Donald Justice; or Coming of Age in America [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dear Bleaders,

It is One pm.

I’m moved by Jim Cummins’s recent post, where he cites
Charles Wright on Donald Justice. 
DJ was reviewing the young CW’s poetry and a fly flew around the room
and near DJ’s open mouth. CW wrote: “He actually swallowed the damn thing, so intent was he on the
poem at hand.  "Did I swallow that fly" he asked,
astonished.  I allowed as to how he had.  "Jesus," he
said.  Amazing!  Then he actually went back to the poem.  From
that moment, he had me in the palm of his hand."

I love it so much.  "Did I swallow that fly" he asked, astonished.  I allowed as to how he had.  "Jesus," he said."  so good.

I have a Donald Justice story too.  I was at the Sewanee writer’s conference over a decade ago and had yet to
publish, but I soon would.  I had
had very little input on my poetry, because I never went to school for it.  

The meeting with Donald Justice was a big deal in that I had
never had a tete-on-tete with a poet of renown about my work.  But it wasn’t a big deal because I knew I liked the poems I’d sent in, and I still do – those poems are in my first
book and remain the best location of many of my thoughts and lexipleasures.

I thought he’d praise my work and also infuriate me
someway or another, because that was what usually happened in the few meetings I'd had with people about my poetry, and I was ready to take it, braced for praise and scalding.  So I go in and sit in what I remember as a room full of
glass.  It is just me and him.  We are at a
corner of a large glass table.

Right out of the gate he wants to know why I wrote one of my
poems, “Send in the Swans.”  This
is not what I was expecting.  “What
do you mean?”  I ask.  He tells me the opening of the poem is
brilliant [well this is my story] and he wants to know what made me think to write this from a man’s
perspective?

I suppose you need some poem here.  Here is the first two stanzas of it-

 Send In the Swans

                        I

Summer streets and the ring

sent back.  Like my hand might

float away, it felt at first.  Now, nothing.

Just a stubborn taste of skin when
I

look around and there is Leda on
every

street corner.  Everywhere, unknowing.

She seems to think that she’s the
swan.

You should have seen my face as I
figured it out.

                        II

I’m the swan.

After the rain, the grass still
complains of dryness.

It takes predators longer, is what
I discovered.

Sadists come and go like food
allergies.

But predators need several lives

to find their nature and several
more

to isolate their style.

There was a perfect frozen moment after he said “man’s
perspective?” and creased his eyes. 
I don’t mean to tease him, and I suppose he had been wondering this
since he read the poem and saw the name. 
What had walked in to talk poetry was a girl with a rather full semiotic
sailboat, all pointing butch-butcheast.   But he wasn’t reading me, he was busy with his question.  He has posed it, and is waiting.

So I have zero experience being with a world-renown poet,
and this is his question, sitting in the air and not falling.  I’m in short-short hair, men’s long
shorts.  My girlfriend had given me a wallet with a chain, and I was wearing that too.  I tell him it is not a
man’s perspective it’s me.  I’m the
one that wants to jump all these hot Ledas.  I
lean back and hint: Don’t I look like the rapacious swan?  Again the pause.  “Hmm,” he says and nods.  He smiles and I smile.  He returns to praising the poem.  

Walking back from this meeting, heart buzzing and banging
like a horsefly stuck in a roomful of windows, thinking about how I was going to relate these events to my friends, a song came to my mind, which I have never forgotten.  To wit: “I told Donald Justice/ that I like the ladies/ I told Donald Justice/
I’m a little queer.”

In the rest of the conversation he drew my attention to something about that poem and said if I could do more of that, I should, and that advice influenced the voice of The Next Ancient World, which came out a few years later.  I sent the book to him.  Now that I think about it, the little encounter may have influenced Funny too.  Funny how long it takes to see things, despite the impressive speed of light.