September 14, 2012

Louis Simpson, (March 27, 1923 to September 14, 2012) a Pulitzer winning poet, said of his career,

“I wanted to tell stories... Writing, ...came as naturally as playing games.” And also he said. “To remember ...a man must make himself innocent again — innocent of newspapers, books and movies. He must remember his actual life, the life of the body. Everything else is journalism.”

His volume, The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems (2003) has these lines in the title poem, a story about moving into a house whose previous owner met an accidental death. He found:..


....
A bell, perhaps for calling
a cat. Every night
one comes around and mourns.

Simpson draws a picture of this owner:

.....
She let the house run down
the garden be overgrown
lost in her arcane studies.