neither wailing nor gnashing of teeth

the carrying on that is done when unknown poets die unexpectedly in NYC is perhaps unmatched by anything but the extravagant grief of vivian gornick’s widowed mother. it’s almost a competition to see who can book the first memorial reading, build the first tribute website, send the most and teariest emails.

all this on behalf of someone who, often as not, got little more than a nod of recognition when encountered over the open mike sign-up list. someone about whom (tell the truth!) one had snickered.

by all means let’s give these poets their final fifteen minutes of stagetime, add a couple of entries to their google results and throw a party where all us other unsung poets can reminisce and swap quirky stories about the deceased. but spare us all the bogus bereavement, the hand-to-heart when speaking the dear departed’s name. and let’s not pretend we’re mourning the end of western letters either, for chrissake, because a lot of the writing simply wasn’t very good.

where does it come from, this apparently irresistible desire to idealize people after they’re gone? i don’t think it’s necessarily any more prevalent among poets than other social groups; it’s just that poets have more visible bully pulpits. the same type of thing happens in the workplace, where all the office harridan has to do for immediate conversion from scumbaggery to sainthood is keel over with a stroke, or where a brain tumor makes everybody a BFF of the mailroom guy they never even talked to before he got sick.

i suppose this is a strange way to start a remembrance of robert dunn, who passed away this weekend — but he liked strange, and with his deadpan and always-irreverent sense of humor i think he would appreciate a ball-busting post like this as my way of saying farewell. robert was a kind and generous curator, who organized readings at venues ranging from raunchy west village bars to a no-cursewords barnes & noble tucked far up the asscrack of queens. for some years he also co-edited the Medicinal Purposes literary journal with his crotchety friend thomas catterson. i don’t think he put an issue out after thomas died.

but what comes to my mind most clearly is the loving care that robert took of his mother. i met her at their apartment some years ago, in the middle of a blizzard, when i stopped by to help with a computer problem. stopped by is a nice way of saying that i took 2 trains and then a bus and then struggled several blocks through hip-dip (as i recall it) snow to reach their high-rise. i was surprised by the courtly woman in the wheelchair, as i’d taken it for granted that robert lived alone. we worked over his laptop in the kitchen while she watched tv, and when i stopped in the living room to wish her goodnight she very graciously thanked me for coming to rescue her son from the pc virus demons (which i hadn’t quite managed to do). i could have been — shit, i WAS — mightily annoyed at having undertaken such a shlep on such a night to fix a LAPTOP that could just as easily have made its way to me, but robert’s gentleness with her and his sotto-voce apology lest i detect the aroma of colostomy, softened me. i don’t soften easily, as you might guess. but i softened that night, and i stayed soft toward him, as it so happens, for the remainder of his life.

robert, i would be lying if i said i’m gonna miss you, because of course i’m not — lately we ran into each other only once or twice a year, and you just don’t miss someone you hardly ever see. but i must salute the irony of you bowing out in the selfsame gym where you lost a hundred-something pounds. you were looking better lately than you’d ever looked before; dapper, even, with that ubiquitous hat cocked sideways. i can almost imagine the poem you’d write, making fun of a guy who finally gets in shape only to drop dead on the health club floor. i can almost hear us laughing and applauding as you read it.

bravo for a life well-lived, mr. dunn. no sentiment, no schmaltz, no overhyped BS. just the way you liked it.