Richard Eberhart's Reading

Richard Eberhart best defined his approach as a poet when he said in his poem The Groundhog:

. . . Then stood I silent in the day Watching the object as before, And kept my reverence for knowledge Trying for control . . .

Reading for the Advocate last Thursday afternoon, Mr. Eberhart reinforced the image of himself as the modest practitioner of the craft of poetry. This stance, associated as it was with the Advocate, was a welcome one. Too often the Advocate seems to stand for a romantic idea of literature, a kind of filigree on a Golden Bowl. Mr. Eberhart's poetry, by way of contrast, arises from a feeling and attention for ordinary experience. His toying with insects in a country shack gives him the sensation of being a god and conjures up Michelangelo's gesture of the Lord giving the spark of life to Adam. Perhaps the result is not the greatest poetry ever written, but it is a genuine poetic attempt. Mr. Robert Lowell rightly introduced Eberhart as a man who by instinct sees poetically.

Eberhart's poetry seems to one with a non-scholarly poetic interest, closest to the poetry of Robert Frost. Both men celebrate New England nature with a similar metaphysical turn. Both men are careful and controlled craftsmen. I think Frost weaves more profundity out of the commonplace; essentially, he is probably closer to nature.

Robert Lowell, in introducing Eberhart, produced some recollections of days both spent at St. Mark's preparatory school, Eberhart as teacher and Lowell as student. The younger poet recalled Eberhart's dedication to his craft and the times they spent together reading the great words of the poets. "If it weren't for those experiences, I might have never written poetry myself," Lowell said. What I am sure he meant sums up Mr. Eberhart's importance. He exemplifies the poet as a man trying to order experience, trying to celebrate it in a modest way.