OUR FRIEND
by Elizabeth Knies
The poetry community, and Portsmouth as a whole, lost a unique figure with Robert Dunn’s passing on August 31. Robert succeeded Esther Buffler as Portsmouth’s second Poet Laureate in 1997. In that role, he inaugurated the Poetry Hoot, now a standing-room-only monthly event at the Cafe Espresso, and masterminded the placement of poems under large pieces of Plexiglas around the city. One of the pieces, a poem by Jane Kenyon, hangs inside the Hanover Street entrance to the public parking garage.
Robert was not a “public person,” yet his was a familiar face around town. For over three decades he strolled the city’s streets, stopping along the way to speak with anyone who wanted to chat. His last gainful employment was at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, an ideal place for someone of his temperament—full of books, and steeped in Portsmouth history.
For most of his Portsmouth years, Robert inhabited a single room in a residence on Whidden Street. He never felt the need for a TV, phone, car (or food, it seemed). As a concession to those concerned about his well-being and safety, during the past couple of years he made his home in the Feaster Apartments on Court Street, where he had a telephone and a “panic button.” Although these last years were marked by increased physical frailty, as emphysema weakened his lungs and sapped his strength, he remained his humorous, witty, and friendly self, reading, writing poems, and keeping up on politics. Friends who came by to share a cup of tea or a glass of wine were warmly welcomed. When he felt up to it, he went out for a short walk or to local poetry events.
Robert didn’t care much about material things, but he certainly cared about poetry. Numerous fellow writers benefited from his encouragement and insightful criticism. The least pretentious person in the world, he knew Latin, German and French, as well as history and “the classics,” and he spoke with authority on literature. Writing poetry was his true – indeed his only – vocation. In public he didn’t “read” his poems, he “said them,” as if the words were coming to him from somewhere in the cosmos. In early days he used to hand out tiny, hand-sewn booklets containing a few poems. In 1968 Poems from a Meeting Place was published by Greenleaf Books in Canterbury, NH, and in 1975 Evidence of Johnny Appleseed, the fruit of his apple-picking days, appeared. Peter Randall published quo, Musa, tendis? in 1983, and Oyster River Press published I Hear America Singing (2002), and Je ne regrette rien (2007). Robert’s droll observations and flair for capturing colloquial speech brought many a chuckle from audiences, though in essence he was a lyric poet.
Robert appreciated the care he received at Edgewood Centre and from the Hospice workers who aided him in these last months. Everyone who came in touch with him was touched in some way. He was like that – eccentric, unworldly, gifted, and personable. Portsmouth is going to seem empty without Robert Dunn. We loved him well.
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