Arts: Mary Karr?s Poems About David Foster Wallace

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Brow Beat Mary Karr's Poems About David Foster Wallace By Katy Waldman Posted Tuesday, Oct 09, 2012, at 03:09 PM ET At the New Yorker Festival on Saturday, the poet Mary Karr was one of several panelists who gathered for "Rereading David Foster Wallace," moderated by Wallace biographer D.T. Max. She was joined by the novelists Mark Costello and Dana Spiotta as well as Deborah Triesman, Wallace's editor at the New Yorker. There, Karr read a poem she had written for Wallace that was recently published in Poetry Magazine: "Suicide's Note: An Annual." It's a knotty, complicated poem, one that bears sitting with and puzzling over. Beginning with that title. Why "an annual"? It is as if Wallace's death were something that happened over and over, both defeating the finality of death and hammering it home. The title keeps dragging its subject to life, for better or worse. Karr and Wallace had a stormy romantic relationship in the mid-'90s. When she writes, "So far apart we'd grown/between love transmogrifying into hate and those sad letters," she could be remembering any one of the incidents she described to New York Magazine's Evan Hughes: The time Wallace hurled a coffee table at her during a fight, the time he forced her out of the car in a dangerous neighborhood.  Karr recalls a "letter of apology" Wallace wrote her, in which he regrets "being such a dick." Reading the poem, you're not sure if Karr has forgiven him. "Every suicide's an asshole," she writes. "There is a good reason I am not/God ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate How the Democrats Won New Mexico The Healer Did You Take Your Aspirin Today?	Advertisement
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