One Art

BY PROF. VAROL AKMAN

Rachel Hadas (b. 1948)

As soon as someone reads or rereads a poem, in however musty a volume, by however obscure an author, that breathes new life into it.

One of the most accomplished American poets writing today, Rachel Hadas was born on November 8, 1948, in New York City. She is the daughter of Columbia University professor Moses Hadas (1900-1966), a leading classicist of the 20th century and a great teacher. She received a BA degree from Radcliffe, Harvard University (classics), an MA from Johns Hopkins University (poetry) and a PhD from Princeton University (comparative literature). She spent some years in Greece before graduate school. The effect of the classics is evident in most of her 17 published volumes (of poetry, essays, a memoir and translations), spanning the period 1975-2011.

Since 1981 Hadas has taught at Rutgers University (the Newark, New Jersey campus), where she is currently a Board of Governors Professor of English. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant and an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

The poem I have selected from Hadas's vast oeuvre is a spectacular piece which I think will resonate well with my readers. After all, we (faculty, students and administrative staff) all have Bilkent IDs with photos.

Hadas lost her beloved husband, the distinguished composer George Edwards, on October 23, 2011, after a long illness. Although busy with a hectic end of semester at Rutgers, not feeling very well, and exhausted from her great loss, she kindly agreed to my last-minute request for a mini-interview via email.

1. What was the earliest poem you've written? On what medium did you compose it? Did you keep a copy? Is it included in any of your books? Do you remember the context and the thoughts and feelings which gave rise to it?

I started writing at age 9 or so, very stilted imitative stuff I haven't kept. By 14 I was imitating e.e. cummings and by 16 Eliot and Shakespeare's sonnets. The earliest poems of mine that I have kept were a couple written while I was still in high school, "After the Cave," "The Fall of Troy," and "Super Nivem," which all appear in my 1975 chapbook "Starting from Troy."

On what medium? Pen and paper. This was aeons ago, remember.

2. If you had the opportunity to have a chat with a great dead poet over coffee (or drinks), who would that be and what would you like to converse about with her/him?

I think Keats might be a genial and convivial and inspiring person to talk to; Byron is also tempting, on the basis especially of his letters. But I am not very imaginative about such counterfactuals, and I know from abundant experience that poets are often quite different in person from what they are like on the page - sometimes disappointingly so, sometimes the opposite.

3. Which one is more beautiful in your view as an art object: a printed poem or its audio rendering by its poet? Why? If you were to pick a living actor/actress to read your poems who would that be?
A printed poem by far. Why? I don't exactly know - all my instincts, and my sense of how I'd like my work to survive, though audio is certainly interesting too. Living actor or actress: hmmm, that's hard. In my experience, actors overdramatize poetry when they read it - not surprisingly. I prefer to imagine my poems read aloud by younger contemporary American poets who know me and my work and who read well and who it is easy to imagine introducing a new generation to my work - for example, Alicia Stallings or Michael Snediker or Keith O'Shaughnessy.

NOTES

  • The opening quote is from a 2009 interview with Hadas, appearing in Contemporary Poetry Review.
  • "I.D. Photo" is from "The River of Forgetfulness" (WordTech Communications, 2006). In Greek myths, the river Lethe flowed through the Underworld, and anyone who sipped from it underwent total forgetfulness. Lethe is also the name of the Greek spirit of oblivion. If you would like to hear this poem in Hadas's voice, please click the following link: http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/almanac/2007/10/23_wa
  • Hadas has an attractive homepage at http://rachelhadas.com

 
I.D. Photo

Since I can feel my radiant nature shine
Out of my face as unmistakably
As sunlight, it comes as a shock to see
The features that apparently are mine.

Mirrors are not a lot of fun to pass,
And snapshots are much worse. Take
the I.D.
Picture taken only yesterday
(Take it -- I don't want it): sallow face

Pear-shaped from smiling -- lumpy
anyway,
Droopy, squinty. General discouragement.
I'd blame the painter, if this were in paint,
But can't avoid acknowledging it's me,

No likeness by an artist I could blame
For being bad at matching in with out.
What I see, alas, is what I get.
Victim and culprit are myself and time --

Having seen which, it's time to turn aside;
Look out from, not in at, an aging face
That happens to be mine. No more
disgrace
Lies in having lived then having died.