Chitra Ganesh, The Condition of Womanhood (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist and Durham Press.
Introduction
In Gail Mazur’s poem “Blue Umbrella,” an artist of delicate constructions named Kai not only fixes the broken cap on a special umbrella, a gift from Gail’s daughter, but with extraordinary thoughtfulness, holding out “the deft hand of friendship,” carves not one but two “perfect” replacements:
one for now, one for the future, when he knows
in his heart I'll need another (don't things
always break?)—And won't we two be far apart?
As a poet who also founded a reading series (the Blacksmith House Poetry Series, which she directed for twenty-nine years), Gail Mazur knows how to treat artists—with respect, empathy, consideration, imagination. Poets have recognized this; and here, four of them—with the deft hand of friendship, and with respect, empathy, consideration, and imagination—return the favor. Their tributes are the best kind, offering an insight rare in criticism, partly because it is also an expression of love.
I think anyone who reads a poem by Gail immediately feels her voice talking to them—talking to the world as if she were, in the process of discovery, talking to herself (with that plaintive and quizzical and even impatient “Gail!”). And while her writing seems effortless, because we also feel the emotional and intellectual complexity, we know there must have been a struggle to achieve this effortlessness. Though her poems are always talking about hard things—one’s place in the world, one’s passions, a life’s insecurities and fears (will those passions be reciprocated?) and inevitable losses (even more devastating when those passions have been reciprocated)—these poems invariably give pleasure. Their insights. Their language. For a poet, there are few greater satisfactions than to read an admired fellow poet’s deep understanding of her work, the pleasure they take in her skill, technique, practice. Effort. Gail’s poems are manifestations of her nature, her character, and personality. The four poets here, in illuminating aspects of technique and style, tone and form, that lie just beneath Gail’s seemingly effortless surfaces, are true authorities.
Lloyd Schwartz’s latest book is Who’s on First? New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2021). For his poetry he has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and his poems have been selected for the Pushcart Prize, The Best American Poetry, and The Best of the Best American Poetry. A noted editor of the works of Elizabeth Bishop, he is also the longtime classical music critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and was the classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix, for which he was awarded the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. He is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the poet laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts, for which he has been awarded a 2021 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. (updated 8/2021)