Passages: Charles Erwin Neighbors: The Giving of Our Guiding Lights (1947-2009)

There are so many people in a life that make such a difference. There are a few who merit being called Guiding Lights.

When I first met Erwin Neighbors he was teacher and I was an 11th-grade high school student. Mr. Neighbors taught English, American Literature in particular.

As a junior in high school I was extremely shy. I kept to myself. I was quiet, so quiet, many of my fellow students thought I was on the Honor Roll just as they were. But I wasn't. In fact, I never really liked high school.

The one thing I liked to do was write. It was poetry. And short stories. Writing was my outlet, how I converged with the world. Donald Spoto said of Tennessee Williams that Williams, while living in St.Louis was “painfully shy” growing up. That was me, as well.

But one way I could express myself, was through writing. Mr. Neighbors saw that and singled me out with quiet attention. He expeditiously had me join his Creative Writing Club, which met monthly after school. The club put out two magazines a year which were sold to the student body. And also a Christmas issue.

Mr. Neighbors was one of those rare teachers who made literature relational. Mr. Neighbors taught American Lit. my junior year. He not only taught us about our early American literary masters, but showed us photographic slides of the places we were learning about. We had read “Walden's Pond,” but Mr. Neighbors had been there. He had actual photos of Henry David Thoreau's place in the woods. There was real, present-day photographic evidence of the pond!

I remember to this day the entire school quarter we spent on reading and dissecting Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. It was about the genius of the book more than anything; the great symbolism it contained. Maybe that was why I did a book report that year on The House of Seven Gables. I didn't get the “E” I wanted, but the “S” or “S-” was good enough.

The other remarkable thing Mr. Neighbors did for us was to show us that writers-- especially-- were once living and breathing beings. It was so much more than the author's name in the Lit. book, followed by a birth-date and death-date. Again, he made literature relational, in this case taking us to hear a living and breathing poet at a near-by junior college. This was someone who didn't have a death-date under their name in the American Lit. book!

We found the grey-haired poet before us funny. “What is a pocket but a hole,” he quipped on stage, and we laughed. Or “Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.” (“Power to the People”). And we laughed again from the front row of the auditorium. Little did I know that I would 13 years later produce two Howard Nemerov poetry readings, the latter being his very last...

But back then I was just a shy, acne-covered high school student. And like my fellow Creative Writing Club members, trying to find a way into the world through a pen and a typewriter. And lots of mimeograph ink on our fingers...

Erwin Neighbors was the very real, but quiet, meticulous-- but better-- version of Kevin Kline in Dead Poets Society. We did indeed bloom under his guidance. He had an affinity and love of education, anything smart, and students who at least tried their very best. Even as he once quietly corrected my spelling of “seperate” to “separate” in study hall once. He never made me feel ashamedfor the mis-spelling.

Perhaps it was also because he was a fisherman, a hunter and archaeologist and lover of history that he understood the often still and quiet nature of young people. He was an observer. And he was able to solicit from us our very best. And seek us out. He was a proud father of the flock of writers that he so carefully guided and cultivated at Hermann High.

I think Mr. Neighbors had a certain facility to understand the angst of youth, as all such young men and women go forth to flex and try their wings from the nest that every high school is. Certainly his guidance went a long way to help a gaggle of 14 young people achieve their disparate but collegiate identities that school year. In his (our) issue of Counterpoint that year, Mr. Neighbors summed up the process in verse on his dedication page:

The Vernal Urge

In the springtime of years,

A migrant flock of chosen words

Are launched to test their wings,

Hoping that someone in darkness

Will hear their wild call

And pause to scan his sky

And think of that North of dreams

Toward which we are all drawn.

I truly hope that there are many more Erwin Neighbors out there in our world today. I certainly have been blessed and splendidly influenced by his brief but patient attention. My first book was dedicated to him.

In the succeeding years we infrequently shared correspondence. One thing is for sure. Erwin had the most extraordinary and beautiful handwriting I've seen, then or since. But then again, can any less be expected of a Guiding Light? Probably not...

Thank you, Erwin. You will be missed. And you are...

_____________________

Many, many thanks to Jessica Neighbors Hill for supplying the obituary and photograph of her father! Thank you, Jessica!

Charles Erwin Neighbors, 61, passed away May 3, 2009 at University Hospital in Columbia, Missouri. He was a resident of Moberly, Missouri.

Erwin was born August 11, 1947 in Unionville, Missouri to Chester V. Neighbors and Vivienne A. (Halliburton) Neighbors and grew up on a farm near Pollock, Missouri. He graduated from Green City R-1 High School in 1965. He attended college at Northeast Missouri State University, Kirksville, Missouri, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in education in 1969, a Master of Arts in 1971 and an Education Specialist in 1991. He married Jolene M. Emel in 1971; their marriage ended in 1995. His twin children Byron E. Neighbors and Jessica M. (Neighbors) Hill were born in 1977. At the time of his death, he was engaged to Dr. Patricia A. Miller, with whom he shared 13 loving years.

Erwin was a teacher, school administrator and professor. He taught secondary school English and social studies for 15 years, and was a secondary school principal for six years and a school district superintendent for six years. After his retirement, he became an adjunct instructor at Moberly Area Community College, where he taught English for eight years.

An avid hunter, outdoorsman, conservationist, archaeologist, historian, genealogist and travel buff, Erwin was dedicated to his many hobbies and associations. He was active in Optimist International, where he had served as Governor of the East Missouri District, and the Missouri Archaeological Society, where he had served on the board of directors. He was also a member of the Archaeological Conservancy, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Defenders of Wildlife, the National Wildlife Federation, the National Muzzleloading Rifle Association, and the Truman State University Northeast Missouri Alumni Chapter. He was a long-time member of the First United Methodist Church in Kirksville, Missouri.

Erwin was a dedicated father and proud grandfather. He was preceded in death by his parents, and he is survived by his son Byron and wife Kimberly Neighbors of Columbia, Missouri; his daughter Jessica and husband Jason Hill of Owasso, Oklahoma; his two grandchildren Jacob Paul and Caitlin Marie Hill of Owasso, Oklahoma; his fiancé Dr. Patricia Miller of O’Fallon, Missouri, and many friends.

The Dedication Page, A Minor Poet's Tribute to a Major Poet: Richard Wilbur

“It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors, but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self.”

--Richard Wilbur

Remarkably, one of the finest gestures any man bestowed on me was one by Richard Wilbur. In the early 1990s we were pouring our tall frames into my car. As I got in behind the steering wheel, I noticed Dick reach down and pick something up from the seat, then sit down. Before I turned the ignition, Dick reached a hand over, saying, “Whenever I find something like this, I like to give it to my nearest friend.” I dutifully held my hand out. He dropped a dime from his hand into mine. His earnestness and my smile have stayed with me for years.

I am like my father. My dad relished and valued friendships with people older than he. We both had an affinity for absorbing and learning from the life experiences of others. There is something to be said for mentoring. Perhaps it is Socratic. Perhaps it is influence from a distance. Or maybe it's just being there, like many writers are, an example of how we should be. It's also, in a small way, about heroes.

My first literary influence was that of Howard Nemerov. Howard was also one of the venerable masters of his craft. But he could sometimes be gruff. On one occasion, we sat at breakfast. We were waiting for his wife Peggy to come downstairs. Howard was direct and to the point. In his deep, sonorous voice, he said, “I read your book last night.” In the space of a very small pause, I replied, “You mean all of it?” Of course, that gave Howard his chance. He became professor

Nemerov. “Now, Edward,” he said sternly. “When you read a book of verse, do you read all of it in a single sitting?” Plainly I was being chastised! And he was right of course. I offered, if I recall, a soft, timid “No.” We had another pause then, he gauging me with that quizzical look of his. He softened. “Well, I read the poem you wrote to me, and I was deeply moved by it.”

Blessedly, after Howard died, Richard Wilbur consented to pick up the baton of that yearly program I produced. And our resulting 20 year friendship has been truly a blessing. He has a genuine, earnest approach to life and communication. His approach is both contemplative and almost gleefully interested at the same

time. Perhaps it has more to do with his positive approach to life, much like Tennessee Williams who heralded the ability to still “be surprised” by life, particularly as one ages.

In a day and age when we have truly seemed to have lost the capacity to have heroes, Richard Wilbur remains the gentleman and scholar one should emulate. His dedication to his art and his craft is so focused-- his literary output so vast-- he is truly one of the most very remarkable and gifted writers of our time. Simply, we are fortunate to learn from such undisputed Masters. We are emboldened by such grace... Or grace of space...

In a way, it is a truly remarkable journey we take in this life of ours. A great many people come into it. Sometimes they are also great. They are sometimes large of heart. And they give unselfishly of the noble ideas and formulas that form the inertia of their art. We are lucky, in regard to the truly great of mind, to be allowed a more-or-less generous peek into the process. Or a good word.

Once Howard, Peggy and I were in my car. Howard was sitting up front. As I prepared to turn the key, I could not help but tender an analogy, to which the former WWII fighter pilot responded. “Ignition,” I said. “Contact,” he said. And we were off.

It's all about momentum. And thanks.

Thanks, Dick. This new book is dedicated to you...

Photo Captions (Top Down):

1) Cover of Standing Pelican: Key West Poems & Stories, dedicated to Richard Wilbur. Foreword by JOHN HEMINGWAY.

2) Edward Steinhardt and Richard Wilbur, 1992.

3) Edward Steinhardt, Howard Nemerov, Margaret Nemerov, 1991. At the conclusion at the last poetry reading Nemerov would ever give.

4) Letter to Steinhardt from Richard Wilbur

5) Nemerov inscription to Steinhardt, 1991, University City, Missouri.

6) Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens at the Casa Marina Hotel, Key West.

7) Richard Wilbur, courtesy of Secret of Salt: An Indigenous Journal.

It's easy to order a copy of Standing Pelican: Key West Poems & Stories. Send check or money order in the amount of $13.95 (plus $4.00 shipping) to: MARGARET STREET BOOKS, P.O. BOX 23314, ST. LOUIS, MO 63156

The Armory of Widowed Sons: When a Poet's Father Dies

I learned today my father died yesterday. My father had been suffering from emphysema for many years. He died at home early yesterday morning reaching for the cord of his Nebulizer machine. He was 70.

My dad and I didn't always get along. My dad was a carpenter. In a way, he and I were unfinished parts of wooden toys he would make for his grandchildren and nephews and nieces. We were members of the same working project, but still independent, with our differences.

The older you get, the more you find sometimes that you are more like your father than you intended. When you reach your forties, your dad seems to look back in the mirror at you: the look, the forehead, the receding hair, maybe even the walk.

When I visited with my father a couple weeks ago, I was acutely aware that my father and I were more alike than I ever knew. When I first arrived, we sat at the kitchen table. He cupped his hand over mine on the table, maintaining a male decorum as Ellen, his devoted wife of three years, passed in and out of the room. We both sat there silently crying, because we had not seen one another for a couple years. He also knew his time was short. I was home briefly, running away from a Key West love-affair.

In 2006 I was severely injured when I was hit head-on by a car while I was driving a scooter down Simonton Street in the Southernmost City. I received many broken bones including severe head injuries. A kind KWPD officer cradled my head until the ambulance arrived. He told me several weeks later that I had repeated two things laying in the street, "Where is Lukasz?" and more importantly, "I want my Daddy..."

When I was seven years old we lived outside Palmer, Alaska. We had just moved there, my just having my seventh birthday in a campground outside Edmonton, Canada, on the way up the old AlCan Highway. My dad at last had his cabinet shop, in a large quonset building. I remember the house and the shop were heated by coal, because the circle drive consisted of cinders.

I remember walking down the long drive after school and going into the shop where my father was making kitchen cabinets. My father was always a stern man, something he had adopted from his father. I was always in rather a fear of him, since he was quite the disciplinarian.

So I had to work up great courage to initiate conversation with him. When I detected a spot of time where his work had slowed, I told him my dilemma, how the other boys at school no longer called their fathers "Daddy." I finally posited my question, "Daddy, can I call you 'Dad?'" His response was to the affirmative. And I went to the house, relieved that I'd gotten that over with...

Some 15 years ago, my father and I were talking. The subject was my youngest brother and some trouble he was in. I remember remarking, "Boy, if I'd done that, I would have been murdered for it!" My dad paused, then said softly, "Eddie, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret how hard I was on you."

For many years, I thought I was totally opposite of my father. In recent years the commonality of our traits and blood showed me how similar we were. We both, I found, were ultra-sensitive, both within ourselves and toward others. We also shared the debilitating curse of depression, something in retrospect my grandmother battled. My dad lamented that there were no readily available anti-depressant medications like there were today. Two weeks ago, I asked my father, "Dad, how do you keep from going crazy?" He quickly answered, "I keep busy." He was always an early riser and at work in his shop. In recent years he had excelled in carving life-sized herons and doing canvas painting, in addition to his trellises and other projects.

While I was growing up, my father was an unwitting influence on his young son, his son who stuttered, who was exceptionally sensitive, cute; and conversely every teacher's pet without ever trying. The first thing of importance I can recall was when we lived in the old rural Larsen, Wisconsin schoolhouse that my dad had converted to a house. I was very cognizant of the fact that my father had had a Letter to the Editor published in the local paper. He was (and remained) quite the American patriot, while in those days he was a member of the John Birch Society. A Navy veteran, my dad had a published work in the newspaper with his name at the bottom. And at six years old, I was very impressed. Someday, I thought, I would like my by-line in the paper, too. Much later, I would write for a newspaper for ten years.

At age seven, my father would have me type his infrequent business letters on an old manual typewriter. And then, when we lived on Bodenburg Creek near "The Butte" outside of Palmer, Alaska, I began to read and collect books. It was a practice my father did not defer; every time it came time to order books through the Scholastic catalog at school, my father generously ordered up to five books. My collection soon became the "Bodenburg Library," on a shelf under the stairs. Library stamps consisted of a Dudley DoRight stamp...

My father finally mellowed in his later years. And in time our differences became similarities. I was never the fisherman or hunter my father wished of his eldest son. His son instead was slightly frail, already having survived two bouts of pneumonia. Sensitive-- and yes-- maybe percocious. Sometimes favored children know of their status early on. And my grandmother absolutely adored me, as she and my grandfather shared in raising me those first six years.

The hunter? No, that I never became. I was too squeamish. My father took me only one time Caribou hunting. It was near Lake Louise in Alaska. We trudged through the snow, me following in my father's footsteps. After about 15 minutes, he slowed and said to me over his shoulder, "Are you cold?" I shrugged, because it would have been treason to admit a Steinhardt male was not a hunter and was cold. We continued on. Another 15 minutes later he stopped and asked me again. "Are you cold?" My little body was shivering like a little birch tree in the wind. I could only nod in the affirmative.

We retraced our steps back to the truck then, me dreaming of the glories of the truck heater, but also cognizant that my father was abbreviating his hunt for a prize caribou to care for his eldest son; not unlike the time we hit a deer in Wisconsin when I was three. "You don't remember that, do you?" I would always shake my head. "You were standing on the seat and I had to reach over to catch you."

The sad part in losing your father, is there is no longer that familial familiarity. I remember Ramsey Mason, who owned the first movie theater I worked at. Ramsey taught me how to be a 35mm projectionist. One day-- about mid-day-- I was in the lobby of the old theater, having just finished cleaning the auditorium. And I remember Ramsey coming in. And he was shaken, for his mother had just died. "Ed," he said, "It's a terrible thing to lose your last parent. Because then you can't go back home and you're truly alone..." And he was crying. And I didn't know what to say. What was I, maybe 19?

Two weeks ago at my father's house, my dad asked me, "Is there anything you want in the house?" I demurred. Then I thought of the Gray squirrel. My dad had shot it when he was 13 and taxidermied it himself. "I would have liked the squirrel," I said. 60 years hadn't been kind to the old squirrel. "Oh," he said, "the hair started falling off so I threw it away." I said maybe I'd like the arrowheads he found when he was a kid.

On that last visit home, my father and I engaged in one final point of difference. It traced back to when I first moved to St. Louis at the turn of the millenium and a phone conversation we had had. After some preliminaries in that call, I got straight to the point:

"You know Ryan, right?" I'd talked about Ryan a lot. Ryan was supposed to visit my parents with me.

My father said, "Yes."

"Well," I began, "Ryan and I are closer-- than is socially acceptable... You know what I'm saying?"

My father's response was quick, "Don't feel guilty about it."

And we talked. I told how I was depressed, because Ryan and I had broken up. This news from a son who had proposed to a woman in front of an audience in the Rotunda of the State Capitol only six years before.

And my father was sympathetic, the opposite response I expected from the ex-Navy E-3 man.

But this time, two weeks ago, my father was less-sympathetic. I chalked it up to the Fundamentalist influences of his new wife and my two Fundamentalist sisters. I was plainly outnumbered. And we parted.

I returned to St. Louis. For a week I did not return my father's calls. Bereft, alone from a love-affair, I felt I needed my father; just like the accident and what I had said. Unhappily, I discovered I could not go home.

I listened to my father's messages. Finally in one message he asked if I would forgive him and please call him.

I rented a room in an old house under the gaze of the old Compton Heights water tower. My first evening there, my dad called and I answered.

I was wary. "I was sitting on the porch here," he began, "and I thought I would call you one more time. I was feeling down. I'm glad I did..."

I said I was glad he had, too.

My father asked me directly if I would forgive him. I said yes, of course. "I let it get out of hand," he said. "My dad did the same thing to me once."

"I'm sorry if I talked too much about Travis," I apologized in return. I tried to explain how I had needed to talk with someone, and that I had wanted it to be my dad. I said the week in which my new book came out should have been a happy one.

"I only wanted to love you," I said.

"I love you, Eddie. Always know that... You going to be down here tomorrow?"

"No." I explained my front brake pads were shot and I couldn't make it to the book-signing at Osage Beach. "Oh..." he said. I could tell my father was disappointed. He was alone for the weekend and hoped he and I could visit together-- just he and I...

* * *

For all of our years, my father and I had a remarkable bond. We were compatriots of a sort when for my first six years he was a single father and I was his only child. He professed to have a psychic link to me that was quite unique. My father told me several times that if I was going through hard times or was depressed he could feel it. Sometimes it would wake him up. Although I did not share such a link, I was appreciative of that bond; not unlike the care he showed early on before any differences became manifest; like when he reached over and caught me when we hit that deer.

That's the sad part in all of this, when you lose your father. You can no longer go home, and there is no longer anyone to catch you when you fall.

So this is what I record as a new inductee in the Armory of Widowed Sons. I must close now, for I have resisted tears today. I sit in a recliner in a rented room in a boarding house in St. Louis. And await the long cry...

IN MEMORIAM: Lee Benedict Steinhardt May 12, 1939-August 11, 2009


Going Through My Father's Things

His glasses,
A half-dozen watches;
Old photographs.
My brothers get
The black-powder guns.
I choose a few things:
A clock he made,
A heron he carved,
A painting he painted.
We find old driver's licenses,
Deer tags from the 50s;
An arrowhead he found
When he was a kid.
My brother Wally gets his dog-tags.
I insist on the old wooden cigar box
My dad found in the Mojave Desert
When he was 16...
This is what happens
When you join the armory
Of widowed sons,
When a poet's father dies.

At home I am going
Through old photos
And I reach for my phone
To call my dad and say:
"Guess what I found,"
And I can't.
The entry in "Calls Received"
In my cell-phone for Friday
Still says, 'Dad';
By Tuesday he is gone.
On Friday we lay his hammer
Alongside a cedar box
Not much bigger than a book
In a hole in the ground.

--Edward Steinhardt

Photo Captions (Top Down):

1) Lee Steinhardt and Eddie Steinhardt, driveway of Allenville, WI grandparent's house.
2) Lee Steinhardt, Aged 16, ROTC
3) Navy man Lee Steinhardt aboard the U.S.S. Somers
4) Lee Steinhardt and son with Pinnochio, Allenville
5) Eddie Steinhardt, Allenville
6) Drawing by Eddie Steinhardt, age 3, preserved by Lee Steinhardt
7) Eddie and Wisconsin frog, photo by Lee Steinhardt
8) Letter from Eddie Steinhardt to grandparents concerning Palmer, Alaska
9) Color photograph Eddie Steinhardt, age 16.
10) Photograph of Edward Steinhardt. What buying too many Scholastic books for a child will do!

Standing Pelican: Key West Poems & Stories is Now Released!

"...Thoroughly entertaining, well-written collection, highly original in its scope and style. Steinhardt "reads" much better than many, if not most writers- even (at least to this reviewer) better than Faulkner."
- CHARLES GUENTHER

"A subtropical alfresco that has all the heat, ambiguity and humor that first attracted my grandfather to the island in the 1920s... a true traveler's narrative."
- JOHN HEMINGWAY

Edward Steinhardt's new book, Standing Pelican: Key West Poems & Stories, is ready to order! Remit check or money order in the amount of $13.95 (plus $4.00 shipping) to Margaret Street Books, P.O. Box 23314, St. Louis, MO 63156. Multiple copies (of up to ten) are shipped for just the one flat fee of $4.00! Sales tax is included.

Is your order a gift? Send a note along with your order giving the name for whom you would like the book inscribed.

Guardian of Grief: Poems of Giacomo Leopardi, Translated by Charles Guenther, is now Released

"Lucid and

graceful..."
—Richard Wilbur

I am pleased to announce as Charles Guenther's last publisher and editor that Charles Guenther's new book, Guardian of Grief: Poems of Giacomo Leopardi, has now been released.

As you may know, Charles left us in late July, leaving many friends, colleagues and readers of his work. The world of literature mourns the loss of this great man.

Conversely, we now celebrate the publication of Charles' new book, a collection of translations of the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. The book, although slim (64 pages) is much-heralded. Richard Wilbur, in endorsement remarks, says, "Charles Guenther is a rightly honored translator of French, Spanish and Italian poetry, and it is good indeed that his lucid and graceful renderings of Leopardi have now been gathered into a book."

William Jay Smith, also one of the great poets and translators, says Guardian of Grief "...succeeds brilliantly in retaining the flavor of the great Italian poet's work while carefully avoiding the grossly archaic language that mars so many of the previous versions."

The book is now released and available for order.

____________________________________

Send $12.95 plus $3.95 shipping (this also includes sales tax) to MARGARET STREET BOOKS, P.O. Box 23314, St. Louis, Missouri, USA.

The Story Behind the Book

This project began some six years ago. Charles and I were prodigous correspondents, even when we both lived in St. Louis. With one letter Charles included one of his translations, as was his most-welcome habit with me. We were frequently sharing each other's newest work.

This time it was a poem by Giacomo Leopardi, a poem I found intriguing, mostly because its style seemed so much like my own: introspective, sensitive and rather melancholic. Plainly, I wanted to see more from this poet. I was hooked.

I wrote Charles and asked if he had any more. He sent several more. And I began to see the possibility of a book, one certainly that would showcase Charles' great gift of translation. The nation of Italy, mind you, had already awarded the St. Louis poet their highest award in the early 1970s for his many translations over the years, a special Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, Rank of Knight Commander.

So began a careful project of getting the book to print. Great care was taken by Charles and I to ensure typographical accuracy. We also wanted the best presentation possible. And to familiarize readers as to who Giacomo Leopardi was, Charles obliged to my request to write a biographical introduction on the 19th Century Italian.

Not only does the book entertain by virtue of reading a great Italian's work, but it also educates the reader as to who the young Leopardi was. Charles, at the end of his excellent introduction, is hopeful of this vision, "I hope they (the poems) may bring a renewed interest in, and appreciation of, Leopardi, his life, his times and his work."

While the book is no Three Faces of Autumn in size, Guardian of Grief was extremely close to Charles' heart, despite the fact that these poems were translated some 40 years ago. This is the first time many of these poems have seen actual publication. Poems include "The Infinite," "On the Portrait of a Beautiful Lady Carved on Her Tombstone" and "Hymn to the Patriarchs."

One poem, which closes Guenther's selection of translations, seems apropos in light of Charles' so very recent death. In fact the poem "Calm After the Storm" was read at Charles' funeral. And it is no wonder. It is a case, in the timelessness of poetry, that a poem made so immortal by Guenther's pen served also to celebrate his life as a fallen poet...

One line from that poem reminds me so much of Charles, his love for poetry, and certainly his craftsmanship. "When else does man turn to his studies with such love," the line goes, "or to his work or begin something new?"

In fact, the last stanza of the poem seems as pertinent to us the living (in losing Charles) as a thought can be, when it comes to grief, a subject with which the young, sensitive Leopardi was very familiar.

"O kindly nature,

These are your gifts.

These are the delights

You offer mortals. It's a pleasure

For us to be relieved of pain,

You spread pain freely; grief

Rises spontaneously; and that bit of joy

Which by miracle and prodigy sometimes

Is born of anxiety, is a great gain. A human

Progeny dear to those eternal ones! You're lucky

Indeed if you can breathe again

After some grief: and blessed

If death heals every sorrow."

from Guardian of Grief: Poems of Giacomo Leopardi,
translated and copyright by Charles Guenther

This book certainly brings to life one of Italy's most-revered poets. The book equally demonstrates Charle Guenther's exquisite and careful craftsmanship in translation.

A quote in the beginning of the book summarizes what Charles has accomplished in Guardian of Grief. "Past and present and future are not disjoined but joined," Walt Whitman wrote, "The greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet."

See also the advertisement in the next issue of The American Poetry Review.

FROM DODWELLS ROAD: Friends, Frost & the Love Lost

We are accorded a few good special friends in a life. Among my literary friends is the poet Richard Wilbur. Our friendship goes back to 1992 when I produced a series of poetry readings, the last of which had been vacated by the untimely loss of U.S. Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov.

Dick allowed me to do a feature piece on him in 2007, an interesting piece concerning he and his wife Charlee's experiences wintering 40 years in Key West. He also talks about his home in Massachusetts, and his long love and passion for writing and translation. And the loss of his dear wife of 64 years...

This great piece on Wilbur is available in the splendid literary & photographic journal called Secret of Salt: An Indigenous Journal, published by the immensely visionary Kim Narenkivicius. This publication is available through the Key West Film Society for $21.50 (including tax and shipping). You can buy the book online http://store.keywestfilm.org/servlet/Categories?category=Merchandise&searchpath=16706817&start=9&total=10 or send a check or money order. It also helps a great non-profit.

In the same book (288 pages) is my feature piece on Tennessee Williams and his first visit to Key West in 1941. The article is called "Hell's Hammers: Tennessee Williams' first visit to Key West."

But don't take my word for it (no pun intended)... There's a wonderful potpouri of verse, essays and stories in this handsome book. One of my favorite aspects of this journal are the great color photographs throughout the whole thing. My favorite is a series of photographs by James Leo Herlihy, including images of Tennessee Williams. A great photo of the painter Henry Faulkner and a group of sailors is particularly captivating (one of those photos within a photo type of thing). There are shades of Diane Arbus all through the series.

If you have ever wanted to read something that is patently Key West, this book is it! All the charm, eccentricity, passion and calamity of one little island crammed into a hefty book.

THE SECRET OF SALT: AN INDIGENOUS JOURNAL
Issue 3, 288 pages, Paper, 6.5 x 8 inches, $21.50 (includes tax and shipping)
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Standing Pelican: Key West Poems & Stories, Foreword by John Hemingway, A REVIEW

For this, my second blog, I tender what may be one of the last reviews Charles Guenther ever wrote, written just a few months ago. This will complete the introduction of edward steinhardt into blogdom...



The Unique Voices of Edward Steinhardt

A Review by Charles Guenther

Many if not most writers have more than one voice—lyric, dramatic or narrative. Few have succeeded in all three, but it’s always a joy to find such an emerging talent. Edward Steinhardt is an experienced poet, editor and journalist, with just the background to write well in any voice. Standing Pelican: Key West Poems & Stories shows a talent unique in its many modulations in poetry, fiction and drama (or docu-drama).

The opening section of Standing Pelican contains a dozen poems, most with Key West settings, and all strikingly different. Steinhardt’s poetry celebrates today’s Key West in Narrative imagery and dialogue. The lines are spare, cinematic, on themes of a Tarot reader, urban bars, and Key West settings. Emotion is tempered, unlike that of modernist Wallace Stevens in whose "Farewell to Florida" (a century ago) "Key West sank downward under massive clouds," and who "hated the weathery yawl" and "the vivid blooms" of that city.

Contrast also Steven’s "The Idea of Order at Key West" which begins with a singing woman (the Sea) and ends almost romantically by summoning a fisherman (Ramon Hernandez). Steinhardt’s "On the Pier at Key West" sings a real man and woman who "Methodically cast/ Their blind lines into the sea."

Steinhardt excels in the short story, with eight delightful examples. In his prize-winning "A Square Green Patch of Earth," are surprising transitions in the narrative, about an elderly couple and the stark, subtle symbolism of a dark ibis. The plot is quiet in tone and flow, and beginning and end are skillfully joined together.

The next story, "Julian," has crisp images of Key West, with intense personal observation and subtle characterization. Its plot involves fresh, moving memories and affectionate relationships of mind and heart.

The next tale is set in the Hemingway House; it is totally different, with almost continuous dialogue and authentic present-day exchanges on the old and new. Still another story unwinds with fascinating contrasts in age and youth, an old man and a young boy.

"The Rooming House" resembles Tennessee Williams’ style in a series of ruminations and musings on rooming house life and characters, reminiscent of Williams’ life in St. Louis and Key West.

The next story, "Johnny Bible" has an aura of mystery, with strong suspense and character contrasts. The plot revolves around an eccentric protagonist and a long-awaited letter—and an unusual ending.

The final story, "The Trials of January Jones," is longer and more intricate. ("January" is a woman.) The leading character’s trials are numerous, credible; yet she endures a life of sadness among the customers in her diner. The revelation of her secret past life will surprise readers.

Standing Pelican closes with a strikingly original one-act play, or docu-drama—a 45-page conversation with Tennessee Williams. Here, too, Steinhardt is a consumate craftsman as an interviewer of Williams, who vacationed in Key West in his youth and bought a house there in 1949. The play is titled "A Summer Place," a setting found in a number of Williams’ works. Steinhardt provides an enlightening introduction, with a cast of ten strongly delineated characters. Steinhardt is particularly well-grounded in this work, since he lived in both Central West St. Louis and Key West where Williams spent most of his life.

Altogether Edward Steinhardt’s Standing Pelican is a thoroughly entertaining, well-written collection, highly original in its scope and style. Steinhardt "reads" much better than many, if not most writers—even (at least to this reviewer) better than Faulkner.