Remembering Paul Violi

My Day Is A Little Dimmer Today . . . by Vivian S. Bedoya

My day is a little dimmer today... A part of my life has died an untimely death... Paul Violi has always been a presence in my life, silently looking over my shoulder as I write my blogs, stories or poems, reminding me of what he taught me, encouraging me now as he did when I was his student at NYU's School Of Continuing Education... I'd like to share this letter, which I actually mailed to him. It says just about everything I feel for this great man who touched so many people and of his influence on my life, then and always... My deepest condolences to his family and to all who loved him…

April 15, 2002

Paul Violi
NYU SCPS Mcghee Liberal Arts Programs
50 West 4th Street
New York NY 10012-1165

Dear Professor,

I really enjoyed your poetry reading on Sunday, just as I always enjoyed your classes. You were my favorite professor at NYU and one that I remember fondly. I appreciated the way you always gave a little extra in your classes, teaching us not only literature and writing but giving us a taste of philosophy, art, critical thinking and many other subjects. It was this glimpse into the things I didn’t know that motivated me to look further and I always went home and researched the things you talked about. As a result, I learned much more than what was in the syllabus and I thank you for that. Even now, the Violi influence is felt in our home: when my daughter started college this fall, I ordered her a copy of the Harbrace College Handbook because I couldn’t part with the one on my bookshelf. Most of all, it was your encouragement that helped me rediscover a love of writing and of literature that I had lost through years of neglect. In short, you opened the door to a wonderful world of words and meaning and I treasure that gift always.

Sincerely,

Vivian S. Bedoya

Mentors by C C Fulton

In the 1990s, a former classmate introduced me to Paul (as she called him) through her excitement about his class.  From Prof. Violi through my friend, I care for poetry. 

MENTORS   by CCFulton

Satchels over our shoulders/Full pitch near our ears forever

Buckets that brace us/to carry wise water/from encyclopedic oceans

Breath that ignites/intrigue Nantucket/lighthouse strong

As you command from clouds/our thanks to you continues

 

"the perpetually youthful, vital, brilliant, force. . . " by Kate Falvey

I am stunned - Paul - the perpetually youthful, vital, brilliant force that is Paul Violi - gone? No way. This is a hoax!
I taught for twenty years at NYU with Paul. Only two weeks ago a former student of both of ours contacted me asking where Paul was - She wanted to arrange a get-together/reunion for alums and faculty who had been involved with our magazine, Icarus.
Hardly seems possible. He was - and will continue to be - beloved, influential - and his rare combination of humor and shrewd intelligence will live on in his incredible storehouse of poetry - as well as in the hundreds of students, colleagues, and friends who were made better for having known him.

"Paul’s poems were like the man: witty, laconic, erudite . . . " by David Belbin

I've enjoyed reading the posts here. I was lucky enough to know Paul since 1993 and the posts below confirm what I always assumed, that he was a great teacher as well as a great guy and a brilliant poet. I've just put up some memories of Paul, and a youtube video of him reading last year (taken by his widow, Ann) here.  I'll paste in the text below. I hope that a publisher will do both a collected and a selected of Paul's poetry. Unusually, the only 'Selected' ('Breakers' 2000) is of his fine long poems, though it wasn't described as such (in the copy he sent us, Paul wrote in the word 'long' after 'Selected').

My friend Paul Violi died the Sunday before last. I knew that he was deathly ill, with cancer of the pancreas and liver, but only heard last night. Paul’s illness was diagnosed just three months ago and he kept it quiet until near the end, but at least there was time to write and say goodbye. I first met Paul eighteen years ago, when he was on tour here with Kenneth Koch. Martin Stannard was organising the tour and set up a Radio Nottingham reading for Paul, which is where we met. As I recall, they came to dinner afterwards. Later, Paul and his wife, Ann, stayed with us in our new home in Sherwood. Paul visited the UK solo once or twice as well. We were both politics nuts. I remember getting up early with him one morning to hear Clinton give the TV speech where he more or less admitted that Monica Lewinski had given him a blow job.

Sue and I stayed with Paul and Ann at their home in Putnam Valley, New York State in 1999. Lots of long, free-wheeling conversations in and around their lovely home. He took us around the area and out on his little boat. Last time I saw him was when I was in New York for a conference three years ago. We met for a meal near Columbia, where Paul taught a poetry class. Two hours of great conversation about writing, teaching, mutual friends and the literary life. He insisted on paying, then set off for the ninety minute drive home.

The following morning I met Billy Collins, and told him how Paul had introduced Sue and I to his poetry several years earlier. We talked about what a great poet Paul was and how it was a pity that he wasn’t better known outside the US. And he wasn’t, although Martin and I both had a go at getting him some attention by writing pieces in UK magazines (check out Martin’s fascinating 2004 interview with Paul here). In the US, he got all sorts of awards and featured in all the major anthologies, wearing these achievements gracefully and modestly. Paul’s poems were like the man: witty, laconic, erudite in a very self deprecating way, formally inventive, wise and unashamedly entertaining. Indeed, a Violi reading was often laugh out loud funny, as the excellent video (made last year by his wife, Ann) above demonstrates. You also get to hear his rich, utterly American voice. Below is one of my favourite poems of Paul’s, from 1999′s Fracas. There are dozens of others I could have chosen. I pasted this from the memorial blog to Paul that has been set up here. The tributes there demonstrate what I could only assume, that Paul was a great teacher as well as a great poet, always an encourager of genuine talent. He was also a warm, generous, funny man, who died far too young and will be greatly missed. Condolences to Ann and his two children.

There then follows a paste of 'On an Acura Integra' as posted at the bottom of this memorial blog. Well done for setting it up. David Belbin

Our Paolo by Ray DeJesús

(photo from the Maggy poetry reading, November 2010)

An Enjoyable Neon  

                      -for Paul Violi

 

a Tareyton lit 

      an egg cream foam electrical
a warm  

 

       distance
talk of them

 

        stacks stacks of books
to purge later 

 

          a grin
to burn

 

& rocket 
          across

--  Ray DeJesús

"a boisterous laugh and a wicked sense of humor..." by Greg Santos

Besides being an engaging and attentive teacher, Paul was an extraordinary poet. He was not afraid of challenging poetic conventions by writing poems that took on non-poetic forms like TV Guide listings, an author's acknowledgment page, or book indexes. He also wrote poems that were some of the most  clever and funniest pieces I've ever read.

Paul had a boisterous laugh and a wicked sense of humour. His knowledge of poetry seemed profound and endless. He was prone to quoting Byron and Pope, among other poets, in class and in conversations.

When I attended Columbia, I was lucky enough to take two classes with him as a teacher: his imaginative writing course and a literature course on satire. When I was applying for grad schools, Paul encouraged me to apply to The New School, where he also taught. Studying at The New School turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences I ever had, largely thanks to Paul.

I don't recall if I ever had a chance to properly thank Paul for his help. I don't think it is possible to thank him enough but this is my small attempt.

Thank you, Paul. From the bottom of my heart. You will be sorely missed by all of us.

-Greg Santos

For Paul Violi by Zach Miller

 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold;
Bare ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

You missed a beautiful morning.
The cherry boughs, where the birds broke the day,
are full and heavy as cathedral bells
waiting to peal.

I'm stuck with the truth,
an awkward box left on my doorstep
that I cannot square with my shelves.
So I took a walk, sure that someone sly as you
could never be trapped by such a box.
More likely you've gone wandering,
and left it as a riddle
or a reference to the fragments
of a Latin poet's manuscript.
Suppressing a laugh, you'll light a cigarette
and explain it to me.  

In your class you taught the limits of truth but not of beauty,
something I'm coming to appreciate,
and why I think you'd like today;
this cherry is jagged with beauty, impossibly heavy,
refusing to give up it's bloom, it is frozen.
It will take only a breeze for it to break
and scatter the sidewalk with tiny pieces,
as stained and sharp as the glass from a Catherine Window.

 

--Zach Miller

"gracefully gliding between low and high . . ." by Michael Costello

Poetry has lost an honored voice and ambassador with the passing of Paul Violi.

I, that inverted exclamation point, met Paul once about a decade ago after a lecture at the New School. Paul was one of the first “real” poets I had met after moving to New York City to begin my MFA program. I asked him about inventiveness in poetry, his in particular. I had recently read his poem Index. I remember he was engaged during our brief conversation.

In the years since, I, have come to regard him or rather his body of poetry, in a similar way to Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and David Lehman. All of them possess tremendous wit and a heightened dexterity of diction–gracefully gliding between low and high–and all are practiced in forms but unrestricted by them; funny formalists with a penchant for invention. They have all delighted in the surprise of poetry so that we might do the same.

So, as cliched as it is to say that he will live on in the published volumes of poetry he left behind, he will. As long as we continue to read him that is. And we should. So, below is the beginning of one of his poems I have pasted the link for anyone who wishes to finish reading it.

 

Little Testament

To wake on my fortieth birthday buried in this pile of gifts and not question how they or I got here but proceed with the inventory, all tatters and extra coda, and salvage for you what I can from whatever is fake and forgettable: Something old, something new, something borrowed, stolen, scavenged, a lot simply looted from the pleasures and shambles of the day. Tobacco, wine, sacks of cash, a menagerie, a matador’s doormat and a little bull, The Sultan of Passion’s Manual, a semi-epithalamion, Sonata for Brutality and Vegetable, snapshots, a winged thing, what looks like a self-portrait of Ponce de Leon’s younger brother, Pounce. Pick or choose, keep or toss. Welcome to a firesale at the local Cornucopia. Please excuse the whiff of chaos. Forty years old and I still can’t see myself planting flowers on either the dark edge of heaven or hell. Though in either place I can guess which would flourish, I have a better idea of what thrives here. Item: And so, instead of a bribe for my gravekeeper, I leave a Trillium, …for the rest of the poem go to: http://paulvioli.com/LittleTestament.html Reposted from WeWhoAreAboutToDie

 

You didn't just teach, you edified. Thanks for everything, Paul. ♥ --Marty Correia, NYU

"I tried so hard just to get him to laugh . . . " by Kiely Sweatt

I was a student of Paul´s. He was one of my first professors at the New School. It was his voice that caught me at first, althought I admired his work before, he reminded me a little of Tom Brokov if my eyes were closed. That first day after class I had a long discussion with him on my choice of graduate schools, and why I picked the New School. I knew I had picked the right place after that conversation. The classes with Violi were probably some of the most enjoyable. I tried so hard just to get him to laugh at something I wrote.

 The following year when I interned at Hanging Loose I had the chance to read lots of his books in the little backroom where he would come in every now and again and ask me what the hell I was doing there. ha. I will truely miss him. He has inspired me to inspire people and while I wish I knew him better I am truely honored to have had the chance to work with him. My regards to his friends and family. xo 

(Kiely writes from Barcelona, Spain.)