Liam Rector

Louise sent me an email informing me that Liam Rector committed suicide yesterday in his Greenwich Village apartment.


Here’s a poem of his from the anthology Night Out: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants and Bars


The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends


We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends—the ones
Your mother hadn’t called—and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we’d just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we’d have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.