This past year, I've been so hypnotized by the business pages and all of the rotten news they bear, I've almost fogotten poetry, though I'm sure I'm not alone there. A bad state of affairs. Proof: I did not see the news of poet Don Finkel's passing on Saturday until this morning, while I was doing my quick jog-browse through The Beacon's headlines and saw Robert Duffy's story.
Being a transplant to St. Louis, and a relatively recent one, I never knew Don Finkel, except through other folks' anecdotes, my copy of What Manner of Beast and a track of Finkel reading his poem "The Tenth Mu," from a 30th anniversary River Styx CD. It's pretty much my favorite poetry track ever. All of these things have convinced me that what people say about Don Finkel was true: that he was funny, generous, a brilliant teacher and writer, a bit of an antinomialist, a family man in the best and truest sense. His poems showed the kind of beautiful craftsmanship that you usually only see these days in a piece of Amish furniture (and hardly ever in contemporary poetry), yet they were not afraid to run all over the lawn and yawp when necessary.
Don Finkel's son, Tom, editor of the Riverfront Times, recapped an amazing tribute to his dad earlier this spring, when readers from David Clewell to K. Curtis Lyle read their favorite Don Finkel poems at Duff's. You can find that lovely audio archive here. —Stefene Russell
