Liam Rector 1949-2007

I got one of those group Bennington emails late last night with the news that Liam Rector had killed himself. I searched for news that said otherwise, that somehow it wasn't true. It's hard to imagine the Bennington Writing Seminars without Liam's lecture on the Vortex or his joy in showing his favorite "Glengarry Glen Ross" clip or his looming, stage left presence above the lecturing students and guests.

While searching for the good news I never found, I pulled up a couple of his poems. Eerily, these are the first two I read:

From The Cortland Review

So We'll Go No More

So it's fare thee well, my own true love;
I'm leaving you behind. And not
For the early, for the young reasons, but

For these late, last, ill reasons. I'm almost
Kaput! Yea, you'll get no more of me....
Cancer, heart attack, bypass�all

In the same year? My chances
Are one out of two! And I'm fucking well
Ready, ready to go. To go!�how often

I've operated that way. That way
Almost the entire caper, the way
For people, places, things:

Abandon, abandon, nay abandon before
Being abandoned. But we've, we've
Stayed. You the third wife for me, I

The second such boy for you, and I love
Looking directly into you, as we look
Directly into this last get-go. We all

Have the talent for leaving, like it
Or no. And oh, how rich it is, how fine
To finally inherit!: the final thing

I was looking for, as it turns out,
The great power of leaving
All the breathtakingly brief all along.



From Pif Magazine

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends


We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends - the ones
Your mother hadn't called - and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we'd just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we'd have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.