STELLA

I was having breakfast when I got the call from Claudia. She was the caregiver of a retired doctor with vascular dementia named Fred London. Fred’s wife Trudy had attended the Alzheimer’s Association conference I had spoken at the day before in Napa, California. Trudy had told Claudia about the techniques we use in the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project to perform and create poetry with people navigating memory loss, and they wanted to share that with Fred, as he loved poetry. Claudia asked where she could purchase our book, Sparking Memories: The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project Anthology. When I told her how to get the book online, she said she really wanted to get it that day. I asked her where Fred lived, and it turned out the little town was on the way to the airport in San Francisco, and we agreed I would drop off a book on my way and work with Fred using poetry.

When I arrived, I found Fred a little agitated: a door had slammed from the wind as I entered and that set the dog to barking. I introduced myself and said that Trudy and Claudia had told me he loved poetry and that I also loved poetry and I wanted to share a few poems with him. Dr. London was tall and fit with wavy hair. He said, “Any other day would be fine, but today I have my tennis lesson, and I just am too busy.” Claudia replied that they had changed the tennis lesson to another day. Fred, Claudia, and I sat down in their living room where a pile of poetry books was stacked on the coffee table.

I picked up a collection of T.S. Elliot’s poems and began to read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I said to Fred that I wanted to use a “call and response” technique where I would recite lines of poetry and have Fred and his caregiver Claudia repeat the lines after me, that we could perform the poem together in this way. He was hesitant, but when we got to the famous line, “In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo,” he chimed in, and his face brightened. When I skipped to my favorite passage, Fred, Claudia, and I were really rolling, almost chanting:

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .                                              
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

We also performed “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town” by e.e. cummings, “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare, and “Rattlesnake Meat” by Ogden Nash. We began to talk about poetry. Fred asked if I knew the work of two poets Allen Cohen and Constance Walker. I had not heard of them but later learned that Cohen had founded the underground newspaper the San Francisco Oracle and that Walker is well known for her poem “Pray for Peace” which was reprinted in over twenty-five different publications.

Fred went into another room and seemed to be losing interest. I told Claudia that at this point in a poetry session I would start to create a poem with the participants but that Fred appeared to be done for the day. Then Fred walked back into the living room, sat down, and said:

If I don’t write it down it’s shhhhhhh.
Notice the color, this gray-brown
that eats up all the land.
When you reach out for it, it sneaks away.

Outside the window, the rolling California hills, faded with winter, echoed the image. I quickly wrote it down and asked Fred if he would like to create a poem. He said okay, and I said that I would ask him some questions about poetry, ask him to experience poetry through his senses. I told him I would write down what he said. I started by asking Fred what came to mind when I said the word poetry. What follows are his answers in the order he gave them and with light or no editing. I wrote down what are as close to his actual words as I could, trying not to paraphrase but to capture his speech. Fred took each question seriously and scrunched up his face, furrowing his brows with concentration for a few seconds, and then the words would pour out. This took place on a Thursday afternoon at 3:00pm. Later that night I flew home to Brooklyn. On Saturday, Trudy called to say Fred has passed away in his sleep that morning.

— Gary Glazner, 2012

When Gary Glazner, founder of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, shared this story at a poetry workshop I attended, I was deeply moved, and at my request he has graciously agreed to share it on this site. Below is his own recitation of the poem he and Dr. London wrote together.
—LC