A Poet Is Dead
John F. Burns, Prize-winning Foreign Correspondent for The Times, Dies at 81
John F. Burns, one of the most important people in my life, is dead.
We never met, he never knew I existed, and yet he was critical to my formation as a poet and as a man. The way he wrote, the choices he made, and the way he thought were the ways I wanted to write, wanted to be, wanted to think.
My modified anonymous template
As we say in AA, I wanted what John F, Burns had, and for the last 30+ years, much of who I am was built on the template I deduced from reading him.
I optimized that template starting in 1993 for the life of a minor poet/ playwright who just wanted to build my family tree, tell the truth as I saw it, and try to be one of those who will survive in America.
His obituary, written by longtime colleague Alan Cowell, summarizes:
In his writing, Mr. Burns displayed a deft ability to capture the sweep of history along with the telling detail of the present. A 1992 article, for instance, began with a description of a cellist, Vedran Smailovic, playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor under artillery fire in the ruined streets of Sarajevo, the besieged capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to commemorate the city’s dead.
The article went on to take note of the city’s cosmopolitan history, dating to its founding in the 15th century. By 1992, Mr. Burns wrote, it was “a wasteland of blasted mosques, churches and museums; of fire-gutted office towers, hotels and sports stadiums, and of hospitals, music schools and libraries punctured by rockets, mortars and artillery shells.”
His paragraphs were my stanzas. His hammers were my stage props. His steel eyes propped mine open wide. My poetry books, the Documenters program, my archive practice, our definitions of Arte Agora— all informed by holding the New York Times in my hands over decades.
Injured Child Flow to London
Many of the poems published in my 1995 book, Memo To All Employees, were direct daily responses to John F. Burns news articles. Here’s our discourse on Irma Hadžimuratović.
Read the wikipedia page about the incident and you see that the hammer Burns brought down in his last paragraph— always the hammer— tells you the truth:
United Nations officials here had defended their handling of Irma’s case. They said that careful vetting of each application for medical evacuation was essential in a city where more than 50,000 people had been wounded.
Archive is Life
In the early 2000s I copy/pasted hundreds of articles out of the paid NYT archive into a Blogger blog so as to spread his gospel freely. I spent a lot of time keeping up with search trends and maintained this archive until the NYT changed their hyperlink policy.
John F. Burns: The best writer in American newspapers.
This is an archive of links to John F. Burns articles on the New York Times website. These links (click on the title of any article) do not require registration on the NYT site and are impervious to linkrot. If you are interested in obtaining the complete text of John F. Burns articles going back over the last couple of years, send an email noting the nature of your request (fair use, personal consumption, etc.) and I’ll see if the text is available.
Mooring
So goodbye to the last living person from my formational pantehon of poets, along with Frank O’Hara and Amiri Baraka. And now I feel unmoored. There’s no reason for this—I know—it’s silly to have traced so much of my life on his. I will re-steady, stay with me, forward.
Addendum / more
Integrity & John F. Burns: post upon his retirement
John F. Burns and Iraqi KPIs: worlds collide.
Deaths from Natural Causes: an op-ed by Zlatko Dizdarevic during the Siege of Sarajevo, the subject of so stories filed by John F. Burns
Bosnia Girl’s Life Hangs on Procedural Tangle: story containing the photo of Irma that kicked off Injured Child Flown to London
British Fly to Bosnian Girl’s Rescue: article on the fateful flight
Bosnian Serbs Overrun Town Protected by U.N.: the initial article, written by Chris Hedges, portending the coming Massacre of Srebrenica,
John F. Burns Reporting on the Imposition of Martial Law in Poland, December 1981 – June 1982: In 2008 got an email from a student at the University of Warsaw looking for his reporting from Poland after the imposition of martial law there in 1981. So I dug up the stories out of TimesSelect and copy/ pasted them to her.