“Scott, all poems are about death”

It was Father’s Day morning, just last week, when Laure-Anne called me.

“Scott, I am so sorry to tell you this, but our dear, sweet Kurt has died.”

This is going to be a long and personal post. If you care to read about the passing of Kurt Brown, poet, author and one of my best friends, click More.

I met Kurt Brown in Aspen, Colorado in the fall of 1978. After I graduated from Yale with my Masters, I took a year off to follow my creative aspirations. It was music then and through a serendipitous set of events, I was invited to come to Aspen by a friend of my brother. “Lots of musicians there,” he said. “Want to see if you have what it takes, come on out. You can stay with me for awhile.”

And so I drove west to the Rocky Mountains. Once there, I found my way to Jake’s Abbey, ground zero for local musicians, and home of the well-known Hoot Night on Mondays, a chance for amateurs to perform a few songs while rubbing shoulders with more established, professional musicians.

Kurt was a bartender at Jake’s.

I do not remember our very first meeting, but we became friends early on. Within a few weeks, I met Pat Flynn and we started playing music together: Myers & O’Flynn.

Kurt loved our act. He became our ‘manager,’ a non-paying position in which he would produce flyers to post around town promoting our upcoming week’s gigs.

It was an odd thing for Kurt to do. Here was a man who had founded the Aspen Writers Conference in 1976 (you can read about that here), a legacy that continues to this day under the auspices of the Aspen Writers Foundation), was himself a poet, and mused philosophical well and often. To hang out with Pat and me, helping to promote our musical efforts?

That was Kurt. Drawn to creativity, feeding off it, and giving it back.

Thus for two years (1978–1980), Kurt was a regular part of my life, as a key supporter of Myers & O’Flynn, but also a friend. Straight out of divinity school, my frame of reference to interpret the world was a theological one. Kurt’s was poetry, Bob Dylan, and courvoisier.

I called him a “secular humanist.” He called me Deacon Delirio.

We got along famously.

I have tried a half-dozen ways to go on from this point in the post and tell you about Kurt, as well as our friendship, but I keep getting derailed. I know why.

I don’t want to believe it’s true he’s gone.

And so I will do what little I can to keep Kurt here with us for awhile longer and honor his wit, intelligence, and sheer writing talent: Each night at midnight Pacific [U.S.] this week, I will tell you a bit about Kurt, then feature one of his poems. Here is one that seems particularly apropos:

Road Trip

by Kurt Brown

The new road runs along the old road. I can see it
still imprinted on the earth, not twenty feet away
as I drive west past silos and farmsteads, fruit stands and hogs.
Once in Kansas, I stood in a field and watched
the stars on the horizon revolve around my ankles.
People are always moving, even those standing still
because the world keeps changing around them, changing them.
When will the cities meet? When will they spread until
there is a single city — avenue to avenue, coast to coast?
What we call “the country” is an undeveloped area
by the side of the road. There is no “country,” there is no “road.”
It’s one big National Park, no longer the wilderness it was.
But the old world exists under the present world
the way an original painting exists under a newer one.
The animals know: their ancient, invisible trails cross
and re-cross our own like scars that have healed long ago.
Their country is not our country but another place altogether.
Anything of importance there comes out of the sky.
In Amarillo the wind tries to erase everything, even the future.
It swoops down to scrape the desert clean as a scapula.
Here among bones and bleached arroyos the sun leans
through my window at dawn to let me know
I’m not going anywhere. There’s no more anywhere to go.

Several years ago, I was just about to begin writing a screenplay in which one of the characters had terminal cancer. On a whim, I emailed Kurt and asked him to send me a poem about death, something perhaps to give me a point of inspiration and focus for my writing. He replied with this:

“Scott, all poems are about death.”

His words never had more meaning to me than they do now.

Here is a photograph of Kurt with his wonrous wife Laure-Anne Bosselaar, a remarkable poet in her own right.

Godspeed, Kurt. And God be with you, Laure-Anne.

You may learn more about Kurt by going here.

An obituary in the Aspen Daily News.

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