The Passing of Herb Coursen

HERBERT R. COURSEN, JR., March 28, 1932 – December 3, 2011 

 

Harry Osgood, Herb Coursen, and Lew Turco at the New England Poets Conference at Harvard University, 1985.

          Last evening, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, very belatedly I learned of the death of Herbert R. Coursen, Jr., whom I met forty-four years ago here in Maine, at a 1968 Bowdoin College conference on “stylistics.” It was the same year that the first edition of my volume titled The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics was published — Herb would become one of its first and biggest fans.

          Herb died at the age of 79 in bed, in his sleep apparently and enviably, on Saturday, December 3rd, 2011.  I hope that he had received and seen his contributor’s copy of the revised and expanded edition of The Book of Forms, Including Odd and Invented Forms, which included four of his poems, “National Pastime,” in my opinion the greatest poem about baseball ever written; “The King of Kolchis,” written in a form he invented called the “once” (pronounced “on-say”), “St. John of the Cross,” written in the Spanish form called the “lira,” invented by the title poet, and “Winter Dreams,” written in another form Coursen invented, the dagwood.

          On more than one occasion I have written about Herb: I penned the "Introduction" to his book of poems titled Hope Farm (Stratford CT: Cider Mill Press, 1979), and I wrote a lead essay, "The Protean Poetry of Herbert Coursen," published in The Hollins Critic, xxxii:3, June 1995, pp. 1-11.

          Herb was a dear old friend, as was Pamela Mount, his companion of two decades, who died last year. My wife Jean and I miss them deeply. I will post “The Protean Poetry of Herbert Coursen” on my blog titled “Odd and Invented Forms” today.