Three occasions of Tony Frazer
August 14, the year we meet, many years back. Tony arrives in Providence with Ulli, his wife, and their son Julien. For me, the surprise pleasure of conversations that aren’t about the politics of poetry or its business. He’s standing behind me while I’m looking up something on the computer in the barn. And as I’m typing away, he’s enthusiastically championing a wide range of international poets— many of whom I don’t know (but soon will). Incredibly refreshing! I’m thinking, Who IS this guy?
August 15. We take a long walk, Tony, Ulli, Julien and me, along the calm, clear Narragansett Bay, looping back along the road through the neighborhood. Tony’s asking questions but also talking the whole time about Thomas Kling, Raphael Urwider, Barbara Kohler, Raoul Schrod, Wulf Kirsten, Jurgen Becker, Franz Josef Czernin. “Denis Devlin,” Tony asks: “What have you read of his?” Brian Coffey. Thomas McGreevy. As Creeley says, “etc. etc.” And when Tony zeroes in on the mechanics of what makes a particular poem great, that’s when his shop talk really goes lyric.
So at ease in generosity. Immediately offering to pay to fly two poets from Spain to London for a reading celebrating Panic Cure: Poems from Spain for the 21st Century. Offering to put them up in a hotel. What kind of editor does that— and for writers he’s never met? A singular man committed to the sense of community made available by expansive innovative literary traditions. Putting his back into it. His fulsome mind alive, alive-O. Despite an ocean comes between us, there’s always a glass for him at my table.
August 14, the year we meet, many years back. Tony arrives in Providence with Ulli, his wife, and their son Julien. For me, the surprise pleasure of conversations that aren’t about the politics of poetry or its business. He’s standing behind me while I’m looking up something on the computer in the barn. And as I’m typing away, he’s enthusiastically championing a wide range of international poets— many of whom I don’t know (but soon will). Incredibly refreshing! I’m thinking, Who IS this guy?
August 15. We take a long walk, Tony, Ulli, Julien and me, along the calm, clear Narragansett Bay, looping back along the road through the neighborhood. Tony’s asking questions but also talking the whole time about Thomas Kling, Raphael Urwider, Barbara Kohler, Raoul Schrod, Wulf Kirsten, Jurgen Becker, Franz Josef Czernin. “Denis Devlin,” Tony asks: “What have you read of his?” Brian Coffey. Thomas McGreevy. As Creeley says, “etc. etc.” And when Tony zeroes in on the mechanics of what makes a particular poem great, that’s when his shop talk really goes lyric.
So at ease in generosity. Immediately offering to pay to fly two poets from Spain to London for a reading celebrating Panic Cure: Poems from Spain for the 21st Century. Offering to put them up in a hotel. What kind of editor does that— and for writers he’s never met? A singular man committed to the sense of community made available by expansive innovative literary traditions. Putting his back into it. His fulsome mind alive, alive-O. Despite an ocean comes between us, there’s always a glass for him at my table.