Rorty
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Raised by Trotskyites, he had a soft spotfor the writerly reactionaries: Eliot,Larkin, poets steeped in Original Sin,for whom poetry was the scala sanctorumand the best lines ineffable.Not for him, the abolisher of Truth,the materialism of words. He lovednot only what they could do, but what theyaspired to do. One day, settingdown his bourbon after a seminar meantto engage unkempt, querulous supernerds,he told me that Allen Tate had been hisfavorite teacher at the U. of Chicago.Grinning, he told how each classconsisted of Tate reciting a single poem,in his sonorous, waterlogged baritone,then pausing, adding, "Isn't that beautiful?" [End Page 137]
David Rigsbee is the author of six collections of poems, including Cloud Journal (2008) and The Red Tower: New and Selected Poems (2008). He coedited Invited Guest: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Southern Poetry (2001) and is the author of critical works on Carolyn Kizer (1990) and Joseph Brodsky (1999). He is the recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Virginia Commission on the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Academy of American Poets.
