Annotations for Personal Life: Death

I mean, heritage, yeah, and it, and it's centered on, and it, and it, the first story is about an actual inheritance, but I think everything is my, from them is my inheritance, and it's how I, how I know the world, or knew the world early on, anyway.

And they're all dead now?

They're all dead, yeah, they're all dead. My cousins are alive, but, uh, my last aunt died about three or four years ago.

How did your father let himself get fooled by the, con-man. Was that a characteristic trait, or…?

Well, I think, I'm surprised, I was very surprised, at old age and infirmity, um, had some effect. The guy was, the guy knew what he was doing, and he knew how to get to my father, and the, and the, the sadness for me was, not only that he was giving everything to this guy, but that I didn't know how to get to my father. This guy knew how to do it. He knew how to flatter him, he knew how to play on his, on my father's greed, and, and, and miserliness. Um, he knew how, and also, also, the fact of the matter is, that if I'd had children, it would have been different. I think, if I'd had children, I, or my children, could have gotten to my father, and it wouldn't have happened. I think the fact that I denied him of grandchildren.

Everybody in your family is dead? I mean, of your, of your parents' generation. Your aunts and uncles?

They're all dead. Yeah. Some cousins are, some cousins still alive. But yeah, that's about it.

[Laughs] "Daddy li- I know that Daddy likes it, because he said something to somebody that you'd written a book, but..." No. He would never have said anything. And he wouldn't have been happy with his last, with his last, with the first story. He would not have been happy. But you know, I don't know. Who knows? I don't know. They're dead. I mean, I can do what I like with them.

They were live, you said.

Yeah. They were alive. And now they're dead. And now I can do what I like with them.

Yeah. But now they're alive in your book again.

Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. I meant to make them live.

Aunt Lily lives.

Aunt Lily lives. Aunt Sally lives, you've forgotten my Aunt Sally.

Aunt Sally lives.

You've written, so I gather, often about mortality and I wonder if I can ask you a somewhat personal question. How much does the fact of your father's death, how much of that makes you a poet or made you a poet?