Liam Rector

Liam Rector Poems

Liam Rector Biography

Liam Rector (November 21, 1949 – August 15, 2007) was an American poet, essayist and educator. He had administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. He was also the director, most recently, of the graduate Writing Seminars at Bennington College. Rector, born in Washington, D.C, was the author of volumes of poetry including The Executive Director of the Fallen World (University of Chicago, 2006), American Prodigal (Story Line, 1994), and The Sorrow of Architecture (Dragon Gate, 1984). He co-edited with Tree Swenson On the Poetry of Frank Bidart: Fastening the Voice to the Page (University of Michigan, 2007), and edited The Day I Was Older: On the Poetry of Donald Hall (Story Line, 1989). Rector founded and directed the graduate writing seminars at Bennington College in Vermont and taught at Columbia University, The New School, and Emerson College. Rector committed suicide by gunshot[2] in his Greenwich Village apartment on August 15, 2007. The Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry is awarded annually by Briery Creek Press to honor the best emerging poets with their first full-length poetry publication.)

The Best Poem Of Liam Rector

This City

This apartment with no furniture,
where no one puts anything up,
where everyone schemes to get out.
This mess, to the right and the left of me,
that equation of garbage wherein matter moves its way,
the magazine sector in glanced-at demise.
This price, and that mind,
and nothing to say but 'violent.'
Nothing but violence in the expensive mind.
Moving from the window towards morning.
These characters at the bottom,
so generous and pathetic.
Those abstract things at the top,
so mean, precise and arresting.
That god-abandoned theatre
with its three-legged dog.
Staying alone to learn the lesson,
the lesson being
DO NOT SPEND NIGHTS ALONE FOR AWHILE.
This program, these organizations,
these gatherings and awards.
This sweat that drags it down.
These pagans with large teeth and good eyes.
The profit sector giving us images,
the nonprofit passing out handbills,
and worried. The mind that grabs after information.
The dance changed every week
so no one masters any one dance.
Carrying around the little guns and knives,
the bars owned by a friend.
The same economy that binds them
together pulls them apart. The little thems,
staring into the canyon.
The all of us. A sense of proportion,
in this dense heat, hearing the tune of
romance behind the psychotic.
The profit sector giving us images.
Elegance, learning, poverty and crime.
Those who smell power must dog these.
The untuning of cement into many moods.
In audacity, in hilarity,
this city plays an unbelievable organ.
How afternoon goes like the movies.

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