I think my favorite event in 1994 was getting a letter from Mark Helprin in response to one I’d sent him. I was soliciting him for a poem contribution to the journal that I was on the staff of and also asking him if I story I’d heard about an Israeli/Palestinian romance that got the respective governing bodies involved might be true. Mark’s essays and stories (The Acceleration of Tranquility and Jacob Bayer and the Telephone, for example) about what it means to be fully human have had a major impact on my thinking and play a continual role in my reflective life. I know I mention him every year, but hey, you may have forgotten.

His politics:

The totalitarian impulse to interpret absolutely every fact of life as a part of a grand struggle for power always runs together with comic pettiness and stupidity. Perhaps one should expect this in certain quarters, but that this spore can thrive in an open society is disturbing and disheartening. Though it, too, will burn away in the sunshine, it is a blow nonetheless.

His humor:

Without Nestor B. Watoon, the cadets of the Brazilian naval academy would not think that popcorn is a fruit. They would not have the opportunity of following in the footsteps of a young lieutenant who, attending an official funeral, approached the official widow, made a sad bow, and said “Bon appetit.” They would not think that the opposite of cool was “worm,” or that “turban” engines come in several “virgins.” (from A Memoir From Ant-proof Case)

His scenes of high drama and essential things:

Peter Lake cracked the whip; and they raced to the house on the lakeshore under a sky of solid delft azure. “Drive hard, Peter Lake, drive hard,” said Beverly, holding the child.
He had never had a family. But there he was, suddenly, almost a husband and father. Small scenes can be so beautiful that they change a man forever. He would never forget that noontime on a lake of ice, nor would he ever forget her words.

“Drive hard,” she had said. He would. Things were different now. All he wanted now was love. (from Winter’s Tale)

Mark told me that he’d only written one poem, and that it was about (I think) a table owned by James Madison. In any case, I found a bibliography that mentions that he published one poem a couple of years after I wrote him. It was in the Wall Street Journal, November 29th, 1996 (section A, page 6, column 4), and it was called “Table of Inflation.” If anyone could find it on microfiche and send me a copy, I’d appreciate it. I just don’t have the time to go to a university library and pull it up.