him in a dream why he and Connie had moved after he had retired. Don told me he had written all the poems he could from that house and that he had to look for another place to live. Don has moved again. Wherever he is now, he will always be in our lives and in the living body of poems he left behind.
