Jennifer Moxley Remembers Helena Bennett

Jennifer Moxley has a new website, and much of the content there already feels like an extension of her memoir writing in The Middle Room. Just up is a beautiful piece on the writer Helena Bennett, Moxley's first "poetry friend" and former wife of poet Bill Luoma (who writes about her in his great book Works & Days). Bennett died in 1990 at the age of 27. Moxley writes that her hope is "to use this page to post some reminiscences of Helena by those who knew her, as well as to share some of her original works." Moxley includes some of Luoma's memories of Helena, and a remembrance from Scott Bentley:

And yet, if Helena had lived we wouldn’t have the perhaps greatest piece of writing of the latter part of the 20th century, Bill Luoma’s My Trip to New York City. How would Jennifer Moxley, Lisa Jarnot, Lee Ann Brown and Juliana Spahr be different writers from the ones they have worked to become? Bill’s son, Sasha, may not have been born, born with those deep dark eyes. And what of my boys? Who can say? It seems so sentimental, absurd even to an extreme to wander with wonder into such algebraic territory, with allegiance to such nostalgia. Still, I do. I can’t help it.

From Luoma:

MEETING HELENA

Helena was named Helena Michele Bennett on July 1963 in Elizabeth City, NC. She died December 1990 in San Diego, CA. It’s 17 years later and I can’t remember the days. She was a Cancer and sometimes called herself Helena Handbasket. Cancers and Scorpios are a good match. I am a triple Scorpio. She grew up in various places, starting in North Carolina, going to various rocky mountain towns and ending up in Salt Lake. Her parents divorced early. Helena, her younger brother Alex, and her younger sister Gabrielle moved around with her mother, who was a member of Ekencar. Her father was an architect of Norfolk, Virginia. Helena’s grandmother, ‘Lel, remained in Elizabeth City forever. ‘Lel would call Helena once a week. Yes ma’am, yes ma’am, yes ma’am and it was easy to know ‘Lel was on the other end of the phone. Helena lived with ‘Lel while her mother and father sorted it out. It was clear that ‘Lel was Helena’s mother. In the rocky mountains, Helena assumed the role of mother to the youngsters until she left for college in the early 80s. Tulane -> UCLA -> UCSD. I met her at UCSD in 1984 or 85. I can’t remember how, maybe when she walked into the comp class I was teaching 15 minutes late as the new tutor for the youngsters. She may have been barefoot in jeans with a large beige canvas bag full of books and what not. If she wasn’t barefoot then she was wearing cowboy boots. She didn’t just walk. It was a long bouncy stroll. She was semi-tall so the effect of her appearance was always slightly exaggerated.

WATCHING ORPHÉE WITH HELENA

Helena was typically more advanced than her peers at writing poetry. She seemed to have been seeing the world ‘that way’ longer than most of us. When I say ‘that way’ it probably means nothing more than having a critical eye, being able to analyze the metaphors we live by in order to consider change, as well as finding those spaces other artists have either neglected or refused and find beauty and critique and utopia there too. Putting the gloves on and going thru the mirror, so to speak. I often wonder what kind of writing she would be producing today. What inventions would she have made? In what manner would she be a force of good in the spats against evil? Who would she diss? Who would she love? Who would she tease?

Find it all here.