Anne Beatts is known for being a writer on Saturday Night Live in its first years and for creating the TV precedent-breaking show Square Pegs. But I knew her as a poet, and a friend. She was as funny as you would expect for a comedy writer who started out at National Lampoon. And she certainly had an acerbic wit that I was sometimes the brunt of. But she was also sweet and generous and truly a lovely person who mentored many younger writers.
In the 1980s and '90s when her writing partner Eve Brandstein was my partner running a weekly poetry reading called Poetry In Motion, Anne got up the nerve to share her poetry publicly, something she admitted took more courage for her to do than anything else she'd done. If you can find a copy of the publication that came out of that series—The Hollywood Review, number one, spring 1991—you'll find a very moving poem by Anne: "When You Got Nothing, You Got Nothing To Lose" (too long to quote here). There's an interview with Anne (by Eve) in there as well.
My heart goes out to her daughter and other family, friends, and fans. Rest In Poetry, Anne.
No comments:
Post a Comment