{"id":87588,"date":"2015-07-09T16:08:33","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T20:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=87588"},"modified":"2016-02-25T22:39:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T03:39:30","slug":"james-tate-1943-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/09\/james-tate-1943-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"James Tate, 1943\u20132015"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"James-tate-and-gordon-cairnie-by-elsa-dorfman<\/a>

James Tate at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in 1965. Photo: Elsa Dorfman<\/p><\/div>\n

James Tate, who wrote that the main challenge of poetry \u201cis always to find the ultimate in the ordinary horseshit,\u201d died yesterday in Massachusetts at age seventy-one. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award, Tate\u2019s poems were \u201calways concerned to tell us that beneath the busyness and loneliness of our daily lives, there remains in us the possibility for peace, happiness and real human connection,\u201d wrote Adam Kirsch in the New York Times<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Tate was born in Missouri but\u00a0lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, since 1971. \u201cI\u2019ve imagined that every character and every single event takes place in this town, Amherst,\u201d he once confessed. But John Ashbery once opined<\/a> that Tate is a \u201cpoet of possibilities, of morph, of surprising consequences, lovely or disastrous, and these phenomena exist everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

His poetry is often described as absurdist, and indeed the speakers in his poems come across as bewildered narrators who are as inquisitive as they are clueless\u2014which is all part of their charm. His poetry has also been described as\u00a0comic, ironic, hopeful, lonely, and surreal; \u201cI love my funny poems,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019d rather break your heart. And if I can do both in the same poem, that\u2019s the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his Art of Poetry interview<\/a>, speaking to the intersection between humor and seriousness, he said,<\/p>\n

\n

Most people don\u2019t have a sense of humor in the first place. So if they find themselves laughing at the end of an experience, they are almost distrustful of themselves\u2014like, what happened to me? Today, for instance, on the tragedy side we could easily be talking about the hideous effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, or we could be talking about the Iraq war. But we can go out tonight and hear a great jazz band. We could spend a night with friends, laughing and drinking and toasting and saying how wonderful life is. Simultaneously, we all know that we\u2019re enshrouded in tragedy, lies, and all kinds of evil. Torture, for God\u2019s sake! And heaps of evil beyond what we can contemplate, and yet life is wonderful for those of us who haven\u2019t been directly affected. So we walk around balancing the two all the time. I, for one, am not giving in. I am not going to walk around in tears all day long. I still want to have a good day if I can.<\/p>\n

In my poems, I try\u2014God knows, probably unsuccessfully\u2014to bring that home. There\u2019s a poem in my last book, \u201cA Clean Hit,\u201d where suddenly a bomb falls out of the sky and blows up this person\u2019s house. And all of the neighbors come running down and they\u2019re saying, \u201cWhat the hell happened?\u201d The guy whose house got bombed says, \u201cWell, I voted for this president. They shouldn\u2019t be targeting me.\u201d They\u2019re all trying to figure out what they did and what they didn\u2019t do that could have caused this bomb to drop. Some of them think it\u2019s a mistake. They say, \u201cIt happens all the time. Those reports pass through so many hands, by the time they reach the top somebody has gotten the address wrong.\u201d So you can still have fun with the horror.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Review<\/em> published several of Tate\u2019s poems throughout his career. Below is his poem \u201cThe Old Soldiers<\/a>,\u201d from issue 177<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

When I came out of my study, Ginny was standing there with\u00a0
\u2028wet hair. \u201cAre you going to town today?\u201d she asked me. \u201cI wasn\u2019t\u00a0
\u2028planning on it,\u201d I said. \u201cOh, never mind,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d\u00a0
\u2028I said. \u201cI need some stuff for my allergies, but I can get it\u00a0
\u2028tomorrow,\u201d she said. \u201cNo, I can go. It\u2019s no big deal. Just make\u00a0
\u2028me a list,\u201d I said. Ginny had to be at a planning session for the\u00a0
\u2028League of Women Voters. I went back to my study to line up\u00a0
\u2028several dozen lead soldiers on my desk. They were expensive antique\u00a0
\u2028specimens I had saved since childhood. When I had them all lined up\u00a0
\u2028the way I wanted them, I knocked them all down. Ginny shouted, \u201cAre\u00a0
\u2028you alright?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s nothing, just a small accident,\u201d I shouted back.\u00a0
\u2028She said goodbye and left me the list on the counter. I made myself\u00a0
\u2028a bologna sandwich and sat staring at the list. It all sounded like\u00a0
\u2028stuff that could kill you. But if it could also stop your nose from\u00a0
\u2028dripping and your eyes from running, then good. I walked back and\u00a0
\u2028stood at the door to my study: all dead. Then I put on my jacket\u00a0
\u2028and drove into town, which was crowded and bustling for some reason.\u00a0
\u2028I found my secret parking space at back of the deli. In the drugstore\u00a0
\u2028I roamed the aisles until I found the section devoted to allergies.\u00a0
\u2028There seemed to be hundreds of products making great claims, all with\u00a0
\u2028dire warnings: dizziness, fainting, nausea, etcetera. I felt myself\u00a0
\u2028getting sick just standing there. Finally I found everything Ginny\u00a0
\u2028needed. It was really quite expensive. It wiped out all the cash\u00a0
\u2028I had. When I stepped outside, I saw a mob had gathered in the park.\u00a0
\u2028I asked a woman standing next to me, \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re\u00a0
\u2028protesting,\u201d she said. \u201cProtesting what?\u201d I said. \u201cJust protesting.\u00a0
\u2028You don\u2019t need to have a special cause anymore. In fact that\u2019s now\u00a0
\u2028thought to be kind of quaint and old-fashioned. I do think it\u2019s an\u00a0
\u2028improvement, don\u2019t you?\u201d she said. \u201cI always miss the old ways, until\u00a0
\u2028they come back to haunt you,\u201d I said. She moved away from me, as if\u00a0
\u2028from a bad aroma. The police were moving in on the mob, nightsticks\u00a0
\u2028at the ready. I heard one of them say, \u201cWhat is this about?\u201d The other\u00a0
\u2028one answered, \u201cSpoiled brats don\u2019t know what to do with their Saturdays.\u201d\u00a0
\u2028Finally I made it to my car behind the deli, and it had a ticket on\u00a0
\u2028it. This made me sad. There had been a flaw in my otherwise perfect\u00a0
\u2028mission. I drove home and lined up the medicines on the counter.\u00a0
\u2028I hoped Ginny wouldn\u2019t faint and throw up, fall down the steps, and\u00a0
\u2028crack her head open. I walked into my study and the first thing\u00a0
\u2028I noticed was that all the soldiers were standing up. I was\u00a0
\u2028certain I had knocked them down. Ginny had left the house. No\u00a0
\u2028one was here but me. I didn\u2019t like thinking of the possibilities.\u00a0
\u2028Nonetheless, I walked from room to room, slowly, quietly, glancing\u00a0
\u2028at every item carefully. Everything seemed to be normal, undisturbed,\u00a0
\u2028leaving only the uprighted soldiers unexplained. I could just be\u00a0
\u2028losing my mind. That was a simple explanation. Yes, that was it.\u00a0
\u2028Unless the soldiers righted themselves. They are old and have experienced\u00a0
\u2028thousands of battles. Maybe they\u2019ve learned a thing or two. I\u00a0
\u2028entered my study and sat down at my desk. With a sweeping gesture\u00a0
\u2028I knocked them all against the wall, breaking several bayonets\u00a0
\u2028and a leg or two. I sat there solemnly contemplating my deed.\u00a0
\u2028Ginny wouldn\u2019t be home for three hours. That seemed like a very\u00a0
\u2028long time. I went into the living room and waited for them to regroup.\u00a0
\u2028I had a feeling this was going to be a fight to the death, but still\u00a0
\u2028I was surprisingly calm.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Tate, who wrote that the main challenge of poetry \u201cis always to find the ultimate in the ordinary horseshit,\u201d died yesterday in Massachusetts at age seventy-one. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award, Tate\u2019s poems were \u201calways concerned to tell us that beneath the busyness and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":784,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[9205,2186,10672,20537,1132,10175,5234],"class_list":["post-87588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","tag-art-of-poetry","tag-death","tag-dying","tag-in-memoriam","tag-interviews","tag-james-tate","tag-john-ashbery"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJames Tate, 1943\u20132015 by Jeffery Gleaves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 9, 2015 \u2013 James Tate, who wrote that the main challenge of poetry \u201cis always to find the ultimate in the ordinary horseshit,\u201d died yesterday in Massachusetts at age\" \/>\n<meta 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