Remembering Brett Foster
Dear Brett,
I spent some time this morning with poems you’d sent long ago. I don’t know how I managed to put off reading them and replying until now. (Maybe a wishful thought: Brett will of course be there when I find something to say, so the longer I wait, the better.) What can I say? It’s sheer pleasure to witness your mind at work, whether in these lines or at our last get-together, while you browsed the lines of titles on the one-dollar shelf at Half Price Books with a slot player’s eagerness, ready to delight in any cool tidbit or bizarre topic. And then in line at a Wheaton ice-cream parlor, you were hilarious as ever, quipping about the absurd flavor names and about your own absurd determination to use a clipped coupon you remembered to bring despite your chemo-addled brain. And then there were your lines of questioning—always attentive and encouraging—about my time at BU (in your footsteps, of course) and your line of sight forward, with wise advice, imagining a good future on my behalf.
The memorial notes I’ve seen so far have a few common threads. One, for sure, is the humanity of your poems—the keen noticing, the brave gaze inward and outward, the all-encompassing curiosity, the wit, the music, the wisdom, and the grace. We cherish your art, and it helps us to live. Your late poems of illness, in particular, are a gift: crying out honestly, showing us how to die in a way that brings life.
Another thread is your incredible love for your family: they meant the world to you. We see this and admire it and it blesses us all. When you talked with me about Gus and Avery and Anise, as well as your mother and extended family, I saw tender concern and care, and I felt they were lucky to have you.
A third thread is your profoundly warm, generous spirit. You gave to so many people—students, colleagues, friends, acquaintances—beyond what was easy or comfortable to give. This was a clear expression to us of your kind heart and your sincere faith.
Looking back, I realize that the largeness of what you gave and how freely you gave it often escaped my notice, simply because you were so insistent that what you did was no big deal. You were among the busiest people I knew, and yet you always made time for me: to read together at the library or do grading together at McDonald’s, to send opportunities my way or to get a drink together when I was in town. And for several years, you were the only person who regularly read and commented on my poems, even when you were no longer my teacher. You always managed, inventively, to find something to praise. Sometimes you may have cared about my poems even more than I did. You believed in me before I believed in myself, and that created a way. If not for you, I would almost certainly not be where I am today, and I would have most likely given up on poetry.
I also realize now that almost all of my current ambitions for my work and career have you as their inspiration and first model. I think this has something to do with your enthusiasm for poetry, but also with your enthusiasm for me—or maybe: for others, of whom I happen to be one. Even though I struggled to keep up with you in conversation, you didn’t seem to mind; you still treated me as a peer and respected my ideas. I wish you could have lived to see more of the fruit that will come from your efforts on my behalf, and to enjoy the fulfillment of things that were on their way in your own work. I’m glad I got to talk to you about teaching my own first class of undergrads. I’m looking forward to understanding you better, and in that way being closer to you, as I try, modestly and in my own way, to fill your shoes. I only hope that someday I can do for a student what you’ve done for me.
Last night, nearing the end of my fellowship in Paris, I went to a bar, sat with my drink across from an empty chair, and imagined you were there: talkative, hilarious, inquisitive, warm; my teacher, my mentor, my friend. And I remembered how each time we met in the last few years, you parted with a caring word and a big hug. Small gifts can be big.
I’m so proud of you, Brett. I add my voice to the choir: Well done.
I love you. I miss you. I hope you are well.
Love,
Dan
P. S. — These lines from one of your pre-illness poems (odd category, huh?), “A Commonplace Twilight,” feel fit right now to honor you and what was in you:
[…]
last light pulses with its waning, then
begins to sputter, or not so much that
as dignified dwindling, not flying off
but offering itself through branches
toward the earth, bearing in its dying
everything not given up on, otherwise
called everything. There’s nothing at all
it has ever once chosen not to love.
By Daniel Leonard, Poetry MFA Class of 2015