TO MEET A POET

The ceiling in our living room was high, so high that only a spider would know its
secrets. I stood on the balcony and looked down on the people crammed below. It was
unusual to build a house like this in the America of the sixties and in the middle of yet
another warin Vietnam. But high ceilings were spacious, creating the appearance of
lots of room.
So when is America not in a war? I thought. When we lived in Denmark, there was an
uprising in Cuba. Then it became Vietnam. Where and when would the next trouble
break out?
Here I stood in a house wed built ourselves with high ceilings, so high that the
English Department at Olivet College, of which Jim, my husband, was a member,
decided we should be the ones to hold the parties after the visiting writers had read their
poetry. Our friend Bill, a colleague in the English Department, was happy that we could
entertain the poets.

He was a confirmed bachelor, not ready to prepare for large

gatherings. But when it came to getting the best writers to visit our college, he was tops.
In this way I got introduced to Denise Levertov, Gary Snyder, and May Sarton.
This evening Ms. Levertov was the guest. Many of her admirers from Chicago were
present. When I came downstairs, I had to cram myself into a corner. There was not
even room for a handshake. The writer was in the center of the room surrounded by her
friends. No one from the college could reach her.
The next day I was more lucky; I got to sit across from her at a luncheon arranged by
the English Department at Wynn Schulers, a lovely restaurant in Marshall, a neighboring

town. She smiled and laughed a lot. There was a big space between her front teeth,
which just added to her charm.
Gary Snyder came for breakfast the morning after his reading. He wore a white linen
suit, and wrote something nice in his book of poems, which of course I can no longer
find. We talked, among other things, about saunas, which he loved, and we offered to fire
ours up, a wood-burning stove we had brought back with us from Finland, but he did not
have the time.
Then there was May Sarton, who showed up in a tailored mans suit, white shirt,
butterfly tiethe whole shebang. She arrived on the same day as the catastrophe on
Three Mile Island occurred. Our attention was divided, and I am not sure it suited her.
She scowled at our small son Eric, who has Down Syndrome, when he peeked in at her
through the glass patio door. As a mother, I took offense. I had not scowled at her black
suit, tie and allalthough I would have liked to.
Yes, the cathedral ceiling brought us celebrities, though we werent so impressed at the
time, or perhaps simply didnt care. Our home was built for a family who loved to have
visitors, who loved to have children, young and olda family who loved poetry, but
abhorred war. We moved away from that home when the college president did not care
about the things we held dear. Our friend Bill departed a year later. He traveled to India,
where his ashes were later spread over the river Ganges. But once upon a time there was
a house in Olivet with a cathedral ceiling where spiders made their webs.