In Memory of Kurt Brown

Last week, author, poet and good friend Kurt Brown died after a sudden illness. Every night this week at midnight Pacific, I am posting something to honor his memory including one of his poems each day. If you wish to read tonight’s reflection, hit More.

In the fall of 1980, I left Aspen to pursue my creative dreams in California. Kurt stayed behind for awhile before eventually getting a Masters in creative writing from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Somehow he wound up for a time teaching at the Winchendon School in Massachusetts, all the while editing the well regarded Aspen Anthology and working at his craft.

Meanwhile I had landed in Ventura, California and was playing music for a living while penning songs that sounded so much like Jackson Browne, customers would ask me which of his albums the last tune was on.

Through our respective wanderings, Kurt and I stayed in touch. Before the days of the Internet, let alone email, we relied on phone calls, once every month or so.

At that time, we were pilgrims on the road to God knows where. Often I’d ask Kurt for his advice. “Maybe I should apply for a doctoral program.” After all that’s why I had gone to Yale in the first place to become an academic and teacher. I had left to take one year off. Now here I was 5, 6 years later. What the hell was I doing?

But Kurt consistently encouraged me to stay on the path.

“There’s something out there, I know it,” he’d say.

As it turns out, Kurt was right… for both of us.

Here is another of Kurt’s road poems, a fleeting momoent in a Hero’s Journey set in the West:

Road Report

By Kurt Brown

Driving west through sandstone’s
red arenas, a rodeo of slow erosion
cleaves these plains, these ravaged cliffs.
This is cowboy country. Desolate. Dull. Except
on weekends, when cafés bloom like cactus
after drought. My rented Mustang bucks
the wind — I’m strapped up, wide-eyed,
busting speed with both heels, a sure grip
on the wheel. Black clouds maneuver
in the distance, but I don’t care. Mileage
is my obsession. I’m always racing off,
passing through, as though the present
were a dying town I’d rather flee.
What matters is the future, its glittering
Hotel. Clouds loom closer, big as Brahmas
in the heavy air. The radio crackles
like a shattered rib. I’m in the chute.
I check the gas and set my jaw. I’m almost there.

For each of you who are on your own creative path, but unsure of yourself, should you continue or turn away, I encourage you to keep this poem at hand. And remember Kurt’s refrain to me:

“There’s something out there, I know it.”

You may learn more about Kurt by going here.

An obituary in the Aspen Daily News.

You may find some of Kurt’s original poetry as well as numerous books he has edited here.

For Part 1 of my tribute to Kurt, you may go here.

Godspeed, Kurt.

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