Jackson Mac Low
1922 - 2004
It’s always a shock to think of Jackson as being of the same generation as my parents. For one thing, he came to publishing late. Or more accurately, publishing came to him late. When he was 48, say, the same year both This & Tottels were getting started, Jackson had only had four books published. Even tho he’d already had a transformative effect on so many art forms, from poetry to dance to music, he was still “too far out” for most small press publishers to imagine in print. I’ve always thought of The Light Poems as a kind of translation, making what Mac Low was doing intelligible for people who couldn’t imagine it otherwise. Happily, an entire generation showed up ready to read him precisely because he taught us how.
He saw / heard / felt language with the same dispassionate objectivity that, say, Jimi Hendrix had with the guitar: you could hear it this way; these words could do this! Once you heard it his way, it was (is) impossible to go back.
About five years ago, my family & I were driving back south from Nova Scotia & had been told by James Sherry & Deb Thomas that we could stay at the Roxy, the little converted hotel they have in upstate New York. They wouldn’t be there that weekend, but they told us how to get in & told us to make ourselves at home. They then told Jackson & Anne Tardos that they could stay there that weekend. But they neglected to tell either of us about the presence of the other. When I first came up through the basement into the kitchen, a startled Anne was looking around to see if there was a butcher knife available to protect her from this invasion. We recognized one another instantly, deflecting all kinds of awful scenarios. And we then had a wonderful visit, the height of which was watching Jackson playing board games with my then-seven-year-old sons. That was one side of him I had not seen before.
We quarreled about politics occasionally, but never lost sight of the fact that our goals were almost identical & we never lost a mutual sense of affection & respect. I am, as I’ve always been, in awe at his achievements. I’m going to miss him terribly.
