Of poetry and passion New book by Rachel Hadas Archived article from Oct 6, 2000 By Carla Capizzi   Rachel Hadas' 12th book, "Merrill, Cavafy, Poems and Dreams," is a collection of her essays, ranging from analyses of Greek poetry to reflections on digging a well. Photo by Nick Romanenko Poet-author Rachel Hadas is a woman of many passions. Language is one: The English professor loves reading and writing poetry, as well as writing about poetry and literature. Relationships — with friends as well as family — are another. Greece and its literature and myths, yet another. And, of course, there is her zeal for teaching. Hadas has shared her insights and love of literature and the classics with students on the Newark campus for nearly 20 years. These diverse passions lie at the heart of Hadas' 12th book, "Merrill, Cavafy, Poems and Dreams," part of the Poets on Poetry series from the University of Michigan Press. The book reaches through two decades of her prose — essays on Greek poets, tributes to deceased writers, observations on literature and reflections on Hadas' own life — while presenting some of her own poetry. For Hadas, best known as a poet and translator, the book presented "a wonderful opportunity to get some of my scattered prose pieces collected." James Merrill and C.P. Cavafy, as well as several of the other poets she writes about — Homer, Konstantine Karyotakis, George Seferis and Yannis Ritsos — are all Greek by birth, lived in Greece or wrote in Greek. Merrill also was a close friend, a relationship that lasted until his death in 1996 and still resonates with Hadas today. Given Hadas' decades-long love affair with Greece and Greek literature, it's no surprise that she decided to "string the prose on the thematic strand of Greece" in the first two sections of her book. Her choice of the poets was a logical one, says Hadas, since these are among the best-known to English-speaking readers. More importantly, "All are interesting in different ways," says Hadas. "Homer is important because everyone reads Homer; he never stops being a classic. The others are less well-known but are being rediscovered and re-explored," she says. Cavafy, for instance, enjoyed a resurgence of interest when his poetry was read at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' funeral a few years ago. "Merrill, Cavafy, Poems and Dreams" also explores the work of several other poets and provides insights and reflections shaped by Hadas' decades of writing, reading, teaching and learning. What Hadas refers to as her "day job" — teaching — inspired one essay, "The Ark of What Has Been." Hadas' struggles to rename a course triggered an introspective look at inclusiveness and "the culture wars" in which "teachers of literature are being asked to wield a syllabus as an instrument, a weapon of social justice." The original title, "Techniques of English Poetry," she deemed "unappetizing," but she rejected "Great Poems of the Western Tradition," "Readings in the Lyric" and a couple of others as "politically incorrect" or "wispy," settling finally for "Poems and Poets." As she went through the potential titles, Hadas found herself champing at the "prevailing sense of constraint. ... In bending to the winds of change, we may not manage to become paragons of social justice and fairness to all; but we can very easily cease to be ourselves." And, she points out, "We may read all of the world's literature, but we still ... write more or less alone, a poem at a time." No matter how inclusive you are, she notes, you simply can't include everyone. While the trend in naming courses might be toward inclusiveness, the same is not true, Hadas notes, in classifying writers and their audiences. "The ways we think about literature necessarily involve ourselves, whether we are writers worrying about the audience or readers brooding about the writer behind the work. But the very notion of the self appears to be undergoing, if not quite effacement, then progressive fragmentation into a cluster of entities." She relates the story of a novelist who was asked, "Do you think of yourself as a lesbian writer?" The author, after thinking about it, listed all of her identities — writer and lesbian, writer and white, writer and woman, writer and alcoholic, among others. Hadas refers to this process as the self splintering into shards. She challenges this tendency to classify people and offers some advice to writers: "Read the words of someone else — not one more refraction of the self but another person." When she participated in such a reading at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, she and the other writers — all the "shattered selves" — found that "speaking someone else's words, we shared in a journey larger than ourselves." Hadas' book is at its most reflective in the last section, appropriately titled "Close to Home." For Hadas, anything that touches her life and inspires introspection is fodder for her writing. Her poems and essays talk about everything from the Worldwide Web to thoughts about her mother, address books, the Internet and the drilling of a well at her New England summer home. Her morning commute to Rutgers becomes a theme of a poem, "Around Lake Erie and Across the Hudson." Her love of books, and her desire to share that passion, are also evident. "As a teacher, I would stand on my head if it encouraged my students to read," she says in "Close to Home." Hadas frequently attributes her passion for language, books and reading to her mother, and she herself has instilled that in her teen-age son, Jonathan. "Our shared love of reading is more important than any legacy of what I've written." Hadas will be on leave from teaching this academic year, recharging her batteries. "I love teaching, and it's really important to me. But like any day job, routine and repetition are a danger," she notes. After visiting friends in England, she will be back in New York as a Director's Fellow of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers. She'll use her fellowship to write more poetry and research poetry anthologies from 1800 to the present as a way to study broad cultural trends. The fellowship comes on the heels of Hadas' latest in a long string of literary honors: the O. B. Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize. The Folger Shakespeare Library gives the award annually to an American poet whose art and teaching are considered extraordinary and whose work is informed by "the spirit of inquiry, imagination, daring and scholarship exemplified by O. B. Hardison in his lifetime." Despite the accolades and awards, Hadas thinks her literary legacy may focus more on her accomplishments as a translator from several languages than as a poet. In an interview reprinted in the last chapter of her book, Hadas expresses pride in her translations: "Forcing myself to render ideas and feelings as skillfully as I can, I forget to worry about my own lack of inspiration. Maybe I'll be remembered (if I am, which is a huge if) in the future as a gifted translator who also had a career as a poet."

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