November 1, 2019: What was I Doing At a Ceremony for a Famous Poet?

As you will know from having read the cleverly-named “About Me” page on this website, I was granted a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I say “granted” because in retrospect it seems a purely discretionary move on the university’s part. But then, none of the men there, to my knowledge, distinguished themselves in American letters after graduation. UNC-Greensboro was a pre-eminent program for creative writing until my class showed up.

In any event, after I graduated, I taught at Auburn University for six years, then went to law school at Chapel Hill, where Nancy and I met. Then we took jobs in Greensboro—a dumb idea, but I had been so happy getting my MFA there, and the pay was actually better in those days than Portland, OR, where we also had offers.

In something like my second year as a lawyer in Greensboro, I was asked to speak a retirement ceremony for the MFA program’s revered poet, Robert Watson.

The invitation was a puzzle. I wasn’t a poet.* When at UNC-G, I knew Bob enough to nod and say hi. I never took a class from him. Why me?

Nevertheless, the event sounded like fun. Back then, too, I was beginning to understand that I would have to bring in clients if I wanted to make partner. Though most of the attendees would be from the literary world, they still needed lawyers, right? Why not get my name out?

This is over 30 years ago, so some memories of it are fuzzy. I wore a suit, and Bob sat next to me on a chair, which then and now seems awkward. I forget where the auditorium was, but it was big, and full—perhaps 200-300 people? Probably the UNC-G theatre. They had a good MFA in drama. The year before I arrived, I’m told that two lesbian actors wallowed naked together in a vat of spaghetti. Probably apocryphal.

Several other people spoke first. I remember most the head of the MFA program, H.T. “Tom” Kirby-Smith, a real literary figure in his own right and a really gentle person. Years before, he had taken me, a 20 year old graduate student, under his wing and had taken good care of me. I was chosen to be the student editor of The Greensboro Review purely because I had the highest GPA of any incoming MFA student, which is ridiculous—shouldn’t that disqualify me to do anything? With no real feel for prose or fiction, I at least got the Review’s financial records in shape—Tom later told me that they’d never looked so good.

Tom’s speech was great. He mused over what word was appropriate for Bob’s retirement, and feigned to have trouble coming up with one. He finally settled on an Army term: they were “mustering him out.” I don’t recall the justification, but I’m sure it was just right. It sounded sweet and kind. He made an excellent case for why it was the only appropriate term.

Then at some point I spoke. I had no idea why I was there, so I larded up the beginning with a disclaimer: I was an idiot. I said that I was a mediocre writer and that Fred Chappell, the head fiction writer, had said long ago, “Put a girl in a Pullman and George will write about her.” I glanced at Fred in the first row as everyone laughed, and he was laugh-grimacing.

I ended up focusing on the few interactions I had had with Bob. I remembered the most recent, when I had come back to wander around the department after I had begun teaching at Auburn. I remember running into Bob and him saying, Oh yes, we interviewed your writer in residence but thought he was dull. Everyone laughed wildly when I reported that, perhaps because they knew who it was and were delighting in the slander. (There’s no indication that the person in question heard about that.) But it was pretty indiscreet of me.

So this story wants to become a shaggy dog story because I can’t remember the other two anecdotes I told. But they were mainly about how mystifying Bob was, how I really didn’t know him, but he seemed to know plenty about me. I recall the packed auditorium, the dim light, and, yes, the hilarious laughter. Were they all drunk? Probably, but, afterwards they didn’t act like it.

When I returned to my seat, Tom leaned over and whispered, “That was very nice.” That was kind of him.

Later, I think, I asked him why the speech had gone over so well—I mean, I’ve seldom had such a great reaction to my speaking, especially as I had recently come from a career as an instructor teaching Freshman composition and surveys of lit, the classes about which no one at Auburn wanted to attend. He said, “You made Bob sound as though he knew a lot of information, and you had no idea why. You made him sound like a magician. It gave him an air of mystery.”

Well, as I barely knew Bob Watson, he was a complete mystery to me.

Out in the hallway where we all mingled afterwards, I had a couple of hilarious disappointments. When I was getting my MFA, Bob Watson’s daughter Caroline, who as an undergrad was extremely hot to my graduate student’s eyes, had been a friend back then. She had been as cute as she could be, with her mother Betty’s bright eyes and someone’s frizzy hair and her parents’ quick wit. She was there with her husband and didn’t notice me.

Also, Candy Flynt, who had graduated from the MFA program and published a couple of novels, was there with her husband, a rich businessman named Chuck Flynt. Somewhat earlier, a partner in my law firm, Chip Hagan, had told me what his wife, Kay Hagan, the recently deceased former senator from North Carolina, told him: you should hand out a box of business cards a month. Chuck asked, “Where are you working?”

My young associate’s hope rose: could I bring Chuck Flynt to the firm? It would make me a hero! Heeding Kay Hagan’s advice, I reached into my wallet to hand Mr. Flynt a business card.

He backed off, wincing, holding his hands up, and said, “Don’t give me a business card!”

OK, this post is about why the hell I was asked to speak at Bob Watson’s retirement ceremony, but I also don’t understand, to this day, why Chuck didn’t want a business card. Was that too gauche? Should I have called him at his office (wherever that was) a month later?

Who knows. Kay Hagan was a U.S. Senator, and Chuck Flynt wasn’t. Kay Hagan was even a Democrat, and won despite some really awful attack ads by Elizabeth Dole. Senator Hagan was, in my limited experience, a very nice woman. Chuck Flynt in my opinion wasn’t a very nice man.

Later, I asked Tom why I had been asked to speak; I wasn’t a poet, I barely knew Bob Watson. Tom said something to the effect of that I wasn’t an academic; that I had gone out into the world, obtained a law degree, and was actually doing something out in the world. Unlike Candy Flynt, who had actually published novels? Where were the poets? There had to be some hanging around town. Why me? I’ll never understand, and now Dr. Watson is gone, and I’m too embarrassed to ask Tom again.

*Ironically enough my first publication was a poem, one of only two I’ve written. It was titled “Party Hardy Has Her Say”, and begins something like “Barbra Hardy, southern coed, considers herself/ Less at fault than her mother would suspect./ Head spinining, room spinning to reveal painful orange outside the motel window/ she lies still for the sleeping brown beard against her breast.” OK, that’s as much as I can recall, except the end; it’s a carpe diem poem. “Party Hardy smells also/ Beached fish and dried seaweed and suspected that the destiny was universal.” I love that poem, actually.

Here’s the only other one I’ve ever written; it’s about Kate in utero. I recently remembered it and showed it to her, and she was pleased:

Ultra Sound

Again, I hold my wife’s hand as

She lies on the paper-covered table.

She miscarried before at twelve weeks.

Neither of us speaks. Neither of us believes

In this baby. The doctor leaning over

The table rubs her stomach with a stubby

Gadget as though he were a masseur

And soothing her. He is childless himself.

To ease the nervous air he chatters on

About a town in which we three once lived.

Over his talk we strain but hear only

The gadget's whirring. I panic, urging more,

But afraid: our baby has died again.

Then all at once, as if by my willing it,

We hear the staccato tapping of the heart,

Quickening, as if anxious to join us.

Dr. Robert W. Watson