[A. E. Stallings]

I was stunned to receive the following announcement in my e-mail from Tupelo press:

To our writing community:

It is with the deepest and most unremitting sorrow I have to tell you that Sarah Hannah, one of our own, extravagantly talented, brilliant, witty, buoyant, and beautiful, has taken her own life.

Tupelo Press will hold a memorial for Sarah at Poet’s House in September when her new book, Inflorescence, comes out. I will invite the entire writing community to come and read from her book, and to read tributes or poems in homage. Meanwhile, flowers and expressions of sympathy may be sent to her family at the following address: Nathan and Harriet Goldstein, 17 Metropolitan Avenue, Ashland, MA 01721.

Sarah received her doctorate as well as her MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, and was the author of two collections of poems, Longing Distance (Tupelo Press 2004) and Inflorescence (forthcoming from Tupelo Press in Fall 2007). She was a faculty member in the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, where she taught graduate and undergraduate poetry workshops and literature courses. She was a terrific teacher, adored by her students, her colleagues, and her friends. She lived her life fiercely and fervently, making many of the most memorable and poignant poems I’ve had the great fortune to read. To know Sarah was a great gift, to lose her is unspeakably sad. She had the sort of soul that made the world a better place at every step.



Jeffrey Levine
Tupelo Press



Please, Mr. Postman,

Re: that lightly padded envelope you’ve carried
Hip-side for some time, that scripted missive you’ve

Delayed and delayed relaying to the next pick-up
Box, that scripted something you can’t quite put

Your finger on (except that you put your hands
All over it)—some days you take the long route

Around the leaf-strewn street, you stop under
Some thick hemlocks, half hidden, you wrest it

From your blue canvas bag and behold it,
Scan the somewhat illegible script: Broken Tree

Road, the destination, but of course that is not
Your role, to hand deliver; you’re only to pass

It along to the next point of dispatch. Still, for
Some unaccountable reason, you are unable

To fulfill this sworn duty. You know it’s only
Paper, but what words might be written there?

You run your warm palm across my front,
You turn me over in your hands.

I seem to have taken on some human characteristic.
I seem to be crinkling some obscure utterance.

I was intended—
I was posted in good faith—

No more. Please, Mr. Postman, pry.
Tamper.
Felonize.

Please, Mr. Postman, bring me home.

—Sarah Hannah


Tupelo Press
-----

I have been in contact with Sarah Hannah on and off since writing her a fan letter for a brilliant poem she had on Poetry Daily. We exchanged books, and I very much admired her Longing Distance, which contains and elegant mix of supple free verse and daring formal verse. I had only just written her a letter of recommendation for West Chester, and was expecting to meet her there next week.

I think she has also done a reading for the Pow Wow river poets. I do not know what to say, as I am still absorbing this news, but I thought I should pass it along in case there are people here who knew her and would like to send some condolences.

Alicia

[Jennifer Reeser]

Thanks, Alicia. Here is the link to a Boston Globe obituary from May 31:

/ Sarah Hannah, 40, Teacher & Poet

So many of us would have loved to have had a moment with her at the conference.

"She was incredibly smart and incisive," her husband said. "She could just sort of see into things and see connections, especially relating nature to human experience.

"And she really had a great sense of humor. She was just beautiful, but could be silly and undistinguished, not afraid to make a fool of herself at any given moment."

"I think from the very beginning she was a spectacular writer and thinker, a real intellectual," Bernheimer said. "She's just one of those people who are full of empathy and grace, passionate about people."

[Jim Hayes]

This is unspeakably sad.

[David Landrum]

Sympathies to you, Alicia, and to all who knew her. I had read "Alembic" and thought highly of it. Such a tragedy.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Awful news. So sad. I've just had an email from a mutual friend here who writes, "I’m grief-stricken, devastated, paralyzed. Will miss her unspeakably."

It's a small world - we're all connected. My thoughts are with those of you nearly- and almost-friends who are grieving for this bright spark of a woman.

KEB

[Richard Wakefield]

Unspeakable is the word. Writers are caught up in trying to find the words, as if we could fence in the wild world and tame it, or at least make it hold still. Then something like this imposes silence far more eloquent.
RPW

[Tim Murphy]

This IS unspeakably sad. Self-murder is a pretty extreme remedy, but really good poets like Sarah are so sensitive to the ills of the world, that the ills of the world sometimes drive them to it.

[Janet Kenny]

Alicia,
I waited a decent interval before expressing my sadness to hear of the chosen death of a young poet. I didn't know of her although I seem to have read that poem somewhere?

I lost a creative young woman friend once in the same way. It is a sadness that stays with us.

My deepest sympathy.
Janet