Remembering Steve Orlen (1942-2010)

I am so sad to hear that the great Steve Orlen, poet and teacher and source of one of the brassiest and most beautiful of laughs, has died today. Though fiction wasn't his form, he was a man who both invited and instigated stories (in fact, you can see some of them here). Steve taught writing at both the University of Arizona and, where I met him, the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. A typical poetry course taught by Steve? "Off Your Meds: The Manic Joy of Obsessive Repetition, or The Overly-Textured Free-Verse Poem, or The Heart-Beat and the Heart-Attack." That particular class sunk into the meter and cadance of James Wright, the plain-style of Louise Glück and Mark Halliday, and George Herbert's prayers.

A Massachusetts native, Steve's last book was A Thousand Threads (2009) from the Hollyridge Press Chapbook series. His other collections of poetry include The Elephant's Child: New & Selected Poems 1978-2005 (Ausable Press, 2006), This Particular Eternity (Ausable Press, 2001), Kisses (Miami University Press, 1997), The Bridge of Sighs (1992), A Place at the Table (1982), and Permission to Speak (1978). He won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Foundation Karolyi, as well as the George Dillon Memorial Award from Poetry Magazine. His poems appeared in American Poetry Review, Slate, Verse Daily, Anateus, AGNI, and The Atlantic Monthly, among many other publications.  

Most importantly, Steve was a kind and full-hearted man, talented and fierce and blunt. Oh! This is such a loss. He had apparently been suffering from lung cancer, a fact that was kept rather quiet up until just recently. But word has come that he spent the last days at home and with his family. And that part, at least, makes me happy.

 

Monkey Mind
By Steve Orlen

When I was a child I had what is called an inner life.
For example, I looked at that girl over there
In the second aisle of seats and wondered what it was like
To have buck teeth pushing out your upper lip
And how it felt to have those little florets the breasts
Swelling her pajama top before she went to sleep.
Walking home, I asked her both questions
And instead of answering she told her mother
Who told the teacher who told my father.
After all these years, I can almost feel his hand
Rising in the room, the moment in the air of his decision,
Then coming down so hard it took my breath away,
And up again in that small arc
To smack his open palm against my butt.
I’m a slow learner
And still sometimes I’m sitting here wondering what my father
Is thinking, blind and frail and eighty-five,
Plunged down into his easy chair half the night
Listening to Bach cantatas. I know he knows
At every minute of every hour that he’s going to die
Because he told my mother and my mother told me.
I didn’t cry or cry out or say I’m sorry.
I lay across his lap and wondered what
He could be thinking to hit a kid like that.

 

In the House of the Voice of Maria Callas
By Steve Orlen

In the house of the voice of Maria Callas   

We hear the baby’s cries, and the after-supper   

Rattle of silverware, and three clocks ticking   

To different tunes, and ripe plums   

Sleeping in their chipped bowl, and traffic sounds   

Dissecting the avenues outside.   We hear, like water   

Pouring over time itself, the pure distillate arias   

Of the numerous pampered queens who have reigned,   

And the working girls who have suffered   

The envious knives, and the breathless brides   

With their horned helmets who have fallen in love   

And gone crazy or fallen in love and died   

On the grand stage at their appointed moments—   

Who will sing of them now?   Maria Callas is dead,   

Although the full lips and the slanting eyes   

And flared nostrils of her voice resurrect   

Dramas we are able to imagine in this parlor   

On evenings like this one, adding some color,   

Adding some order.   Of whom it was said:   

She could imagine almost anything and give voice to it.

 

UPDATE (11/17/2010): The Poetry Center at the University of Arizona has posted audio archives of Steve Orlen. And fiction writer Amy Minton's remembrance of him is concise and gorgeous, a prism.

Comments

[Diane Arieff]

Really beautiful, Anna. Thanks for writing it. He had such a great laugh.

[Amy Minton]

Thank you for this, Anna.

[Larissa Amir]

Thanks, Anna. What a kind and loving remembrance.

[Seth]

Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. Thanks, Anna.

[Paula Belnap]

Anna, this is beautiful--your words, the links to others' words, and Steve's own words via his poems.

[Peg Alford Pursell]

Thank you, Anna.

[Kelly Cherry]

I am so saddened to learn about Steve's death. He was a lovely man.

[Cynthia Atkins]

Steve Orlen was my first poetry prof. and turned
me on to a life long pursuit of the muse....He
was a passionate and inspirational man

[Nick Spark]

Steve was a gentle, soulful, caring man. What more can one aspire to be? Once he said to me: "You can have all the energy and dedication in the world, but if you don't have talent, then there is no point in trying to be a writer." It seems an obvious point I guess, but somehow it always stayed with me. Steve truly had "it" and a lot more.