Baron Wormser was my friend, colleague, mentor and mentee for over 25 years.  We shared much together, enjoyed Maker’s Mark together, exchanged our work, loved to talk late into the night, argued our Red Sox/Yankees rivalry.  His death has surprised and saddened us all but it has made us think about the man and his work.  This is in memory of Baron, to say goodbye, that is until I pick up the next Baron poem or essay or memoir.  As Auden’s great poetic eulogy did on Yeat’s death, I say:

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.

Auden reminds us of the frailty of Yeat’s poetry—of any poetry, of any writing, in fact—when placed squarely against the powerful and dehumanizing forces that surround and want to suffocate us, but which finally, like a crucible, give rise to the poet and their work.  In his poem, Auden writes that “poetry makes nothing happen.” But he also reminds us that it “survives,” that it has a mouth with which to speak.  That with its “unconstraining voice” it can “persuade us to rejoice” despite our pain and grief and suffering, and yes, even our death.

I think that in my dear friend Baron’s poetry—as in his life—he had that “unconstraining voice,” a quiet but irrepressible voice that spoke the truth, a truth sometimes painful, often unglamorous, but desperately hungered for in this desperate world of ours.  A voice that at the same sang with joy, with passion, with delight and humor, a voice that took the world as it was and savored each moment, good or bad, a voice that could be both biting and yet comic, searing and yet tender and gentle—as was the man himself.  Baron’s poetic voice spoke to an elemental yearning in all of us, poet or layman, especially in troubled times.  He was weaned on the troubles of the sixties and he passed during our own troubled times now, never looking away, never shirking the poet’s duty, but always staring clear-eyed and level-headed at the truth, as he saw it. Above all, his voice was, as Auden said of Yeats, a healing voice.  

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Thank you, my friend, for helping to heal our hearts and to teach us how to praise.