First, our destinies are influenced by our parents — their genes, their teaching, and their love — in ways that are clear but hard to measure. In addition, most of us, in the course of our lives, meet others who affect us almost as strongly, and in ways that can be clearly charted. Jim Carlson, who died on January 28 at the age of 94, was that person for us.

Because of Jim we’re here in Florida. Because of Jim we spent the bulk of our “teaching career” at Florida Presbyterian/Eckerd College. Because of Jim — a gently subversive radical pacifist — I’m writing these Poet’s Notebooks, and Jeanne’s illustrating them. We even eat the way we do because of Jim: he taught us that dining is such an integral part of our lives, we ought to try to make it an art form. This often included singing after dinner, starting with old union songs like “Joe Hill” and “Solidarity Forever.” At the end of these long evenings, those still standing would link arms, lift a small glass of aquavit, look one another in the eyes, and proclaim the old Swedish toast: “skål.” We miss those days, and we’ll miss Jim.

In 1961, we began teaching at Hamline University. My salary was $5,400, and we moved into an old “faculty house” on Taylor Avenue; only $50 a month! We had the bottom floor; Jim, an associate professor of theater, lived upstairs. For a few years we were gifted with nightly visits — he’d bring bourbon; Jeanne often would cook spaghetti — and our education began.

In the beginning it was a one-way conversation. We’d ask, “What plays do you want to direct this year?” And he’d say he might do something by Bertolt Brecht, Max Frisch, Witold Gombrovicz, Eugène Ionesco or Luigi Pirandello — and we’d say, “Who?” Jim introduced these playwrights long before they were famous and won their Nobel Prizes and other awards.

Most people try to attain their inner kindness through meditation, exercise, yoga and other disciplines. Jim was compassionate by nature. A Quaker, and a rare conscientious objector during World War II, he was often saddened by human behavior, but neither surprised nor angry. He never preached; he just worked — I think of him as an idealistic surrealist, who saw the world for what it is, and loved it anyway. He didn’t tell his students he loved them, but they knew he did. Right now, around the world, from Amsterdam to Alaska, from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, when former students hear that Jim has died, they’ll remember, and smile.

The Director

for James R. Carlson (1917-2012)

I can’t write a cheerful poem for this melancholy Swede

who introduced us to uncertainty and existential

angst the absurd and the deconstructed I can see him still

leaning through our doorway in 1961 with Jim Beam

and foreign names held out as burnt offerings magic seeds

for a parched garden so our heads uplifted like daffodils

in April as he said Beckett Weill Brecht Frisch Pirandello:

We didn’t know we wanted them but Jim recognized our need

He was suspicious of tradition unless it showed

its bones so I confess up front that this is a sonnet built