Introduction to Robert Mezey
My intent is not to write an essay or a review; rather, I want appreciatively to introduce ‘Spherians to our most distinguished member, Professor Robert Mezey. Born in 1935, he began translating Ovid at age 13. He studied with John Crowe Ransom at Kenyon, served in Korea, and was graduated from Iowa in 1960. In that year The Lovemaker was published. Winner of the Lamont Award, this precocious first book showed a sure command of meter and a gift for ingenious rhyme unusual in so youthful a poet.
Perhaps in deference to the temper of the times, Mezey then turned to the mastery of his free verse. It is characterized by an unerring sense of line, a trait which is woefully lacking in most practitioners—then or now. It is proof of what my tutor, RP Warren, told me in my teens, that good practitioners of free verse are those who first master formal verse.
The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry calls Mezey “a gifted metaphysical poet.” Metaphysical yes, but I think his chief attractions are wit, passion, and deep learning. One of the best verse translators America has ever produced, Mezey has absorbed the great influences of the Classics, Japan, the Near East, and the Romance languages. He and his collaborator, the late Richard Barnes, have translated The Complete Poems of Borges. In an unspeakable blow to English letters, Borges’ widow has refused them permission to publish, instead granting exclusive rights to a publisher who first commissioned this majestic tome, then switched tracks in favor of a version by divers hands, the likes of Bly, Merwin and Strand. John Hollander and Dick Wilbur were so outraged at this treatment, they refused permission for their own acclaimed translations to appear in the volume. Alan Sullivan will soon post a few poems on the Mastery Board. This great samizdat text can be acquired by a lucky few who secretly transmit a private message to Mezey. I swear it’s the greatest book of English-language verse I’ve read since the publication of The Collected Poems of Auden.
What we can legally acquire, however, is The Collected Poems of Mezey, just issued by the University of Arkansas Press. Its 300 pages collect Bob’s poems from 1952 to 1999. By insidious coincidence, UPS delivered the first copies to Pomona College the very day last November when I arrived to read and lecture as Bob’s guest. Diving into the book that night was an intimidating preparation for my own performances. Let me close by printing the penultimate poem from the book.
Tea Dance at the Nautilus Hotel
(1925)
The gleam of eyes under the striped umbrellas—
We see them still, after so many years,
(Or think we do)--the young men and their dears,
Bandying forward glances as through masks
In the curled bluish haze of panatellas,
And taking nips from little silver flasks.
They sit at tables as the sun is going,
Bent over cigarettes and lukewarm tea,
Talking small talk, gossip and gallantry,
Some of them single, some husbands and wives,
Laughing and telling stories, all unknowing
They sit here in the heyday of their lives.
And some then dance off in the late sunlight,
Lips brushing cheeks, hands growing warm in hands,
Feet gliding at the lightest of commands,
All summer on their caught or sighing breath
As they whirl on toward the oncoming night,
and nothing further from their thoughts than death.
But they danced here sixty-five years ago!--
Almost all of them must be underground.
Who could be left to smile at the sound
Of the oldfangled dance tunes and each pair
Of youthful lovers swaying to and fro?
Only a dreamer, who was never there.
(after a watercolor by Donald Justice)
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