Dead Poets Society of America

Ruth Stone, 1915-2011

 By Harriet Staff National Book Award winning poet Ruth Stone has passed away at 96. From the New York Times: A quietly respected poet who wrote in rural solitude, Ms. Stone became something of a public figure when news of her award was announced in November 2002 and press accounts drew attention to her unusual life story of struggle and belated acclaim, dominated by the suicide of her poet husband in 1959. New readers discovered a poet of varied and uncommon gifts, fierce and funny, by turns elegiac, scathing, lyric and colloquial . . . She began to gain a wider audience when her collection “Ordinary Words” (1999) won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2000. With the publication of “In the Next Galaxy” by Copper Canyon Press, her ascent to the front rank of American poets was confirmed. In 2007 she was named to a four-year term as Vermont’s state poet.

Czech poet Ivan Martin Jirous, 1944 – 2011

By Harriet Staff Ivan Martin Jirous — a Czech poet and the artistic director of The Plastic People of the Universe, an avant-garde rock group banned by the country’s Communist regime — died in Prague last Thursday at the age of 67.

Better known by his nickname “Magor,” which roughly translates as “loony” and derives from “phantasmagoria,” Jirous trained as an art historian, but was banned from doing his work and became a legend of the dissident underground instead. He’s remembered in an obituary from the Associated Press:

Before the collapse of communism in 1989, Jirous spent more than eight years in prisons for anti-communist activities. In prison, he wrote his best poetry, including “Magor’s Swan Songs,” a collection that was awarded the Tom Stoppard Prize — awarded to authors of Czech origin — in 1985.

Taha Muhammad Ali, 1931-2011

Renowned Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali died on Sunday at the age of 80, reports Ma’an News Agency. Ali’s poems “followed the experiences of Palestinians living in Israel, and Palestinian refugees around the world. They were translated into several languages, including English and Hebrew. Muhammad Ali grew in international acclaim after an Israeli-American writer Adina Hoffman wrote a biography of his life…” The New Yorker’s Book Bench covered the biography’s release in 2009:

Emanuel Litvinoff, 1915-2011

The Guardian and The Telegraph both report that poet and novelist Emanuel Litvinoff passed away on September 24. Litvinoff, born in 1915 in Whitechapel, East London, might be best remembered for a “devastating public attack” on TS Eliot. The Telegraph describes the moment:

Samuel Menashe, 1925-2011

(Harriet Obits) We are sad to learn that Poetry contributor and recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Neglected Masters Award, Samuel Menashe, died peacefully in his sleep on the night of August 22, 2011.  Sam was a longtime friend to so many of us, who will miss the phone calls, faxes, and handwritten letters though which he liked to share his latest poems.

I first met Sam when, several years ago, I invited him to give a reading at Harvard.  In the frequent conversations that ensued, Sam – feeling his age – was worried that something might happen to him before he got to do the reading; we joked about it.  When the night of the event arrived at last, Sam seemed vigorous and hale, much to my relief.  But only a few moments into his reading, to everyone’s horror and my complete disbelief – he collapsed.  Fortunately, doctors like to go to Harvard poetry readings, and the police and an ambulance arrived right away.  Sam had only fainted, but of course we were extremely worried about him.  The two doctors and I tried to convince him to go straight to the hospital, but he refused.  He was determined to finish the reading, which he did; and when we feted him nervously at the Faculty Club he glowed with pride.  Yet that is not the most memorable part of the occasion.  Those who saw Sam read will know that he recited his work from memory, that he looked leonine, that he was, both on and off the podium (and this is no euphemism), a perfect gentleman: a mensch.  And so my most cherished memory from the evening consists of a small thing that occurred shortly after the reading resumed.  A very young child was among the listeners, softly chewing a few Cheerios as she sat beside to her poetry-loving parents.  At one point, somebody shifted noisily in a chair to chastise the family with a sharp look.  But Sam demurred from this correction, expressing his keen pleasure in having the child present.  Later, on the flyleaf of her parents’ copy of his selected poems, Sam improvised and inscribed a poem – which he insisted, later, on revising right in the book...

Here

Ghost I house

In this old flat—

Your outpost—

My aftermath

Wilmer Mills d.o.a? July 25th, 2011

And it is with sorrow that we’ve learned of the death of Poetry contributor Wilmer Mills, who passed away on July 25, 2011, surrounded by his family.  In a touching online journal kept by family members for those of us who loved and admired him, Wil was felt to have reached a new place toward the end of his struggle with liver cancer.  Wil and his family sang hymns together near the very end, and read from the Bible: Revelation 21, and Psalm 139.  When he left us, his wife Kathryn posted the text of Donne’s immortal poem.