I’ve been remembering Joel Oppenheimer lately.

I climbed the mountain to Chijiwa Castle last week with Joel’s Poetry, the Ecology of the Soul (White Pine, 1983), now sadly O.O.P. and sat reading what he said about poetry while the clouds rolled over the mountains.

First contact was 1981–winning the Deep South Writers Contest for poetry. “This City” and “The Farrier” placed first and second. Joel was the judge.

Then Saturday night, Feb. 26th, 1984, Joel came to Woodland Pattern Books in Milwaukee. I’d been down and out with the flu for several days and still had a touch of it, but still went. This is what I wrote in my journal the next day:

“Saw Joel Oppenheimer last night. He appears to have aged ungracefully–is a lean gray old man who speaks hoarsely and seems to be suffering from a growth in his neck on the left side–or perhaps an enlarged thyroid or gland. He read well, though most of what he read seemed slight. He read his “House” poem [one of my favorites] and an impressive poem about an old lady shitting on the stairs. He also read some “Mother” poems that were interesting. He seemed genuinely likeable, very humane. I think that’s the key to his work. As Nemerov is to the intellect, so he and Levine are to the heart.

I didn’t stick around to talk to him because of my illness.”

Having lived with Joel’s poems another generation, and now approaching the “old man” status that I’d given Joel back then, I must say that his poems have increased in value for me.

I recall smiling and nodding at Joel after his reading had just finished and the applause was rattling on–and getting a smile back.

That will have to do me for now.