LARRY KRAMER R.I.P.

My first experience with (the later heroic gay activist) Larry Kramer was at the University of Iowa at which I worked on a BA and MFA from 1966-69 on the G.I. Bill after four years in the military. He was there briefly as probably an assistant professor (I say "grad assistant" in this unpublished sonnet I wrote years later because I can't remember what his actual official title was):

In a class on modern poetry, I write a

paper for a tall, shy-with-me, older grad

assistant, Larry Kramer, who notes on it

You have one of the strangest prose styles

I’ve ever read. So, unasked, I do another

for extra credit, in which I analyze the

structure of Ezra Pound’s haiku-like IN

A STATION OF THE METRO, using

only rhymed, iambic-pentameter qua-

trains. Including two lines rhyming

poem with the tome in epitome, which

I pronounced epi-tome, till Kramer cor-

rects me. He seemed bewildered by it and

admitted he had no idea how to grade it. 

I can't find online any mention of his stint in Iowa, but he was so distinct looking with his height and those rich lips I never forgot him. And others who were there then remember him too. Our paths never crossed directly again, though we shared mutual acquaintances. He was a force of nature and had a real impact on history and the rights of gay men and will be sorely missed by many. May he never be forgotten.