The following three poems are in memory of a friend and revered teacher, Professor Emeritus Gene Frumkin of the University of New Mexico. Born in New York in January 1928, Gene moved to Los Angeles at age 10. After graduation from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1951, he began writing poetry. In 1966 he came to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he taught English and creative writing for many years. He authored several books and chapbooks of poetry and was one of the founding editors of UNM’s Blue Mesa Review. He died in Albuquerque in February 2007. Gene was an inspiring mentor, gentle in his critiques and generous with encouragement and praise. We miss him very much.

Jeanne Shannon
March 1, 2007

By Julie Dunlop

When They Fall
            for Gene Frumkin
                        (italicized lines from his poem
                        “Let the Lines Stand”)

Everywhere, today, something missing.

The wind blowing. Shelves upon shelves of books

that will never again hold, be held,

the embrace of eyes and words, hands and covers,

fingers and pages, minds and minds not bound by death.

Our words are the clasp that holds us/ together

The present tense flickers and is gone.
Was eclipses Is. A million wishes sprout in the soil of Can’t.

Can’t now. Could have then. Could Have, a vine wrapping

every new breath. Patience. Let the lines stand

Staring down grief, like Jack Gilbert. The clatter

of dishes again today at the diner, dining alone.

The waitress watching for her regulars,

remembering cream or sugar, wheat or white.

It will be hard to erase each other

What life lives on? Empty planters rattle in the wind.

Vacant house aching. The messages unanswered, unreceived.

Unless the page is not paper or screen, and words are more

than written or winged, thicker than easy passage from now to then

EPIPHANY
for Gene Frumkin, 1928-2007
By Maryhelen Snyder

Your house was roof and walls for words
in which for words’ sake we met
amid your books stacked like half-columns
of a Parthenon now sacked or in-the-making,
either way a mortal temple to our common god.

Your bathroom was a metaphor for matter.
Walls, soap dish, toothbrush, toilet seat, all
scratched, marred, stained so that what
remained was art and relevance. I imagine
at night in gratitude for text or terrified

of chaos not constrained, wraith-like
you slipped between the thickening hedges
of books grown wild around your narrow bed,
and lay down, almost bodiless, along your
leaning pad and broken springs, and slept.

Beware, you warned us, of epiphany, of
closure, and of such excess as “again,
again.” Yet I recall curving my way
through your zig-zag poems as through
a thicketed dream overgrown with color,

sex and a sense of the hunt gone nowhere
known, until at every ending
you lifted me out into that sudden clearing
where ground and heaven meet,
again, again.

So Long, Gene
By Carl Mayfield

There’s enough silence now
to hear what you said.
I keep snippets of your language
in my pockets because otherwise
the coins get lonely.
And there is no translation
for the way the poker chips feel
when the news reaches them.

We have one life to share
which is mysterious to others,
even more so to ourselves.
Yet you were always
where I found you,
listening and speaking
as though it mattered.
It does matter, and I’m still listening.

In Memory of Mary Rising Higgins

Mary Rising Higgins, innovative poet, friend and colleague of many years, died in Albuquerque on August 26, 2007. Her poetry was startling and radiant, and it had gained well-deserved recognition in recent years. She will be greatly missed.

I am pleased to offer Sheila E. Murphy’s poem “Privilege” in her honor.

Jeanne Shannon
September 2007

By Sheila E. Murphy
In Loving Memory of Mary Rising Higgins
September, 2007

Privilege

Your body lifts past speech,
feeding echoes to a winter gray,
the moment of life’s rising.

A flower is that.
A child.
The poem.

Devotion to the work
that is the life,
is the reward
upon composed terrain
where we will walk again.

Consonants enfolding leisure vowels, sustained and then let go

By Cassandra Sitterly

Bardo) Mary Rising

reedwater sunset cache
reel across refuge
through the mesh

the color hour
spoken
a blue murmur forms

the way the hinge opens
how she moved in the hours

By Cassandra Sitterly

Bardo 2) Mary Rising

On the outskirts of a dream
she walks through her garden
along the words bent by sun.
Asks
Yes?

(top)

In Memory of Sandra Starr

In Memory of my beloved friend Sandra Starr, who entered the Earth Plane on June 24, 1943 and left it on March 24, 2008. This poem commemorates the times we spent together in the beautiful New Mexico town of Jemez Springs.

Jeanne Shannon
June 2008

JEMEZ SPRINGS, NEW MEXICO

By Jeanne Shannon

morning

                                    tall elms sift down
                                    the paper pennies of old bloom
                                    the paper coin of their seed

noon

                                                 in high
                                                green branches
                                                of the cottonwoods

angels touch down
dissolve

move on

sunset

light from the river
dazzles the flecked air

and stars crack open
in the poplar trees

night

                                                 shadowy water
                                                water
                                                watersound

                                                 all
                                                night long
                                                the lulling
                                                river