This poem by Harvey Shapiro appeared in
Hanging Loose 81, in Spring, 2002.
DESK
After my death, my desk,
which is now so cluttered,
will be bare wood, simple and shining,
as I wanted it to be in my life,
as I wanted my life to be.
-- Harvey Shapiro
There’s a letter from William Carlos Williams, written from
Yaddo just after World War II, that mentions meeting the young Harvey Shapiro
there and says nice things about his work.
That was 64 years ago.
A few
weeks ago, in
Key West, we had a
party to celebrate
Harvey’s 86th
birthday.
He likes a good party.
The voice in
Harvey’s
many books has been consistent over the years; the diction has grown steadily
tighter, simpler, always elegant.
By
contrast, there is the horde of poets at this stage of the game who have
produced great, baggy, long poems, often tiresome, sometimes unbearable, as the
Official-Summing-Up-Capstones-to-My-Illustrious Career.
Perhaps that’s a requirement in some academic
contracts.
Although he has taught at Yale and Columbia,
Harvey has not had a career in the
classroom. Instead, he served as an
editor of The New York Times for 42 years, eight of them as editor-in-chief of
the Book Review. I like to think that
those decades of journalism had an influence on Harvey’s
poetry: Say what you’ve got to say and get out of the way. I know there are lots of other influences,
but I fancy this one. Hell, I started
out as a reporter myself.
-- Robert Hershon
