Letters from Max. Sarah Ruhl

was immediate because it did not take long for a perceptive teacher to see Max as an equal. I was certainly not the only teacher of his to dissolve the formal boundaries between the teacher and the taught. And this reversal was not at all a lack of reverence for his teachers—quite the opposite. He would emphatically introduce me as his Teacher with a capital T long after he was my student at Yale. The transformation of his teachers into fellow writers was more to do with reciprocity.

      Max’s generosity could not bear to take without giving, could not bear to be read without also reading. Poetry was, to Max, a conversation. He didn’t want to chirp his epic songs into an unsinging receptacle. He wanted them to answer back. He wanted a poem to answer a poem. He wanted his writing to beget more writing.

      He told me that with the time he had left, all he wanted to do was write poetry. He was applying to graduate school in poetry. He asked me for a recommendation. I said yes. I knew it would be very easy for me to write.

      JANUARY 18, 2013

      Dear Sarah,

      Your recommendation letters arrived. I am so deeply grateful to you. I nearly cried when I read the letter. Working with you and coming to admire you as much as I have from reading you, watching you, receiving the warmth in your human heart as well your literary heart, I felt a pretty fucking close to miraculous sense of joy to hear that the connection is mutual. You complimented my ear. Nobody ever compliments my ear. Secretly, I am very proud of my ear. Everything in my life, the fabric of my life itself, is dissolving. You are not. Maybe I am not? That’s what your letter meant to me.

      The cancer is very, very scary right now. It keeps changing the terms of the contract. I wept a lot today in the bathroom. I am now more terrified than ever of going back into chemo-land, feeling like the chemo isn’t even efficacious. I was starting to get really hopeful about my MFA plans, and the prospect of writing poetry full time. Now I’m scared I might not make it to that stage, or I will end up plugged into some experimental protocol after a semi-botched chemo attempt.

      Thank you for your goodness and your kindness.

      Max

      FEBRUARY 16

      Dear Max,

      If it’s poems you want, it’s poems you shall have.

      As promised, here is one poem I wrote. (Unpublished and largely unread but by my husband who I wrote it for.) How was your reading? I am having socks knitted for you by one Ms. Evelyn Love who lives on Pond Street. Let’s make our dinner plan soon.

      xoxo,

      Sarah

      You know what a lee is; I don’t.

      Behind a stone. No wind. Stop boat. A place.

      Behind your back. My body. Stop the air.

      Travel by stopping, full stop, just there.

      As lee is a small word. Sail easy.

      Lee and unlee, light is hot.

      Rest here, a while longer on my

      belly. A lee, a dry derry, a drought.

      August: marsh sounds, marsh looks, a ferry.

      Look for other words—lucid, pellucid—

      call a mind a pond? Call a pond a mind?

      Lucid, penitent mendicants on a pond.

      Words for clarity, words for light and heat,

      words for charity—words for sleep.

      FEBRUARY 17

      Sarah, I know I’m poetry biased, but this made me shimmer inside. I want to write with this kind of glow, and this kind of penetration/purity (and intelligence) one day. I have read it out loud so many times. I am going to use sounds. I am going to read out loud more, and have words fall back into one another and into one another’s arms!

      The first stanza . . . makes me want to play peekaboo. I can’t even. It’s moving—I want to move. I want this miracle in my life. . . . The elisions. The life. Oh God, Sarah, seriously that first stanza I could read a billion times.

      I’m excited for socks, and for dinner.

      Love,

      Max

      FEBRUARY 17

      Oh, Max. Thank you so much. I will keep sending you little poems then. Maybe you will give me the courage to send them out one day. I’m terribly private about them. In some ways, you know, you are my teacher, not the other way around.

      Socks and dinner soon! And how was your poetry reading?

      All good thoughts sent to you,

      Sarah

      FEBRUARY 20

      Dear Sarah,

      The reading went fabulously—full of loved ones. I have connected with some other poets and they say they want me to come to Brooklyn to do a reading. Maybe you could come to one! (Some of the other poems were a little deliberately and finicky opaque . . .)

      The next day I went to Louise [Glück]’s house and we hashed over some editing I did and some new work. It’s basically me shedding portention and allowing the poem to be a humbler thing than I wanted it to be, but still a thing that I can be proud of.

      I’m exhausted from the chemo this week, and have spent lots of time fearing the upcoming scans. So many uncertainties. There’s talk of a stem cell transplant which would involve even more heinous levels of chemotherapeutic dosing than I’ve ever experienced. And then I could relapse within two months. I’m bitter, Sarah, I’m bitter and love the world and it won’t love me back.

      Missing you,

      Max

      FEBRUARY 20

      Dearest Max,

      I’m so glad your reading went well.

      Oh, and on the school of poets who surround you, I say: resist opacity. I think at the heart of opacity is fear. I think ultimately it was a similar experience I had when I was your age that made me wander away from poetry; that is to say, the poetry that was privileged at college was opaque and academic and my transparency was hugely embarrassing.

      I’m going to save your poem for my Amtrak ride to New Haven today. And I’ll send you another poem soon. But for today, a song!

      I hope you don’t have to go through the labor of a stem cell transplant. I want everything good for you. Love, health, poetry.

      Okay, Dora is almost over on the television, I must go attend to the twins.

      xo,

      Sarah

      The song I sent him was from Melancholy Play: a chamber musical. It goes like this, set to music:

      TILLY:

      Do you ever have the feeling, when you wake up in the morning, that you’re in love but you don’t know with what?

      It’s this feeling—

      that you want to love strangers,

      that you want to kiss the man at the post-office,

      or the woman at the dry-cleaners—

      you want to wrap your arms around life, life itself

      but you can’t

      and