Sad News Yesterday - Danan
[UPDATE: Read Danan Schufman's poems here in the latest post.]
I just found out yesterday morning -- "readin' the news/ and it sure looks bad/ they won't give peace a chance/ that was just a dream some of us had...." -- that one of my former students, an undergrad poet, Danan Schufman, died last weekend early saturday morning in a tragic car accident. It's possible it's not the same person -- but not very likely with a name like Danan Schufman, "a 27 year old Boulder man."
I wish my files were organized by now and I could just check the crosslists, see if I still have a copy of one of his poems. I might even still have his manuscript he never picked up -- as I never throw any of my former students' work away. Maybe this is the reason why not. Maybe this is the reason I have yet to create the files. I've only had one other student die, that I know of, Rex Webster, an exceptionally gifted Amer-Asian poet (his mother was Vietnamese and may have died when he was young) -- tragically, a suicide. One small grace was that it was a decade after that I learned of it. I would have been crushed had it happened while he was in my workshops. I know I have saved copies of his poems, as he was so promising. It's one of my greatest fears. It seems so important just to talk to people, que no?
Maybe that's why I blog: to keep the memory of the dead, to make memory with the living.
Today's observation: The first and last memory to remain of the dead is their smile.
I just found out yesterday morning -- "readin' the news/ and it sure looks bad/ they won't give peace a chance/ that was just a dream some of us had...." -- that one of my former students, an undergrad poet, Danan Schufman, died last weekend early saturday morning in a tragic car accident. It's possible it's not the same person -- but not very likely with a name like Danan Schufman, "a 27 year old Boulder man."
I wish my files were organized by now and I could just check the crosslists, see if I still have a copy of one of his poems. I might even still have his manuscript he never picked up -- as I never throw any of my former students' work away. Maybe this is the reason why not. Maybe this is the reason I have yet to create the files. I've only had one other student die, that I know of, Rex Webster, an exceptionally gifted Amer-Asian poet (his mother was Vietnamese and may have died when he was young) -- tragically, a suicide. One small grace was that it was a decade after that I learned of it. I would have been crushed had it happened while he was in my workshops. I know I have saved copies of his poems, as he was so promising. It's one of my greatest fears. It seems so important just to talk to people, que no?
Maybe that's why I blog: to keep the memory of the dead, to make memory with the living.
Today's observation: The first and last memory to remain of the dead is their smile.
posted by Lorna Dee Cervantes at 8:15 AM
1 Comments:
a smile can take you a million miles
ah / death / last smile of all
the last thing the dying teach us
is how to die
take care lorna dee / think of you
often / i've got the pic you sent me next to my comp :) /
just wondering / did you ever get the package i sent you?
~jennx
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