Interview with Eugene Platt by Sue Walker
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Eugene Platt
A Charleston, SC native, Eugene Platt has given over 100 public readings of his work across the nation. After graduating from St. Andrew’s Parish High School, Eugene served three years in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and chaplain’s assistant. He earned a B.A. at the University of South Carolina and did graduate study at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He is an elected member of the James Island Public Service District Commission, having served since 1993. Some of his poems have been choreographed and in 2002 he was appointed the first Poet Laureate of the Town of James Island.
Sue Walker (SW): Today, Eugene, as I think of interview questions to send you, It is Veteran’s Day, 2019. I see that you served 3 years in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and chaplain’s assistant. It seems appropriate to begin our interview here. In your three years in the army, what stands out for you that occurred during those three years.
Eugene Platt (EP): Thanks, Sue, for beginning with that question. In some segments of American society military service has become a stigma; nevertheless, I am proud to have served. My honorable discharge and silver wings (paratrooper badge) are among my most treasured possessions.
I enlisted in the Army right after high school. By the end of the first week of basic training, I had resolved to go to college after discharge. That scenario worked well. After three years of military service, I was self-disciplined and appreciated the opportunities of higher education much more than I might have otherwise.
SW: Speaking of military, your poem "Dresden's Frauenkirche Weeps for Notre-Dame de Paris" is getting a lot of well-deserved exposure. I like it very much. What inspired this poem?
https://intothevoidmagazine.com/article/dresdens-frauenkirche-weeps-for-notre-dame-de-paris/
https://picciolettabarca.com/issues/issue-13/dresdens-frauenkirche-weeps-for-notre-dame-de-paris/
EP: It was incited by the coincidence last spring of my re-reading Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five, in which the 1945 firebombing of Dresden figures prominently, and the fire that damaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Having been born in 1939, I was weaned on World War II. Its history has always intrigued me, moved me, saddened me.
As a boy, I was gung ho about a military career; as a young paratrooper, I hoped to be called into actual combat. I have long since evolved, however, to be deeply grateful for never having to fire my rifle at another human being. Politically, I identify with the Green Party, a core value of which is nonviolence. My transition is reflected in the opening lines of the poem "War Games":
Beard and passivity belie my past:
In the Cold War
of the almost forgotten Fifties,
I was a soldier for NATO,
one of many in West Germany
always alert to the threat
of Soviet aggression.
SW: I see that you are a native of Charleston, SC. Once, when I visited Charleston, I interviewed Carson McCullers’ friend, John Zeigler. I wonder if you knew him and Edwin Peacock — and if you visited their bookstore.
EP: I knew John as a fellow member of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Besides being the oldest member, he also had the longest tenure, followed by equally esteemed Dr. Oliver Bowman, then me. Their store, The Book Basement, was a gem. Sad that it is gone, but the void is being filled by Buxton Books, which is quite supportive of the Charleston literary community.
SW: And speaking of Charleston, it seems that you defy Thomas Wolfe’s words, “You can’t go home again.” I also think of Robert Browning’s “Home Thoughts From Abroad.” What thoughts do you have on the importance of Home, especially in your work.
EP: As noted in the foreword of my coming-of-age novel Saint Andrew's Parish:
"I count it a blessing of the first magnitude: Being born in Charleston, South Carolina, and growing up in that part of it known as Saint Andrew's Parish. 'The Parish,' as many referred to it, was an idyllic place for a boy to come of age in the 1940s and 1950s. A happy childhood there continues to inform much of my work."
After graduating from the University of South Carolina in 1964, I returned to Charleston presumably forever. But a couple of years later, I succumbed to wanderlust and lived away for the next twenty in such disparate places as Washington, D.C., Dublin, Ireland, rural western Pennsylvania, and New Orleans before ending my odyssey and coming home. The euphoria of coming home is summed up in the last stanza of the poem "Sign Language":
For me this will always be
a religious experience.
Ole naysayer Thomas Wolfe was wrong.
Indeed, you can go home again."
SW: In the past year, what books did you enjoy reading most?
EP: There have been at least a half-dozen I enjoyed very much, but two stand out. To be sure, the novel If Cats Disappeared From The World by Japanese author Genki Kawamura, which I found at a little bookstore in Ireland last summer and began reading on the flight home, had the most emotional impact. And the nonfiction work Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, which relates to the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland and which I reviewed for Charleston’s daily, the Post and Courier, was quintessentially hard to put down.
SW: What books are you reading now?
EP: Tarry Flynn, a 1965 novel by Patrick Kavanagh; Nobody Move, a new novel by Philip Elliott; the poetry collections A Woman Without a Country by Eavan Boland, An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, and Let Us Imagine Her Name by Sue Brannan Walker.
SW: What authors inspired / inspire you as a writer.
EP: With regard to poetry, I have been inspired particularly by James Dickey and Patrick Kavanagh. For readers who might think my work too confessional, I would cite a passage from Kavanagh's Self Portrait: "For years I have tried to find a technique through which a man might reveal himself without embarrassment . . . . I have found that only in verse can one confess with dignity. We have all done mean and ugly things and nearly always these sins should be confessed because of the damage they have done us." As a young poet, I was active on the reading circuit and recall with a smile how posters at a college in Pennsylvania aptly announced my gig: "Private Thoughts for Public Ears."
Others who have inspired me in one way or another include Tennyson, Yeats, Robert Frost, Nikos Kazantzakis, Thomas Wolfe, and Kurt Vonnegut, as well as whoever wrote/translated the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. If the Psalms (King James Version) were being published for the first time today, I feel the author(s) would merit being nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
As for Yeats, being familiar with his lyrical "A Cradle Song" may have factored into my writing what is probably my best-known poem, "New Priorities" when my daughter Troye was born. www.plattwrites.com/poetry/new-priorities/ And reading Yeats’ own best-known poem, "Easter 1916," always stirs my Irish sensibilities.
More for his often hauntingly memorable song lyrics than his poems, I am tempted to include Leonard Cohen in the list---wishing I had written "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye." And, particularly for his prolificacy, I admire another Alabaman you may know, Charles Ghigna. I had the pleasure of mentoring Charles while working as "master poet" in the Alabama poets-in-the-schools program in 1974.
SW: Now let’s say that we might be conducting this interview anywhere in the world — maybe Dublin, Maybe New Orleans — where might we be?
EP: At age 80, I have evolved into a real homebody. I cannot think of a better place for this interview than the living room or front porch of my modest but charming little house here in Charleston. My lovely Montreal-born wife Judith might be in the kitchen making bites and drinks for us. (Irish for me. And what for you, Sue?) Our old corgi Henry and ever-curious cat Keats would be nearby.
Keats, by the way, like his literary namesake, is romantic, adventurous, and beautiful. His engaging, unpredictable demeanor may be a feline manifestation of negative capability. Here are a few lines from "A Clump of Cat" (a poem-in-progress):
I have learned to sleep
with a clump of cat at my feet,
a lunette lump of feline love,
. . .
he has become the beast-in-residence
of my octogenarian heart.
SW: Several of your poems suggest someone you loved deeply died of breast cancer. Would you be comfortable saying something about that?
EP: A serendipity of coming home to Charleston after my twenty-year odyssey, was meeting, then marrying, a beautiful woman named Mary. Our marriage was idyllic, and it is likely we would still be married if breast cancer had not raised its ugly head. Mary died in 2003 at age 51. The experience led to poems such as "My Solemn Vow," "Simple Words," and "A Widower's Fifth September." But a thousand Pulitzer Prize poems would not compensate for such a loss. For ten years I was lonely and too miserable to write much of anything. At last the void was filled when I found Judith in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, and "imported" her to Charleston. Now, with our surrogate sons Henry and Keats, we are a happy family of four! Almost every day I do some writing---often with Keats walking on the computer keyboard.
SW: In writing poetry, to what parts of the process do you pay particular attention?
EP: As much as anything, I always try to honor the integrity of the line, something which seems no longer to matter to most contemporary poets. In reading an otherwise engaging poem, for example, it is jolting to come to a period arbitrarily placed in the middle of a line. In the 1970s while working at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, I arranged for Diane Wakoski to come for a reading. In a seminar, she was asked to define the essential difference between prose and poetry. Without hesitation, Wakoski put it aptly and memorably: “Prose is written in sentences, poetry is written in lines.”
Also, I strive to make my poems accessible to a general readership. Gratuitous obscurity too often masquerades as deep imagery and is something I try to avoid.
SW: It seems that in the current milieu of poetry, older writers get less attention — aside from Mary Oliver, though Donald Hall who died at 89, published A carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety and Molly Keane, whose pseudonym was M.J. Farrell, published her novel, Good Behavior at age 80. How do you view ageism in the publishing world today.
EP: Unfortunately, ageism is alive and well in today's publishing world. At the risk of never being published by those editors who favor young writers, I confront it head-on by disclosing my advanced age.
SW: To conclude the interview, tell me if you anticipate another book.
EP: Indeed, Sue, I would like to publish another collection of poems before it is too late. To that end, a title, Nuda Veritas, and cover design are ready. The cover would feature Klimt's iconic painting with the same title. Nuda Veritas is Latin, of course, for “Naked Truth,” a term I would like to think describes my poetry.
Sporadically, I also continue to work on two plays. One, "Believing is Seeing," is based on a poignant passage in the Gospel of John (20:19-31). The other, tentatively titled Perennial, is an adaptation for the stage of my novel Saint Andrew's Parish.
New Priorities
My preoccupation
is no longer empires;
I tiptoe in darkness to witness
your blanket’s rise and fall.
Then,
bending over the slats of your crib
that remain silent sentries
through the night,
I become reacquainted with a God
I knew in my youth
and say a wordless prayer
of hope for your future,
which is the future of all the world,
while listening
for the sweetest sound I have ever heard:
your breathing.
Eugene Platt
Slaughter of the Innocents
Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and sent forth and slew all the children in Bethlehem . . . Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah, the prophet, saying “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”
Matthew 2:16-18 (KJV)
To say such a slaughter was bad is badly understated;
indeed, it was a monarchial monstrosity,
a misdeed of biblical proportions.
And two millennia later, how unlikely it would seem,
as if in delirium or drug-induced dream,
for Herod to appear anew in Newtown, Connecticut,
a place so far removed, though no less bucolic
than Bethlehem before his Slaughter of the Innocents.
From the complacency of Christmas,
a seasonal naivety we used to enjoy with impunity,
we are awakened by Rachel weeping again,
wailing like hell—
for Ana, Allison, and Avielle.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Before the curse of Herod overwhelms us,
tell us, O Lord, pray tell us
if truly this is “thy will,”
that we must give you back
little Benjamin, Jessica, and Jack.
As we near another nativity of your own son,
tell us what can be done with closets
full of new clothes, trinkets, and Tinker Toys
Rachel has bought with thought and caring
for each of her precious little girls
and almost-baby boys?
What will she do with all those gifts
so lovingly selected,
the boots and books, the bikes and games,
for Catherine, Caroline, and James?
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
But cut her some slack, merciful God,
if Rachel is slow to forgive
the Herod who broke her heart,
the murderer of Madeline, Chase, and Charlotte.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil —
The evil of Herod’s legacy is alive
and lurks in our communal psyche,
tempting us to accept, if not condone,
the Slaughter of Innocents other than our own
in places as far-flung as Afghanistan and Hiroshima,
even as we mourn and do not understand
the killing, so obscurely obscene,
of Olivia, Jesse, and Josephine.
For thine is the kingdom —
Let it be a gun-free place of peace,
one where there can never be a Slaughter of Innocents,
a celestial sanctuary where Rachel need never weep again,
a scene of fun in never-ending sunshine, safe and sylvan,
for David and Dylan.
and the power, and the glory,
And now with hope that trumps despair,
we commend to Your care for the rest of eternity
what was Rachel’s fleeting glory
in Grace, and Noah, and Emile —
for ever and ever. Amen.
Eugene Platt
A Long Way from New Orleans
Stirring this wintry morning
from sleep too solitary to comfort,
I awoke to a world so newly white
outside my window, it seemed right
to linger in bed in reverie of you,
(white being your favorite absence of color)
reliving our loving in another season
in a crescent-shaped city of romance
far south of here, far south
where snow is rare and the newness
of our nearness was sufficient to warm us
long after we had to say goodbye.
I have promised to return someday
to take a lonelier walk along that levee,
low over the storied river,
where we were so high on each other.
I will go some night when the moon,
which is your mother, is bright enough
to shed some light on the mystery
that is the Mississippi in each of us.
And, if I feel like talking while I’m walking,
I will find a compassionate pelican
to tell how beautiful you were,
traipsing barefoot down Bourbon Street
the night we opened oysters for hours
and took in The Ginger Man,
forgetting all our cares
in The City Which Care Forgot.
But tonight to find you,
I will take sight through my telescope
set up outside on the settled snow and,
peering through light years of cold winter air,
forgetting your sign was ever Cancer,
seek your face a long way from New Orleans,
seek it among the prettier Pleiades
forever
Eugene Platt
A Widower’s Fifth September
In this scenic part of my native South
near mouths of the region’s deepest rivers,
although not every tree is evergreen,
deciduous are few and far between.
The Lowcountry woods are dry due to drought,
the leaves colorless, as drab as my mood.
Still, I come for solace, find food for thought.
Unaligned pines respect my privacy,
expressing silently their sympathy.
In this, the fifth September without you
beside me to see these few signs of fall,
I would give all I own and promise more
to the charity of your choice to hold
your hand in mine again and hear your voice.
Frolicking as before, we would wander
in love and sacred lust, but never lost,
going ever deeper into quiet,
greenish shadows miles beyond a true sign
of the beauty of being together:
You Are Entering
Francis Marion National Forest.
Sixteen hundred days have come between us.
Surely, soon I will find final closure.
This perennial renewal of grief
will, I pray, be reasonable and brief.
Seasons shall continue to come and go.
So, I paraphrase Ecclesiastes:
For everything there is a season,
and a time for every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain;
A time to grieve, and a time when a widower
must let go and say, “Goodbye, Grief.”
Eugene Platt