Mother, Stranger, Snow.
Stopped at the Snow Cemetery in Truro on my way home to have a look at some of the (Hopkins, Snow) ancestors there, and if there is a prettier place in the world for one’s eternal rest I don’t know it.
This Saturday I’m joining dancer Cameron Child’s and musician Rebecca Schrader for a @atbennington themed event. I’ll be reading new work, and I hope you’ll come.
A couple months ago I gave a talk on poet Mary Ruefle at @poets_house as part of their Passwords series. You can read the essay on my Substack by following the link in my bio.
Thank you to everyone at @yalereview for publishing this diabolical poem. You can read the full poem at the Yale Review website which is linked in my bio.
James died yesterday after a long struggle with cancer. He was sixty years old.
James and I were together for thirteen years. We met in Provincetown and lived there for three years until we bought our house together in Catskill. We married in a civil ceremony in Vermont in 2003, and though our partnership ended over a decade ago, we never actually got around to divorcing.
If you knew James, you know how insightful he was about people. He was incredibly funny, a generous host, an athlete, a reader, a skilled carpenter. He was also a beloved therapist who devoted his professional life to helping people navigate the psychological and emotional complexities of their lives. He spent many years helping those whom others had ignored and was a pioneer in the use of harm reduction techniques for the treatment of substance addiction. He was a committed yogi, and a practicing Buddhist. He also had the biggest and most hilarious laugh of anyone I have ever known.
James loved being on the water more than anything. The years we lived on the Cape were some of the happiest of my life. In the photo above, we had just succeeded in getting his sailboat ready for a summer of sailing Cape Cod Bay.
James died in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he had returned for the final stage of his life and where he was cared for by his loving family.
I will miss him and remember him always.
