Arthur Hall Smith

It was a Tuesday and Carolyn, who was living in Seattle, was giving a dinner party, and she had been worrying because she had only 6 fish plates. Jan Thompson, who was Carolyn's best friend, was to be there, and Donald Keene may have been too. But Jan bailed out at the last minute. Roethke was there. Roethke had a thing for Jan--as we all did. So Carolyn called me, emphasizing that she wanted me to come, since I had not been asked, smoothing it over (there's no reason I should have been invited). I had met Carolyn through Tobey, who had helped organize a show of six emerging painters, and Carolyn had agreed to write the introduction. Anyway, I was seated next to Roethke, and when I sat down, he kept looking around for Jan who never arrived and there I was. There were a lot of drinks, and he fancied that he was a very good pianist (apparently, and of course Leo Smit, who was there, was). We got drunker and drunker, and then David Wagoner arrived and announced that Wallace Stevens had died. He was coming by for dessert. So we all did bits and pieces of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and then at some point I started singing Purcell's "When I'm Laid in Earth." Roethke was insisting on playing the piano. I began with the recitative and Leo Smit gently sat at the piano which had a bench, not a stool, and gently pushed Roethke out of the way and took over the accompaniment, and then, at Carolyn's instigation, we all went out into the yard to go moon-viewing. That's what I remember: that was like [Agee's] "Knoxville, Summer of 1915."