R.I.P. 2017

Here are the poets—and those I consider poets in their own fields—who I knew personally, as they say—some slightly, some very well—who passed away in 2017 (in no particular order):

Joanne Kyger
William McPherson
John Sjoberg
Denis Johnson
Austin Straus
Harry Dean Stanton
John Ashbery
Tom Raworth
Jack Collum
Sam Shepard

[you can look up who they were
to me on my blog archives, and
if you don't know their writing,
you can go find some and read it
and be grateful, as I am, that they
lived to share what they created]

and two who I never met but saw perform
and whose lyrics were an early introduction
to, and influence on, what poetry could do:

Jon Hendricks and Chuck Berry

May they all Rest In Poetry