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The Immortal Poet

A reading series lecture becomes an accidental funeral for poet Jay Hopler.

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Jay Hopler was originally scheduled to read at the September 30 English Reading Series. When he was offered the spot on the ERS calendar, he had been fighting terminal cancer for several years, but he was optimistic he would make the reading nonetheless. Unfortunately, the lauded poet, known for publishing several acclaimed collections and receiving a number of awards, passed away before the event took place.

But Hopler’s passing didn’t stop his work from being shared and enjoyed—on the contrary, the occasion allowed attendees to reflect on Hopler’s life and poetry. A number of fellow poets and friends took turns reading his poetry to the audience; they eulogized his wit, innovation, and love of his craft.

The first poet to read was Katie Ford, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who shared some anecdotes of her collaboration with Hopler. She said he had a dry sense of humor and an eye that no detail escaped, which she humorously described in a story about feedback Hopler once gave her: “I had some pigeons in a poem, and he said, ‘Pigeons, as you describe them, don’t have coats, and they wouldn’t be in a cage. They have feathers, and they would be in a coop.’ So I wrote back to him, ‘My pigeons now have feathers and a coop thanks to you.’”

Michael Lavers, associate professor of poetry at BYU, shared a single poem along with a touching story of his own interaction with Hopler from Lavers’ undergrad days. Now an accomplished poet himself, Lavers remarked how Hopler’s poem “In the Garden” caught him by surprise when he first read it. “Maybe authority is the best word for what I found myself in the presence of . . . maybe it’s courage or self-sufficiency, and maybe it has no name,” Lavers said. “Whatever it’s called, I wanted to learn how to get this effect in my poems.” So the undergraduate Lavers reached out to Hopler, expecting little; yet suddenly, unexpectedly, he found himself talking to Hopler on the phone. “I remember how seriously he took my question, and I remember his voice as he read the poem out loud,” Lavers said. “William Blake says, ‘Everything that lives is holy,’ and when I read any of Jay’s poems, I know that this is true, because I feel that Jay knew it was true.”

Others who paid tribute to Hopler included Jacqueline Osherow and Paisley Rekdal, both distinguished professors of English at the University of Utah; Lisa Bickmore, poet laureate of Utah; and Lance Larsen, chair of the BYU English Department.

Last to read was Kimberly Johnson, spouse to Hopler and professor of English at BYU. “Jay’s people didn’t do funerals; it is one of the strange things of his family heritage,” she said. “And so I think, accidentally, this has become his funeral.”

Johnson, however, didn’t intend to let the “funeral” go out on a somber note. “He was the funniest person I knew. And sometimes the poems make that clear, and sometimes they don’t. So I am going to try to get some of the funny into this room,” she said before reading “Green Squall,” the title poem of Hopler’s first book—a boisterous, musical poem that, read with zeal by Johnson, invited the audience to chuckle and celebrate the life that Hopler infused in his poetry.

As the reading came to a close, tears of laughter mingled with tears of mourning. And though Hopler’s life had been cut short, his words carried their own life. Another poet, Albert Wadsworth Longfellow, perhaps said it best: “Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies.”

Join us at the next installment of the English Reading Series for inspiration and insights from acclaimed authors.