Introduction

Abstract

Introduction Kaveh Akbar I didn't want to write an intro to this memorial. I thought it important Franz's be the first voice a reader encountered. His five new poems included here are extraordinary—incantatory, magisterial, impossibly charming even in their desolation. The first time I read them I became predictably emotional—like countless others, I've desperately missed his voice. Huge chunks of his later books seem written explicitly to steel his beloveds in his absence, but in these new pieces his voice comes across the actual beyond to speak to us of stillness and solitude and wild strawberries and so much more. I'm getting goosebumps now just typing about them. I think Franz's work and everyone else's work here stands on its own, from his wife Elizabeth's wrenching recollections of their long marriage to David Young's stunningly earnest essay about his and Franz's extraordinary relationship to all the other poems and prose written about or for or to or through Franz by people who loved him or loved his work. So why then am I writing this? To say, briefly, that in the one month this memorial was open for submissions, I got hundreds upon hundreds of poems, essays, letters, and tributes sent to me to consider for the space. They came in from all over the world, from writers and non-writers alike. In almost every single submission I got, there was a story about a seminal interaction with Franz, virtual or in the real world. Dozens of people wrote to tell me about correspondences with Franz about poetry, about life, about addiction, about baseball. Even more wrote about quiet mentorships spanning months or years or decades, mentorships for which Franz never accepted a penny. The theme throughout all these correspondences was this—for all his well-documented struggles living the life of a semi-public intellectual while simultaneously battling serious mental and physical illnesses, Franz devoted an astonishingly large percentage of his psychic and temporal resources to nurturing and encouraging young poets. He may have earned some infamy for burning bridges in the academic and literary spheres, but he was constantly erecting new ones privately, quietly, out of the spotlight, with young and unestablished writers who had nothing to offer him but their poems and their sincere gratitude. It would be impossible for me to account for all these stories in this space, but it feels important to me that I at least make mention of their existence. The memorial aims to preserve the legacy of Franz's life in poetry, and it's become abundantly evident to me that a central part of that legacy is the substantial investment Franz made in the future of poetry. Any thorough consideration of his contribution to American letters must consider both his singular body of poetry and his lifelong practice of supporting poets. —Kaveh Akbar [End Page 155] Copyright © 2017 Pleiades and Pleiades Press