17 Years Gone

I wrote the following essay about Lorri Jackson several years ago for a webpage dedicated to her memory and managed by her sister, Leann. The page hasn't been updated in ages, so before it vanishes outright, I'm migrating over to my own site, with minor edits. I've also posted the poem that I wrote at the time in a separate entry.

Tuesday is the 17th anniversary of her death. And it still doesn't seem real--or right.

"Pierced nose, combat boots, heart tattoo over left breast, white fishnets, plaid skirt, paint-stained ripped t-shirt, black hair." That was the laundry list I scribbled in my journal the first time I met Lorri Jackson.

It was 1985. We were both busting ass as students in the Creative Writing department at Columbia College. I also worked part-time as a tutor, helping Columbia students with their grammar, punctuation and spelling problems. Lorri had signed up to be tutored for a semester not because she needed help with her writing--Lord knows she didn't--but because she wanted to be a tutor herself and this would be a way for her to see what it was like. And I was to be her example of fine tutorial skill. Yikes.

We didn't get along at first. She didn't need my help and thought our sessions were a waste of time. I thought her personality came across "like ammonia" (another note from my journal), and her fiction was as dark and uncompromising as anything I'd ever read before. But as the weeks passed, we spent more and more of out time just bullshitting about anything that came to mind: music (she liked Black Flag); our childhoods (I was a life-long Chicagoan, she a self-described "army brat"); and, more than anything else, our writing. We were both poets. We both like Baudelaire. And the more we talked about what we were most passionate about, the more we got along. Still, it was usually Lorri who, 90 minutes or so into the session, who'd tap her watch and saying "C'mon, Ed. We gotta get some work done." So we'd go over her prose, I'd ask questions about why certain characters were doing what they were doing the way they were doing it, and she'd do a quick rewrite that maintained the same ti ghtness of language, but expanded the level of detail. Damn, she was good.

By the end of that semester, we were friends--not tight buds who always hung out together, but more a "happy to see you when I see you" kind of thing. We'd squat in the halls, shoot the shit, compare notes, have a laugh. Lorri became a tutor the next semester, and we wound up in our first Advanced Poetry Workshop together.

During that first Workshop together, Lorri and I both had poems published in a local arts magazine called Black & White. We had to go to the editor's apartment in Palmer Square to pick up our complimentary copies, and I was the native who knew the turf, so we hopped on the El together and made our way there. We got 15 copies apiece--presumably to be distributed to friends, family, strangers on the street, etc. Lorri swiped a few extra copies and shared her take with me once we were safely away.

In class, Lorri could be vicious with her criticism or, more often than not, would kick an impatient leather-clad foot while her eyes seared holes in the carpet yarn. If she respected a poet, though, she could be generous and constructive with her criticism. One time, I had written a poem with extremely dense language and excessively long lines. Lorri suggested making the lines shorter, giving readers a chance to rest their eyes while setting them up for the next surprise. With much shorter lines grouped in small stanzas, the poem was much stronger--Lorri was dead-on.

On another occasion, we got into a spirited discussion about the use of the word "feel" in poetry. I'd written a poem that started with the line "Some nights, I feel the need." Lorri argued that since the poem itself was an expression of feeling, actually using the word "feel" was redundant. I got the point and changed the line to "Some nights, I have the need." That alteration changed the whole tone of the poem--it was no longer just about "feeling" an emotion, but about being possessed by it.

After a few more workshops together, JB (my best friend, then and now), Lorri and I were selected by Paul Hoover to help edit the first issue of Columbia Poetry Review. We'd plunder student folders (including our own), pull work that struck our fancies and get together sporadically to narrow down our selections. We had our last "meeting" in the lobby of the Wabash campus in July of 1987, just after we three had graduated from Columbia. Lorri showed up at that last session with a blood-red eye, which she said didn't hurt--just a burst blood vessel--but it looked like hell. She'd been at a party where her then-boyfriend had punched somebody out just to get some attention. They got attention, all right--they got the piss beat out of them, and Lorri got popped in the eye by a "new-wave Frankenstein." Somehow, we go a laugh out of it.

And that's what I remember more than anything else--the laughs and smiles, even when things weren't particularly funny. I didn't know the Lorri Jackson who lived on the dark side. I knew that Lorri existed--how could you read her work and NOT know?--but I never did meet that woman. The Lorri I knew was sweet and funny and generous. I believed, in the typical arrogance of youth, that Lorri, JB and I had the talent to change the face of American poetry. Lorri, though, had the drive to make herself a presence in the poetry scene, like her or not. She did numerous readings all over the city--and, later, around the country as well--often taking the mike off the stand and prowling the stage, pausing to emphasize words or phrases, not letting the audience have the comforting option of tuning her out. I didn't stay in close contact with her after graduation, but I did see her occasionally at readings, and I followed her rising career with--guess what?--a smile.

I won't go into all that was said after she died or the anger and sadness that took hold of me. As I said, my memories of Lorri J. had a lot more to do with having respect for her as a poet and appreciation for her as a friend than they do with the reasons why she isn't here anymore.

One more memory, then, and I'll be on my way:

The last time I saw Lorri was at the reading for the second issue of Columbia Poetry Review, which neither of us edited, but we both had poems in it, so there we were. We didn't really talk, just said "Hi" and exchanged pleasant greetings. After the reading, though, there was a small reception with a nice buffet, and as I made my way up the hall toward it Lorri motored past me, humming like a cropduster with a belly full of pesticide. "C'mon, Ed," she called back over her shoulder, "I'm gonna beat ya!" And she did beat me there. In fact, she kicked my ass.

She always did. And all these years later, she still does.