[Janet Kenny]

Tim
Apt and exceptionally good.
Janet

[Vester Brogade]

The tributes above are both moving and fitting.

There's never a doubt that Donald Justice was an exceedingly sensitive poet and a complete master of his craft across the whole range of verse from free to the most formal. His contribution to the poetry of his time was great, and there are few, if any, to fill his place.

I never met him personally, but I know one or two of his friends, and I extend to them my sympathy and most sincere condolence on his passing.

Vester

Elegy For Donald Justice

Close softly the doors.
He will not be coming back to these rooms.
The words for the elegy,
The words in their dark clothes,
So long dwelling apart,
From other rooms are coming together now.

They were waiting, perhaps, for the rustle
Of palm fronds at Cedar Key,
The sun grandly failing Miami
And Orion ascending in its place,
The flap of a crow’s wings low
Over the low stubble of an Iowa field.

Now the pines for the box are tall enough
And the saws whine through them.
The needle, accomplishing its work,
Comes out of the sewn clothes
and is set beside its thin sisters.
The carved stone, unfelt,
Is perfectly weightless

And the words are coming together,
Arranging themselves
Like metal filings on a sheet of paper,
Arcing and aligning
To fields of force no one can see now
Or has, ever, not even the poet

Who, hearing the twilight sound of the crickets,
Saw the dark woods at the foot of the slope
Filling slowly with nostalgias, elegies,
And learned to speak quietly
And to close softly the doors.


-Daniel Rifenburgh

I hope you'll forgive my putting forth my own effort in the face of such loss. Don was my teacher for three years at Florida, and a good friend ever since. This poem takes off from "An Elegy Is Preparing Itself" and "Men At Forty," both by The Master, the "poet's poet," Donald Justice. I got some help over at the Non-Metrical Forum, which was useful. Did you know three of Don's students won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry? Mark Strand, Jorie Graham and Charles Wright. He was the poet-teacher of the age, in addition to being "the heir to Wallace Stevens," as Tony Hecht once said of him. I prefer him to Stevens, myself. Thankfully we have as a grand condolence the prospect of the upcoming publication of the Collected Poems, which I can't wait to hold in my hands. It will be like having Don with us again. We are having a memorial reading of Justice's work here in Houston soon and may I suggest others around the country do the same?




[This message has been edited by danrifenburgh (edited August 21, 2004).]

[Janet Kenny]

Daniel
A lovely quiet poem. Thanks for posting it.

Janet

[Dave Lull]

Here's the last sentence of Michael Dirda's review of his Collected Poems in the Washington Post (Sunday, August 15, 2004; Page BW15):


"This is a wonderful book, and anyone who cares for poetry will want to buy it and read it."

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer)

Cordially,

Dave Lull

[A. E. Stallings]

An appreciation of Justice by David Yezzi, at the New Criterion:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/...04/justice.htm

[Don Kimball]

Yes, an excellent essay by David Yezzi. Read it last night. I was particularly interested in his comments on the theme of memory in Donald Justice's verse - as a way of recalling, with telling details yet breathtaking compression, what is rapidly disappearing from the landscape; and, in light of this theme, enjoyed the many comparisons Yezzi made between Justice's poems and Eudora Welty's wonderful short stories.

[Katy Evans-Bush]

Fascinating! I somehow just read this whole thread in one go from start to finish & what - until the end - a laugh!

However I'll be printing it off for the poems I don't yet own of his. Dressmaker's Dummy is one of my favourite poems ever & there are so many more... I'll add a contribution when I get a minute to type it in, the first one I ever read that made me so happy.

KEB