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WORLD FOCUS: Real-life poetry

The encounter at the elegant Wedmore Place restaurant at the Williamsburg Winery, would have served as a fitting scene in the famous post-World War II spy movie, The Third Man.

“This past summer, Ron Smith, a poet who teaches at St. Christopher School in Richmond, e-mailed me several times about getting together. He knew I had just finished a new manuscript of poems, and he said he wanted to talk about it,” recalled Henry Hart, the Mildred and J. B. Hickman Professor of Humanities at the College of William & Mary, and a noted poet and biographer.

At Hart’s suggestion, they met at Wedmore Place, but Smith immediately started to behave strangely. “He excused himself from our table and when he finally returned he said he’d bumped into some of his friends and wanted me to meet them. I thought it was odd, because there were very few people at that time in the restaurant.”

Smith said, “let’s forget about dinner for the time being and go talk to my friends.” They turned out to have been Carole Weinstein, Don Selby, and Buffy Morgan, members of the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize Committee. The prize, in addition to the prestige that it bestows on the winner, carries a $10,000 honorarium.

“Nothing was said about the prize at first,” Hart said, “but after drinking some fine wine, Carole made the announcement that I was selected as the winner. It was all so unexpected that I was speechless for a few moments.”

He was sworn to secrecy, not to reveal anything until last week when he was presented with the award for “a range of achievement in the field of poetry,” at the Literary Award Celebration at the Library of Virginia.

In his presentation, Ron Smith summed up Hart’s poetry this way: “You don’t need to be a poet to read Henry Hart’s poems and see that they do in fact deliver the pathos of experience, exalt the solid fact, achieve, beauty and delicacy.”

He noted that Hart is the only writer he knows who grew up on a Christmas tree farm. “Henry’s poems are full of life, ordinary life, real life. He writes about family and fishing, parenting and parades, history and hiking: he writes about camping out and kicking back. His poems have common sense as well as uncommon sense.”

I asked Hart how he chooses the subjects of his poetry. “It was after I left my hometown, which was a small farming town in the foothills of the Berkshires, and went to Dartmouth College that I gradually got interested in poetry, “he said. “In my first poems, I usually wrote about my experiences on the Christmas tree farm where I grew up… I found the social and academic environment at Dartmouth disorienting at first. To get ‘oriented’ I returned, at least in my imagination, to my roots in the farming community where I felt at home.”

Later, while at Oxford University, during his graduate work, once again separation from ‘home’ inspired many of his poetic subjects.

Reflecting on how a poem is “born,” Hart said his writing experiences are not different from those of most poets. “Sometimes, in a moment of inspiration, poems will come ‘ready made.’ It’s as if I’m in a fast-food restaurant and my food — my poem — appears almost instantaneously. In other cases, less then half of the meal arrives. I have to painstakingly prepare and cook the rest, and it takes a long time.”

Hart has published three books of poetry: “The Ghost Ship,” “The Rooster Mask,” and “Background Radiation.” He has just finished his fourth volume of poems entitled “Communion.” He has published several important critical books on poets, and his biography James Dickey: “The World As a Lie,” was runner-up for a Southern Book Critics’ Circle Award.

The intriguing meeting Hart had with Carole Weinstein, who is recognized as one Richmond’s most generous philanthropists, was not the only encounter he had with a famous “mystery” guest.

Some years ago, he was invited to a special luncheon at Plumeri House, W&M’s guest house. He was not told who the guest of honor will be until the morning before the lunch, only that she loved poetry, carried a large handbag, and espoused political views that were slightly to the right. At the last minute Hart was asked by Provost Geoff Feiss to write a short poem for her and read it at the lunch.

“After drinking a few glasses of wine to calm my nerves, I stood up at the table and read my short poem to Lady Thatcher. It was really just a bit of light verse, but she told me afterward that she appreciated it and wanted me to send her a copy.” Hart said.

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission

from The Virginia Gazette.

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