NOTE posted September 18, 2009:
If you arrived at this page from a link on the Wikipedia page for Judson Jerome, you might be
looking for more biographical information about Jud than you will find here. He published two
volumes of memoirs--Flight from Innocence and The Youthful Look, both for sale online. His
collection Thirty Years of Poetry: 1949 - 1979 includes brief personal notes as introductions to
the chronological sections of poems. His book Families of Eden documents his interest in, and
his family's participation in, the rural commune movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In Culture
Out of Anarchy he expounded his ideas on radical reform of higher education.
Judson Jerome made significant contributions to American poetry and to the education of many
aspiring poets. The Wikipedia article on Jud is disappointing and needs to be greatly expanded.
If anyone viewing this page has expertise in publishing on Wikipedia and would like to improve
the article, please contact me at hwalker@poetrycritic.com.
Hayes Walker
This is my response to an e-mail from Caleb Murdock in which he asked how well I knew Judson
Jerome. (See my Sites and Sound-offs page for information about Caleb's poetry anthology
Web site, The Poem Tree, which is dedicated to Jud's memory.)
Caleb,
You asked how well I knew Judson Jerome. Here is at least a partial answer.
One of my high school teachers gave me a copy of Writer's Digest and advised me to read the
poetry column. Jud's subject in that issue was Robert Frost. From that column I gained a
deeper appreciation of Frost and an instant admiration for the columnist. I subscribed to Writer's
Digest, and when I learned that Jud had published a volume of his best columns, I ordered a copy.
That was the First Edition of The Poet and the Poem, which I read more than a dozen times.
I think I bought a copy of the Second Edition when it came out, but I'm not sure. I've read the
Third Edition three or four times. (Yes, I can be obsessive. In my teens I read Dylan Thomas's
Collected Poems straight through several times and would often read some of his poems at
random before going to sleep. During that time I would sometimes go to the pasture at my folks'
farm and recite "Fern Hill," "Especially when the October wind," "Poem in October" and others
from memory.)
In one of Jud's Writer's Digest columns in 1982, he asked his readers to nominate the "Greatest
American Poem." I re-read all the major American poems from three or four anthologies I had,
including "Immortal Poems of the English Language" edited by Oscar Williams, and I nominated
Wallace Stevens's "Sunday Morning" as the greatest, with Robert Frost's "A Servant to Servants"
as a secondary choice. When Jud wrote his column based on the nominations, he picked "Sunday
Morning" as the winner. I don't think I swayed his opinion; his comments made it clear that he
already loved the poem.
In my nomination letter I thanked him for helping me arrive at a realistic view of myself as a poet.
I also commented on some of his poems. He wrote back, very warmly, and told me about his plans
for another column with a theme: "How I killed my poetic 'father.'" He asked if I might have some
anecdote to contribute. And, almost inexplicably, he enclosed a draft of his sequence of twelve
sonnets, "Partita in Nothing Flat." I responded with an essay about how Dylan Thomas and his
poetry had cast an inspiring but oppressive spell on me in my teens and early twenties and how I
eventually broke the spell (i.e., "killed my poetic father"). I included a poem of some eighty lines
that I had constructed using words and phrases from Thomas's poems. I sent a few of my own
poems, including "For Arran at Nineteen Months." And I did a brief critique of his sonnets. Jud
responded with a letter containing the passages that I quote on the "Testimonials" page of my
Web site [See below]. Unfortunately, his plan for the article about killing one's poetic father never
materialized.
For a while we exchanged letters every few weeks, and then every few months until the late 1980's.
I often made critical comments on his poems, and he seemed to take them seriously. When I
mentioned, in 1983, that I'd like to make a business of poetry criticism, he offered to advertise my
service. I sent him a few hundred copies of an ad for my service, and he began sending one to every
poet who sent him poetry for his comments. A few years later he devoted about half of one of his
WD columns to a discussion of my service. From 1983 to 1989 his promotion of my critique service
brought me about sixty clients, and my income from critiques made about ten mortgage payments.
By 1989 I was tiring of writing critiques, so I reluctantly asked Jud to discontinue sending out my ads.
Through our correspondence--which would easily fill a 200-page volume--I got to know Jud rather
well as far as what his daily life was like, what his opinions were about politics and society and other
poets. In one letter he told me about a traffic accident he and most of his family were involved in
in the Dominican Republic. (They owned a house on the beach down there for a few years.) He
informed me about his successful cataract surgery. He related some details about the wind-chime
manufacturing business that Marty and their partner Sandy operated for several years. (I sent him
a mock-editorial about wind-chimes, in the manner of Andy Rooney--"Who needs wind-chimes? What
are they good for?" etc.--and he liked it so much he posted it on the wall of their shop.) He described,
in general terms, the "triad" living arrangement he had with Marty and Sandy during those years
(celebrated in "Partita in Nothing Flat.") When he mentioned that his mother and other members of
his family looked down on him severely because of his "perverted" lifestyle, I sent him a verse from
a song by the "Father of Country Music," Jimmie Rodgers: "My papa scolded me, my mama sat and
cried./Lawd, my papa scolded me, my mama she sat and cried./ Said I had too many women for
any little boy my size." He loved it. And there were hundreds of other details of each other's lives
that we exchanged, most of which I have forgotten.
A few times Jud sent me manuscripts-in-progress for my comments. One of them was a photocopy
of the typescript of his novel Nude. I wish I could have kept it, but he needed it back because he was
submitting to multiple publishers and his photocopying budget was limited. He had made only three
photocopies of the typescript.
Our correspondence dwindled to occasional short notes by about 1988. Jud was taking on several
extra projects and was overburdened. He and his family had left their commune in Pennsylvania,
Downhill Farm, were trying to sell it, and returned cash-poor to Ohio. In one of his last fairly lengthy
letters, he expressed a desire to revisit some of the areas of Oklahoma and Texas where he had
lived in his youth. He asked if I might line up some speaking engagements or poetry readings for
him around Dallas so he could pay for the trip. I replied that I had no influence at any places where
he might speak, such as SMU, but that I might look into it. His plans seemed so tentative, however,
that I was reluctant to pursue the matter, and he soon informed me that he would not be able to
make the trip after all.
In the spring of 1991, Jud sent me a brief letter stating that he had been diagnosed with a large-cell
cancer in his lungs. He said his writing was going amazingly well, that the words were really flowing.
I wrote him once after that but did not get a reply. I know now that for a few months he was not
bothering with petty correspondence, because he was working feverishly to complete his sonnet
sequence Homage to Shakespeare. He finished it shortly before he died. His personal assistant
sent me a note stating that Jud passed away on August 5, 1991.
Jud and I never met in person, and we never spoke by telephone. He provided me with his phone
number, but I never called him (and he never called me or asked for my number). I rationalized
not calling him because I might have interrupted his writing or his sexual relations, and also because
Pat and I did not need the extra expense of long-distance phone calls when we were struggling with
bills and raising two daughters. Unless there were an occasion for a phone call--"Hi, Jud, we're coming
to Ohio next week, thought we'd stop by"--why call at all?
In Chapter VII of his book On Being a Poet, Jud devotes about a page to the influence that Dylan
Thomas had on him and the literary legacy that Thomas left. That passage certainly rings true
regarding Thomas's influence on me, and I can aptly apply some of the statements to Jud as well:
"He will eloquently and passionately reach out from the bookshelves through the ages... and here and
there he will move one as he moved me, changing a life with imperishable phrases. He has humbled
and transformed me repeatedly... Were I to meet him on Olympus, I wouldn't know what to say."
Hayes Walker
November 16, 2008
Here are the excerpts that are quoted on the "Testimonials" page:
"I don't know when I've had a greater delight than happening on your friendship. The clarity,
aptness, erudition and wisdom of your letter leave me gaping, but, more importantly, fond of the
man behind it. I can't imagine how our correspondence should not go on the rest of our lives....
I don't want to take off half a day to digest and think as your packet warrants, but I'll take it
along to the Dominican Republic and write you again from there.... One item may have some
urgency. I'll probably be reading proof on "Partita" before I leave, and I found your comments
on the meter unsettling as they were accurate.... I would appreciate more detailed comments,
because I probably need to do some revising, not only to get the u into Sandy's cantaloupes but
to fix dead meter and other matters. And, obviously, your eye is very sharp." [From Jud's
letter to me dated November 27, 1982.]
This page Copyright © 2008 by Hayes Walker/Poetry Criticism Service. All rights reserved.