Goodbye to a Poet
Richard Eberhart, 101, Poet Who Wed Sense and Intellect, Is Dead
Early Twentieth Century - Richard Eberhart (1904-2005)
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet dies at 101
Richard Eberhart described poems as 'spells against death'
Monday, June 13, 2005 Posted: 8:16 AM EDT (1216 GMT)
HANOVER, New Hampshire (AP) -- Richard Eberhart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet admired for mentoring generations of aspiring writers, has died. He was 101.
Eberhart died at his Hanover home Thursday after a short illness, Dartmouth College said on its Web site.
He wrote more than a dozen books of poetry and verse during a career that spanned more than 60 years. He received nearly every major book award that a poet can win, including the Pulitzer, which he received in 1966 for "Selected Poems, 1930-1965."
"Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country," he said in his 1977 acceptance speech for a National Book Award. "It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world."
Jay Parini, a former colleague who teaches English at Middlebury College, called Eberhart "one of the finest American poets."
"He left behind a dozen poems that I think will be part of the permanent treasury of American poetry," Parini said.
Eberhart was an intensely lyrical poet, Parini said. Unafraid to ask fundamental questions, his poems explore dramatic issues of life and death.
"Poems in a way are spells against death," Eberhart once told the Concord Monitor. "They are milestones, to see where you were then from where you are now. To perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive."
Eberhart was also admired for encouraging young poets, including many at Dartmouth, where he taught for nearly 30 years. Even in his 90s, Eberhart would call the school's director of creative writing to say he had discovered some wonderful poet and to urge her to consider bringing that person to Dartmouth.
"He had a largess; it extended to himself, too," director Cleopatra Mathis said. "He was a person who never tired of talking about poetry, never tired of bringing people who wanted to write poetry into the fold."
He taught at several universities and colleges, then returned to Dartmouth in 1956 as a professor of English and poet-in-residence.
Although he officially retired in 1970, he continued to teach part-time until the mid-1980s.
Eberhart is survived by a daughter, a son and six grandchildren.
Eberhart, Richard (1904-2005)
"The Groundhog" (1936):
In June, amid the golden fields,
I saw a groundhog lying dead.
Dead lay he; my senses shook,
and mind outshot our naked frailty.
There lowly in the vigorous summer
His form began its senseless change,
And made my senses waver dim
Seeing nature ferocious in him.
Inspecting close his maggots' might
And seething cauldron of his being,
Half with loathing, half with a strange love,
I poked him with an angry stick.
The fever arose, became a flame
And Vigour circumscribed the skies,
Immense energy in the sun,
And through my frame a sunless trembling.
My stick had done nor good nor harm.
Then stood I silent in the day
Watching the object, as before;
And kept my reverence for knowledge
Trying for control, to be still,
To quell the passion of the blood;
Until I had bent down on my knees
Praying for joy in the sight of decay.
And so I left; and I returned
In Autumn strict of eye, to see
The sap gone out of the groundhog,
But the bony sodden hulk remained.
But the year had lost its meaning,
And in intellectual chains
I lost both love and loathing,
Mured up in the wall of wisdom.
Another summer took the fields again
Massive and burning, full of life,
But when I chanced upon the spot
There was only a little hair left,
And bones bleaching in the sunlight
Beautiful as architecture;
I watched them like a geometer,
And cut a walking stick from a birch.
It has been three years, now.
There is no sign of the groundhog.
I stood there in the whirling summer,
My hand capped a withered heart,
And thought of China and of Greece,
Of Alexander in his tent;
Of Montaigne in his tower,
Of Saint Theresa in her wild lament.
The Eclipse
I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.
I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.
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