Fay Zwicky

Anchored in a sense of the present’s dependence on the past, her best work has been characterised by exemplary clarity, restraint and tact. Predominantly elegiac in tone, mood shifts have rarely jolted her meditative, unpressured pace. Qualities I once described in a 1985 essay on her work as ‘reclusive grace’, distinctly unmodern in her considerate refusal to invade, ‘wanting the light and sorry for the dark.’

Feathering a white thread
Through phantasmal waters
Your boat leaves me small
In dawn’s first light.

It comes back to me that I married K. because he whistled Bach perfectly – that was, as I remember, the reason I gave myself and others. It’s as good a basis as any for marriage and I was not disappointed.