Reed Whittemore, Handyman to the Muse

His reticence makes the emotion he does display more powerful. Take, for example, his report on a trip he took with his younger son, then in his 20s, who was chronically ill and was to die at 37. Whittemore quotes from his son's journal, prints the first poem the young man wrote and restricts his own commentary to a two-word ending paragraph:

"Ah Jack."

As the afternoon wears on, Whittemore's publisher, Merrill Leffler of Dryad Press, reads a poem he particularly loves. It's called "Clamming" and features a father meditating on his life and that of his small son. As many of Leffler's appreciative listeners know, Jack Whittemore is the boy being advised to watch out for rising tides.

"Against the Grain" was a labor of love for its publisher. Leffler helped out by, among other things, unearthing troves of Whittemore's correspondence with other poets and urging its inclusion. He also argued that an autobiographical work by a poet should include lots of poetry, so the memoir functions as a Whittemore anthology as well.

The poet, meanwhile, is creating this day a modest anthology of his own.

"Sometimes it seems that all life is an ailment," Whittemore says, "so that dying is the business of getting well." This is by way of introduction to a poem taking the point of view of a hospital patient.

He reads another poem that begins, "The mind wears many hats" and ends like this:

I know a mind, soul, whose time now leads it

Shoreward to silence.

Not long ago it chattered like half a school,

And bade the desert dance.

He's forgotten which friend he was writing about, he says.

When Whittemore is ready to end his part in the proceedings, he reads the poem with which he chose to end his memoir:

the busy word man is tired

he is lying down

he is lying down with his pad

he is lying down with his pad and writing these words

but lowly

slowly

wanting to slow the flow . . .

He finishes reading and sits down to the applause a noble undertaking and a job of work has earned.