'And Mailed This Guy Gold Every Time'

“By all accounts,” writes Erik Bader, “[Guy Davenport] wrote a legit stack of letters every single day, and would respond to literally anyone -- and here’s an anecdote to confirm.” Dave Lull alerted me to Bader’s account of Davenport and an unlikely correspondent that mirrored my own experience with the Kentucky writer and polymath: 

“Many years ago I wrote an obit on Davenport for a local newspaper and a strange and shy old dude showed up at the bookstore where I worked a few days later. Apparently he lived in a halfway house and said he was moved by my piece and that he used to correspond with Davenport for many years -- he had just written him one day and the dude always wrote back. Yeah right, I thought. Incredibly, he showed up a few days later with a stack of the letters and they were some of the most incredible things I have ever read to this day - the level of care, love, and knowledge dropped into every single one was off the charts. Some were handwritten. Some were illustrated. Every single one had at least one line that outclassed entire careers. It was clear from the letters that Guy knew he was just responding to some lonely weirdo with possible me[n]tal problems --but he didn’t give a shit, he put his A-game into ever[y] single letter, and mailed this guy gold every time. Next time any of y’all think a comment on yr stack ain’t worth responding to -- think of Guy, and think again!”

 

I had been reading Davenport since the seventies. I collected his books, at least the editions I could afford, and my timing was good, as North Point Press started publishing his work in 1981. Seven years later, as a reporter for an upstate New York newspaper, I was writing a profile of Paul Metcalf, author of Genoa (1965), who lived across the state line in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. I knew from an essay in The Geography of the Imagination that Guy admired Metcalf’s work, so I looked up his number and interviewed him by telephone. What I recall is instant openness and intelligent volubility. He gave me precisely what I was after. I asked for his address in Lexington, Ky., and that started an exchange of letters. I have seldom encountered such unqualified acceptance by a stranger. It exceeded mere politeness.

 

In 1990, a buddy and I went on an uncharted road trip. First night, a campground in Cumberland, Maryland (birthplace of J.V. Cunningham, whose poems, Guy wrote, were “as well made as wristwatches”). Second night, a campground in Lexington, Ky. I called Guy and he told me to stop by his house on Sayre Avenue the following morning.

 

We talked for several hours. I wish I had kept notes. I do have the two books I brought along for Guy to inscribe – The Geography of the Imagination (1981) and Apples and Pears (1984). In the former, in his fine draftsman’s hand, he wrote “For Patrick Kurp, Lexington, 18 June 1990.” We talked so much, he forgot to sign his name and I didn’t notice until I was back in the car. He did sign the other volume.

 

I can’t claim to have much insight into Davenport the man. I knew him as a writer and teacher, though never in a formal sense. With me he was always generous and encouraging. When I reviewed his 1989 volume A Balthus Notebook (Ecco Press) and sent him the clipping, he replied with a letter of gratitude in which he didn’t exactly correct me but expanded on what I had written. His first instinct was to share knowledge. It was a memorable exercise in tact and courtesy. As a newspaper reporter I had met and interviewed many “celebrities.” None was so charming and just plain interesting as Guy Davenport. I’m not one to fetishize books, writers or dates on the calendar but I do, every June 18, give thanks for Guy and his work.