Remembering Liam Rector [by Laura Orem]

"Old Coat"

Dressed in an old coat I lumber
Down a street in the East Village, time itself

Whistling up my ass and looking to punish me
For all the undone business I have walked away from,

And I think I might have stayed
In that last tower by the ocean,

The one I built with my hands and furnished
Using funds that came to me at nightfall, in a windfall. . .

Just ahead of me, under the telephone wires
On this long lane of troubles, I notice a gathering

Of viciously insane criminals I'll have to pass
Getting to to the end of this long block of eternity.

There's nothing between us. Good
Thing I look so dangerous in this coat.

Liam Rector. American Prodigal, Story Line Press, 1994.

One year ago today, Liam Rector, poet, teacher, "cultural warrior," shot himself in his New York apartment while his wife Tree Swenson was asleep in the bedroom. By now, everyone in the poetry universe knows the backstory: his heart attack and bypass surgery; his treatment for and triumph over advanced colon cancer; his frequent and vocal insistence that he would not go through that kind of physical struggle again. Knowing the context for his death, however, did not make it any less painful for those of us who loved him.

I met Liam in 1995 when I was admitted to the third incoming class of the then brand-new Bennington Writing Seminars. I knew almost nothing about him, except that two of my recommenders had known him for years and could, I hope, pull some strings to get me in. I had already been to Warren Wilson as a residency-only student and been found wanting; the fact that I did not have an undergraduate degree was apparently an insurmountable obstacle to them.  Bennington (i.e. Liam) was willing to consider me despite this, and sometime in the fall of 1994, Liam called to let me know I had been accepted into the program.  He also told me that he didn't have an undergraduate degree, either. Maybe he saw something of his own journey through academia in my application; maybe he just wanted to take a chance. In any event, he opened the door.

On the first night of the residency (cold as only a Vermont January can be), there was a party intended to introduce the students and faculty to each other. (Free beer and wine to warm people up and get things rolling - Liam's idea.) Liam and Tree came in a little after the party was under way. I had never seen either of them before,  but I remember being struck by their physical presence: Tree, petite, elegant, beautiful; Liam, large, handsome, laughing, loud. I remember thinking they would not look out of place as an old dauguerreotype of a Confederate officer and his lady. Even to someone who had never met them before, it was obvious they adored each other.

As I got to know Liam better, I discovered that he was as complicated as a Chinese puzzle ball and as aggravating as a case of poison ivy: kind, brusque, fierce, stubborn, boisterous, tactless, bitingly honest, hysterically funny, completely unpretentious, narcissistic, generous, intimidating, and relentless in his support of his two passions beside Tree: free speech and poetry. Standing next to him was like standing next to a rocket about to blast off, but his reading voice was musical, lovely and measured, and his poems were as precisely crafted as a Shaker bench. His grin was Mephistophelean. Fools, or suspected fools, lasted about a nanosecond before he cut them off at the ankles. His favorite movie was Glengarry Glen Ross; the "brass balls" scene was required viewing for new Seminars students. His favorite expression and poetic creed was "Always Be Closing," from Alec Baldwin's merciless sales manager in that film. He could be a real prick when he wanted to be, particularly when he thought you were being lazy or careless about your writing (more than once, he made me cry during our studies together; what made it worse was that he was usually right); he could also be generous and gallant. Once, knowing I was desperately low of funds, he gave me several books that he knew I needed but couldn't afford, in a typically offhand and low-key way so that I wouldn't be embarrassed or, worse, embarrass him by profuse thanks. He could talk until your ears rang and your butt ached from sitting so long. Always, he was about the poetry, not the poet or the poet's ego. He was a full-tilt boogie, gonzo poetry beast, burning his candle all along the wick.

After Liam died, the Web crackled with the voices of people who had known and loved him, and there were a lot of them.(At his memorial service last September, St. Mark's-in-the-Bowery was literally packed to the rafters; there must have been close to three hundred people crammed into the sanctuary. There were also memorial services in Boston and on the West Coast for those who couldn't make it to New York.) Many of his poems dealing with suicide were posted online. This shouldn't be a surprise was a common comment; look, it was there all the time. It was. He'd been writing about suicide for years.

Much has been written about how Liam died "on his own terms." I suppose he did. But he didn't have to die. After his illnesses, having been granted that elusive second chance, he did nothing to take care of himself: didn't seem to exercise; ate too much; still smoked his head off. In retrospect, it seems as if he was determined to challenge his own mortality, to hurry the time when he would complete the narrative of the ferocious poet who wouldn't let death take him by inches.

How he would despise me for psychologizing like this! I did not know him the way his family and closest, oldest friends did. But we cared about each other, and his death was one of the most excruciating things I have ever experienced. Now, a year later, it occurs to me that perhaps we, his friends, are just a little bit complicit in his death. He was our gonzo poet. We were the audience for the epic poem of his life. We wanted (needed?) him to be fierce and uncompromising and to dance out the door on his own two feet. Exit roaring, old lion. Realizing this makes me a little angry and very, very sad.

Liam was notorious for insisting that his poems were not autobiographical. He would point to fictional details as proof. But this was disingenuous, or, as Liam would say, bullshit. Of course his poems contained his life, as do the poems of all poets. He was just especially adept at concealing the quotidian details. His terror of abandonment echoes throughout all his work, and he left before he could be left: "Abandon, abandon, yea abandon before/Being abandoned" as he says in the later poem, "So We'll Go No More."  Oh yes -- it was there for us to see all along.

At my last residency, my husband and two sons came to Bennington to see me graduate. At the time, the boys were eleven and eight. It felt a little schizophrenic at dinner in the Commons dining room that evening, going from deeply intellectual and artistic discourse to keeping kids from poking each other with their forks and making sure they didn't spill their 7Up. Liam came over with his tray and joined us. After the introductions, he very pointedly turned to me and asked my opinion about a free-speech controversy that had rocked the residency. We talked for the whole dinner, then he politely excused himself to get ready for that evening's readings. It wasn't until much later that I realized he had done this quite deliberately. He wanted my family to see me as he saw me: not just as a wife and mother, a cutter of meat and wiper of chins, but as a thoughtful, engaged woman of letters. What a gift, and how typical of Liam to give it without fuss or thanks.

Oh, how I miss him! I miss being able to email him about a poem I've just read and get his take on it, or to ask him about some literary gossip, or to kvetch with him about the Administration's latest attacks on the First Amendment. I miss his poems and essays, and his periodic appearances on TV in vigilant defense of free expression. I miss feeling his electric presence in the atmosphere and knowing that literature and the arts had a fearless champion. I miss his infuriating arrogance and his poignant sweetness. I owe him more than I can ever articulate -- my career, my life as a poet, my engagement with the larger world of letters. Knowing him was one of the great blessings of my life.

For me, the poem that touches closest to the real Liam is not a poem about suicide. It is a poem that I began this post with, "Old Coat." It reminds me of some of the reasons I loved him -- his irreverent humor, his toughness, and his vulnerability beneath the gruff, protective carapace he wore. And finally, one last story -- at graduation a few nights after the dinner, as he handed me my diploma, Liam gave me a kiss and said, "This is for closers." It was the best compliment I have ever received.

Liam Rector, 1949-2007

Comments

[terence winch]

Beautiful piece. I'm sure Liam would have loved it. And "Old Coat" is my favorite poem of his.

[Sven Birkerts]

You nailed him, Laura. Thank you.

--Sven

[Stacey]

Thank you Laura. This is deeply moving. He changed my life too, in ways that I continue to discover.

[Grace Cavalieri]

Laura Orem is one of the best writers of her generation and when she shows her heart, there is no one who can better make us feel what the human heart feels. Liam knows this too. I love you Laura Jane... GRACE

[MaryCH]

Thank you for this, Laura. The Big Dog would be proud.

[FW]

As usual, not a real word of sympathy for the woman who had to be awakened by the gunshot and look at his brains on the walls--fuck Liam Rector.

[Austin Bailey]

Roughly a week after I discovered Liam Rector's poetry, he died. I stumbled across the news of it on a website. I did not know the man behind the poems as all of you did but I loved his poetry from my first reading of it. It struck me as so unusually honest. Truthfully it made me feel a little ashamed of my own poetry, like I was not telling the truth about anything, and I thought: here is a poet who is bringing things down to a level of realness. Most poets don't do that. His death saddened me. The number of people--artists, intellectuals, what have you--like Liam Rector are a very small few. Perhaps it is a myth, and I'll admit to it being somewhat rosy, but I sometimes think that these people have a harder time living in the world because of the way the world is. Anyways, very lovely piece. I wish I could have met him and I will continue to read his poetry and love it and I hope to read some of your work as well.