WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: December 20, 2023

 

Earlier this year Ecco/Harper Collins published Hell, I Love Everybody: The Essential James Tate. For fans of Tate, the book is essential!  As a fan myself, I even own Lucky Darryl (a novel Tate co-wrote with Bill Knott in 1997). Edited judiciously by Emily Pettit, Kate Lindroos, and Dara Barrois/Dixon, the book is whittled down to just 52 poems, their reasoning to make an “intimate book.” And it works!  In the foreword, Terrance Hayes lists a delightful account of readers and how they found Tate’s work. And I feel compelled to add my own. As an undergraduate at Emerson College, I found a used copy of his book The Lost Pilot. The title poem is an elegy for Tate’s father—and looking at the birth and death dates made me queasy. I myself was 22 when I first read this poem. Tate’s father, a co-pilot of a fighter B-17, was killed in World War II when Tate was just a baby. I loved the title poem so much—a child creating a father he never knew. Congratulations, editors! And rest in poetry, James Tate.

 

The Lost Pilot

for my father, 1922-1944

 

Your face did not rot

like the others—the co-pilot,   

for example, I saw him

 

yesterday. His face is corn-

mush: his wife and daughter,   

the poor ignorant people, stare

 

as if he will compose soon.

He was more wronged than Job.   

But your face did not rot

 

like the others—it grew dark,

and hard like ebony;

the features progressed in their

 

distinction. If I could cajole

you to come back for an evening,   

down from your compulsive

 

orbiting, I would touch you,   

read your face as Dallas,   

your hoodlum gunner, now,

 

with the blistered eyes, reads   

his braille editions. I would

touch your face as a disinterested

 

scholar touches an original page.   

However frightening, I would   

discover you, and I would not

 

turn you in; I would not make   

you face your wife, or Dallas,   

or the co-pilot, Jim. You

 

could return to your crazy   

orbiting, and I would not try   

to fully understand what

 

it means to you. All I know   

is this: when I see you,   

as I have seen you at least

 

once every year of my life,   

spin across the wilds of the sky   

like a tiny, African god,

 

I feel dead. I feel as if I were   

the residue of a stranger’s life,   

that I should pursue you.

 

My head cocked toward the sky,   

I cannot get off the ground,   

and, you, passing over again,

 

fast, perfect, and unwilling   

to tell me that you are doing   

well, or that it was mistake

 

that placed you in that world,

and me in this; or that misfortune   

placed these worlds in us.

 

 

Comments

[jim c]

First Jim Tate poem I ever read; still my all-time fave of his.