Talk:Carl Rakosi

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From the internet archive: Carl Rakosi Reading Recorded at KPFA on May 13, 1971 Carl Rakosi (born November 6, 1903, Berlin) was one of the four so-called Objectivist poets of the thirties along with Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen and Charles Reznikoff. The Minneapolis poet gave up his art in 1941 to become a social worker and psychotherapist under the pseudonym Callman Rawley; he resumed writing in 1964 and his book Amulet was published by New Directions in 1967. Late in 1971 his new book, Ere-Voice, appeared. Carl Rakosi died June 24, 2004, in San Francisco at the age of 100.

His obituary appeared in the S.F. Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/02/MNGH07FRHM1.DTL

Carl Rakosi obituary
THIS MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHT Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer, and the Chronicle E-mail:jguthrie@sfchronicle.com.

CARL RAKOSI 1903-2004 S.F. poet who never seemed old

Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, July 2, 2004

America's oldest living major poet has died at his modest home in San Francisco's Sunset District. He was 100 years old and not ready to go gently into the night.

Carl Rakosi, a child of Jewish immigrants who became a protege of Ezra Pound, still had poems to write, walks to take, wry observations to make, music to absorb.

He still had his beloved partner of 15 years, his two grown children, six grandchildren and four great-grandsons. Files on his desk were filled with paper dotted with words such as "Xanadu of oranges" to be turned into poems.

He was called a "major American poet" by the National Poetry Foundation and had been an inspiration to generations of poets, including the Beats.

Rakosi was a happy, vital man with a quick smile and wit to match, who at age 99 was still hosting dinner parties where talk was animated, ranging from poetry to politics.

He raged against the dying of the light, resisting for as long as he could, until the evening of June 24, halfway to his 101st birthday. He wanted more of the present, another afternoon to listen to Beethoven or Bernstein, thumb through Chekhov or Joyce or sit in the park and marvel at nature.

"Some people fade out of life, but Carl had a huge fight with death," said his partner, Marilyn Kane, a former nun who fell for an "intelligent man, a giant in life." She said Rakosi was healthy until his final days.

Kane stood in the living room of the home they shared. With tears in her wide blue eyes, Kane looked at photos of Rakosi and spoke of how he lived not in the past or future, but in the moment. Even in the triple digits, he never talked of death.

More than a dozen volumes of Rakosi's poetry have been published. The centenarian had enough new works for another book. "I think that was part of his longevity, his ability to be so present," Kane said.

He was consumed by ideas, questions and plans. Three weeks before he died, he sent a batch of new poems to publications including the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.

Scattered on the coffee table were snapshots spanning decades and countries, from Rakosi's place of birth in Berlin to his early childhood in Baja, Hungary, and his arrival in the United States, where he lived with his stepmother and father, a watchmaker. The family lived in Kenosha, Wis.

Rakosi's poems were first published in Poetry magazine in 1931. Unfiltered, laconic and infused with self-effacing humor, the poet became part of a loose-knit group dubbed "Objectivists." The Objectivists were a sequel to Modernism and included William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Charles Reznikoff and George Oppen.

The Objectivists' aim, Rakosi once explained, was to "present objects in their most essential reality and to make of each poem an object." He wrote: "I mean to penetrate the particular / the way an owl waits / for a kangaroo rat."

"Rakosi was much more attached to the everyday appearances and movement of life," said John Felstiner, a professor of English at Stanford who met the poet a decade ago and was struck by his charm and humility. Felstiner was giving a reading from a biography he'd written on Romanian-born poet Paul Celan and was delighted when a man later approached and introduced himself as Carl Rakosi.

Felstiner said his favorite Rakosi poem is called "Israel" and includes the line: "I have stumbled on the ancient voice of honesty and tremble at the voice of my people."

"Rakosi was this voice of honesty," Felstiner said. "With Carl's death, this leaves Stanley Kunitz, who was born in 1905 and lives in New York, as the oldest living, well-known published American poet."

Poetry served as bookends to a full and varied life for Rakosi. After earning a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in psychology, Rakosi earned a second master's degree in social work. He spent three decades as a psychotherapist and social worker, eventually serving as director of the Jewish Family and Children's Service in Minneapolis.

As a psychotherapist and social worker, he went by the name Callman Rawley. He explained in an interview that the name change was reflective of the times. "At the time, there were very few foreign names in the press and they were all factory workers. I thought I'd never get a job at a university with a foreign name."

He had moved to the states in 1910, and never saw his mother or grandparents again. He later learned that his mother and grandmother had died in Auschwitz. Although he was close to his father, he never told him he wrote poetry. He felt that an immigrant who struggled to provide for a family would not understand such an intangible metier. Rakosi became a social worker in 1924 and later a psychologist; after his retirement, he returned to poetry.

His wife of 53 years, Leah, died of breast cancer in 1989. The two had a rare love, Marilyn Kane said. Kane was the Rakosis' neighbor. Not long after Leah Rakosi's death, Carl Rakosi invited her over for a drink. She stayed for dinner. He was 85, she was 53. She considered their age difference but in the end followed her heart. She never felt a need to marry Rakosi; their love sufficed, she said.

"We lived an ordinary life," said Kane. "We were careful about what we ate. Carl exercised every single day. We watched Charlie Rose and old musicals. But there were times when it was not ordinary. I would see his incredible intelligence."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet and co-founder of City Lights book store, considers Rakosi "one of the poets that the Beat Generation poets read and admired for his unadorned presentation of objective reality."

Matt Gonzalez, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, met Rakosi in 1998 when the board honored the poet.

"I was familiar with the work of the poets in that (Objectivists) circle, '' Gonzalez said. "I think Carl's work has a wry sense of humor and was avant- garde to the extent he moved away from more flowery prose in poetry and tried to reduce poetry to its essential elements."

When Gonzalez was running for mayor, Rakosi stopped by his campaign office on Haight Street. It wasn't far from Amoeba Music, where he shopped for CDs. In November, not long after his 100th birthday celebration at San Francisco's Main Library, Rakosi performed a reading at a Gonzalez campaign event late at night at a South of Market studio. A year or so before, when Rakosi was only 99, Gonzalez attended a dinner party at his home.

"He was all smiles, comfortable, conversational and very, very intelligent," Gonzalez said. "There was no sense this guy was in his 90s."

Poet George Evans remembers the day when he encountered Rakosi's poetry. He read a series of poems called "Americana," about "common people written in the language of the people." When the two met in the early 1970s, Rakosi immediately welcomed Evans into his life.

"Famous poets would come to town, and Carl and Leah would invite younger writers to their home to join them," Evans said. "That was an incredible thing for a young writer."

Evans was at Rakosi's 100th birthday celebration. Rakosi had asked poets to read their own works, but Evans couldn't resist reading the master's work.

"Irony was an important part of his work," Evans said. "I read from a series called 'Country Epitaphs,' which had been published in 1999." The lines were short, irreverent and witty.

One went like this: "The widow Fairchild spoke into a headstone: 'At last I know where he is at night.' " Another was from "The widow Benson" and included the words, "Gone but not forgiven." Yet another, which Evans sees as a fitting eulogy for the poet himself, reads: "The great American head stone: He / Was A Good Guy."

The good guy was memorialized at a private family ceremony on Sunday. No public service is planned. Gonzalez said he hopes to have a city street or landmark named after Rakosi.

The immediate family, which consists of Rakosi's daughter Barbara Rawley of London and son Dr. George Rawley of Chico (Butte County), asks that donations be made in Rakosi's name to the Strybing Arboretum Society, Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, San Francisco, CA 94122. Instructions to the Player

By Carl Rakosi

Cellist,

easy on that bow.

Not too much weeping. Remember that the soul

is easily agitated

and has a terror of shapelessness.

It will venture out

but only to a doe's eye. Let the sound out

inner misterioso

but from a distance

like the forest at night.

And do not forget

the pause between.

That is the sweetest

and has the nature of infinity.

Published in 1971.

Incident in Hell

By Carl Rakosi

Our ancestors were happy

when the white man came.

We made him welcome

and took care of him.

When he was hungry

we fed him. We never

did him any harm.

He seemed honest

and we trusted him,

but once he was settled

his words became as flimsy

as fluff from a cotton-wood

and he acted like a coyote

around a hen-house.

There was no limit to

his greed and cunning.

His soul glared the way

an owl glares at

a covey of quail-chicks.

He had no mercy,

yet he said

there is a God.

What is he?

Who sent him here?

With that the old chief

his face lines with dignity

said no more

but the agony in his eyes

was like a caged beast

in the Inferno

as it struck bed-rock:

kill or be killed

signed, Playboy of

the Western Hemisphere

Alas, old chief!

Published in 1997

E-mail Julian Guthrie at jguthrie@sfchronicle.com.