Madeline DeFrees: a poet you really should know; I'm very thankful that I did...

I would never have become a poet without her stern guidance

***photo taken at the Oklahoma Arts Institute, Summer 1984

She was a nun. A nun! Well, an ex-nun, now teaching at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst where I was returning to finish my bachelors degree after three years in the U.K. Madeline DeFrees agreed to be my thesis advisor—though she seemed less than enthusiastic about my work. It didn’t matter; she would take me!

But there was one proviso: that I would take a creative writing class during fall quarter. The only class available was with Paul Mariani —- the single most horrifying class of my educational career—a true nightmare that I had to survive to get to Madeline’s tutorial—the best undergraduate experience ever! (Side note: try and take a one-on-one class with a professor if you can; it changes everything.)

Once a week, I would knock on the door of Madeline’s office with a copy of my typed-out poem. Madeline would invite me in, her red ballpoint in hand. Each week I fervently hoped that she wouldn’t find a word to circle or a phrase to underline. I prayed for a mistake-free poem. One day she explained to me that “the poem was only as good as the weakest link in the chain.” Once the weak link was excised from the work, a new issue would take its place. In other words, my wish was impossible.

But it didn’t matter! Through Madeline’s teaching I was first introduced to the poetry of Carolyn Forche, Sharon Olds, and Richard Hugo. Through Madeline I learned the art of revision—whether I wanted to learn it or not. Without that tough and (at the time) tedious lesson, I never could have become a published poet.

And as tough as Madeline was with me, she was also kind. For our last class together she invited me to her home for lunch; the first and only time this happened to me as an undergraduate. After the meal, we took my poems and laid them out underneath the dining room table. Here was my teacher on her hands and knees peering at my mess of a manuscript.

I think this was the first time I ever saw anyone care about my work, anyone take it seriously. Underneath her table! Thank you, Madeline.

This would have been enough but she also came to my small graduation party at my group house. She modeled for me what a professor, a mentor, could be. When I moved to Seattle, several decades after graduation, Madeline had moved here, too. And at each of my book launches, Madeline was there, sitting in the front row.

For Madeline’s 90th birthday, I worked with her literary executrix, Anne McDuffie to try and make the event memorable. We had a broadside done of one of her poems by local poet and printmaker, Joe Green, and there was lots of cake. Anne had asked me to speak to Madeline’s time in Massachusetts and I was both honored and terrified. And once again, there was Madeline in the front row, watching.

Excerpts from my talk at Madeline’s 90th birthday party at Eliot Bay Book Company.

“In re-reading her books these past few weeks, I am struck by three things in particular about Madeline: Madeline has an acerbic wit similar to Elizabeth Bishop’s understated humor and a deep pathos for that other life not quite lived.  She expresses both qualities with a slight of hand -- which I think I understood little of at  twenty-two. What I did know when I met Madeline, was that she was someone I wanted to emulate and to make proud - difficult as that task was, and still continues to be.

 In March of 1983, when I asked Madeline about a trip to Italy she’d taken during spring break , she told me she deemed the holiday a success, because she’d gotten three poems out of it. I’d never met anyone before who counted the number of poems written as the measurement of a good vacation. It seemed so exotic. Later, in 1994, when I moved to the Northwest, I wrote to Madeline to say hello, not at all sure she’d remember me.  She did. And always the avid letter writer, she wrote back, I think, within the week - thanking me  for the wine glasses I had presented to her over a decade ago. But I am getting ahead of the story.

“Given that we worked together 33  years ago – I remember quite a bit of that time. Today I pass on to my students much of what I learned from Madeline in the  tiny windowless office the all-male administration gave her in Bartlett Hall .

In preparation for this talk, I went back through my daily journals from winter-spring 1983, curious to find what, if anything,  I had written about Madeline. And perhaps not so surprisingly – there she was — mixed in with huge boyfriend drama and the great penetrating angst of a young person’s life —there was Madeline!

I thought I would share a few BRIEF entries with you and with Madeline.

February 27 1983

A poem just appeared from an exercise Madeline gave me. Scotch Nip.

 (I had taken four  creative writing workshops previously but none of my male professors had ever cared enough  or so it seemed to me, to give their students exercises).

March 9^th

I’m learning lots of technique from Madeline – but she gives little encouragement. Maybe that’s supposed to make me work all the harder?

April 16^th

Madeline is not ego-satisfying, but honest. She says my positive points are my maturity and my determination. Also, that the only thing that makes a good writer is to keep writing.

And that even if poetry is depressing, the poet wrote it in a positive moment.

May 20^th  (This was two days after my thesis defense.)

Madeline came to the party and enjoyed herself. About 12-14 people. At times singing, playing a hand organ, and dueling guitars.

So here are a  few things that strike me about Madeline as a teacher.

1.  Madeline believed in hard work. No surprise there. She would tell me – in a poem  - when you take out the weakest link in the chain  - there will be something else to replace it. I was amazed by this and at the same time exhausted. No student wants to hear this. What do you mean?  It isn’t done yet?

 2. Madeline’s love of poetry showed itself in a true deference for even the most flawed attempts by her students. She extended to me the respect that a fledgling life in poetry deserves - but is rarely granted. We would meet once every two weeks in her office in Bartlett Hall, late in the afternoon when everyone else had gone home. I remember waiting for our meeting as being very much like anticipating a visit to the dentist  – and when she finally opened the door and invited me in, she would be ready her most exacting tool  - the red pen.  Ready to remove the weak points in the chain.”

Here is one of my favorites of her poems from her new and selected, Blue Dusk.

Still Life

The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird”

After your letter arrived I left the oven on
all night and never once
put my head in it. After your letter arrived
I let one foot follow the other
through the better part of the day. Your letter
lay on the kitchen table by the paring
knife on the stoneware plate with the apple core
like a Dutch still life restored to
its muted color.

In the sink a spiral of lemon
peel twisted like smoke toward the past and I
think that I let it lie.
The first day of night these eyes you opened
were glassed and dry as your late martini.
The next they brimmed into morning.
It was time to rehearse the Sunday phone call,
the new role laid out for learning.
When you asked,

Did you get my letter? I picked up
the cue as if you had wired me
roses in winter or proposed
a pas de deux. Then partly for your sake I taught
myself to sing the best song I could make:
the burden of the oven bird’s diminished thing. Sang
wash of sunlight on the sill and apple core,
sang water glass half full of emptiness. Sang body
all in shadow that I must bathe and dress.

From Blue Dusk: New & Selected Poems, 1951-2001, Copper Canyon Press

Thank you Madeline, for taking a chance with me. Thank you for being my reluctant poetry mentor. It has made all the difference.