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.