Reed Whittemore, Handyman to the Muse

Later he was sent to boarding school, which led to the poem he's reading now:

Why was a radio sinful? Lord knows. But it was.

So I had one.

Which I kept locked in a strongbox under my bed

And brought forth, turned on, tuned and fondled at night . . .

"I think I was talking about An-dover," he interjects, dislike for the place still palpable after 70 years.

Yale suited him better. There he befriended another would-be word man, James Angleton, with whom he founded a literary magazine. The first issue of Furioso included work by E. E. Cummings, Richard Eberhart, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound -- not bad for a publication run by undergraduates.

World War II shut Furioso down. Angleton abandoned literature for a legendary CIA career. Whittemore, who spent the war as an Army supply and transportation officer, recruited new collaborators and revived the magazine, which survived until 1953.

By that time he was teaching at Carleton. His wife-to-be, Helen, got his attention at a party by stealing his porkpie hat. Four children ensued, with the usual juggling among teaching, family, writing. Occasionally he'd head off to a literary retreat and get to focus on the writing part.

His elder daughter, Cate Whittemore, reads a poem about what happened when such a retreat had run its course:

The artist must leave these woods now.

He must put his books and files back in the car . . .