December 2022
Author's Note: Gerald Stern’s nine-year-old sister, Sylvia, died when Stern was eight. My sister died at nine when I was eight—discovery of that correspondence leading me to Stern. Described variously as irascible, humorous, worldly, and melancholic, Stern has left an abundance of poetry and essays to think upon and enjoy. His poems, full of surprises, often tip me a bit off kilter, no doubt by design. An American original? Agreed.
Last Questions for Gerald Stern (1925-2022)
an appreciation
Might we guess you fought Death
for your Panama hat—and won?
Bill Murray bit you. An act of poetic license?
You were a fighter, a creative: mutually supportive?
You once sang “Try a Little Tenderness” with
Paul McCartney. Would you agree compassion informed
your life and work, witness your concern for the boys
who left a bullet lodged permanently in your neck?
Was there ever a convention—whether aesthetic
or social—you weren’t up to challenging?
An injustice you couldn’t address?
A subject immune to your wit?
Could anyone really hate your poetry, unless
in the appreciative way you hated rhubarb?
You believed writing is 30% skill, 20% luck,
50% will. Your personal recipe?
What arrangement did you have with time
to be given 97 years to explain your life?
Did your face-off with Death provide answers
about the journey and essence of our dust?
Your ever-young sister always at your ear,
you shaped redemption from struggle and loss.
In the name of the small, the common, the “least of these”,
we thank you for sowing seeds of transcendence.
©2022 Darrell Petska
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL