"Are we only really alive when someone dies?
Suppose it had nothing to do with sin
and Jesus died so we could party.
Suppose the gods are only bright pinatas
to be beaten, broken open, with gifts inside.
Why must we imitate them?
I never met the guy.
I love him tonight, I loved us all tonight.
But I wish I could believe
I'd love him better alive." – Julia Vinograd, "Wake"

I was sorry to hear the news of Julia Vinograd's passing. I had met her once or twice in the late '90s, at a reading at Poetry Above Paradise, or maybe it was the Chameleon ... one of those old-school San Francisco poetry readings. My visits there were always whirlwinds, and I'll confess, most of the poets I met on those trips are lost to my memory. Not Julia, though. She was an impressive poet and person, one you don't forget easily. One of those visits, I acquired a copy of her book, Speed of Dark (Zeitgeist Press) and have held onto it for some 20 years. I believe I may have traded a chapbook with her for it or something. Amazing how much is lost to memory. Amazing how vital poetry becomes when it's all that remains of recollection.

I can't claim to have known Julia well – we've maybe conversed four or five times over the past 20 years – but I'm glad to have known her, and I'm glad to be in possession of some of her poems. It all seems so easy now, with the Internet and all, that we easily forget that the work of whole generations of poets have been lost over time. The poets who were working in the late '60s through the late '90s, particularly, are not as anthologized and collected as they should be. Too much was reliant on small press publishers that have long since vanished, too much was left behind by poetry institutions which, while considerably more open-minded now, were at the time so concerned with being "the one true poetry authorities" that much brilliance was left out in the cold.

It's easier now, but sometimes I hear Thomas Paine's old maxim ringing in my ears: What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Perhaps its this awareness of scarcity, and what so many poets had to endure to bring their words to light, that makes the recent scandal of writer Ailey O'Toole plagiarizing Rachel McKibbens and other poets so captivating,and bewildering.

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