Robert Zend, A Remembrance
by poet, writer and member of The Three Roberts, Robert Sward, Santa Cruz, California, August 20, 2016
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[epigraph]
THREE ROBERTS From heart to heart from brain to brain from Robert to Robert Robert Zend phones Robert Sward. Ring, ring. "Robert, this is Robert." "Is this Robert?" "This is Robert, Robert." "Yes, Robert?" I say, "This "Is Robert, too…" |
1983-1984
Under CBC Radio producer Eithne Black's tutelage I'd been learning how to conduct, edit and produce a radio interview for a national audience of several hundred thousand listeners and, in classic British-Canadian style, keep myself in the background, keeping the use of the interviewer's "I" to a minimum.
Interviewing Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy, Earle Birney and many others, I learned the value of editing myself out of the conversation and keeping the focus as much as possible on the ideas, the content, the personality and workings of the writer's mind accompanied almost always by the poet or fiction writer reading aloud from his or her finished books and/or works in progress.
Putting oneself in the background, listening to an illustrious guest, really listening, paying unconditional attention, and, listening, listening afterwards to the broadcast, editing with a razor blade, as we did at the time, I felt I learned something I hadn't known about love. Love, as I came to understand it, is, in part, paying unconditional attention to another individual. It wasn't always easy, but I came to love a number of Canadian writers.
Apart from teaching, which I still love, working for the nationally broadcast CBC Radio show Anthology was by far the best job I ever had.
It was at CBC Radio studios in Toronto that my heartful and knowledgeable guide, Eithne Black, excitedly introduced me to my "brother-to-be," internationally known poet, Hungarian-born, witty, sardonic, self-possessed, multi-media artist, Robert Zend.
It was there too, thanks to CBC, that I met my other "brother-to-be," fellow performer, British-born, singer-songwriter, internationally known man of letters, the gifted, versatile musician Robert Priest. Of course, I could be wrong. Robert remembers our meeting at a publisher's office, Dreadnaught Press in Toronto, c. 1983.
Three Roberts! We loved performing, that is, singly, on our own, but also as one of a trio of poets, one Hungarian, one British, one American and yet somehow, so it seemed to me, three nationalities, three very distinct voices and yet, recognizably, uniquely Canadian. Altogether, I lived in Canada for 14 years (1969-1984) and I never felt more at home, more in my element, more "Canadian" than I did performing with my Hungarian and British brothers.
Many times over those 14 years of a self-chosen exile, I felt lonely, homesick for the U.S., homesick for the music, homesick for the humor and poetry, and, indeed, the looney bin politicians and their looney bin supporters… a wrenching sadness. Asking myself, "What am I doing in Canada?"
Winter. Winter, winter after winter of… the winter(s) of my discontent. But a phone call and a fresh hot meal at a Hungarian restaurant, followed by coffee, dessert and a rehearsal for a new performance with our eldest brother, Robert Zend, and younger Brother Robert Priest, and I was home. Home. A loyal Canadian, pro-multiculturalism (a buzz word at the time) and proud of it! God save the queen!
In the early 1980s, already a fan of Robert Zend's work, I wrote in a three-page, three-line-stanza poem called "Three Roberts,"
"I had a very pleasant afternoon
While reading your poems,"
Margaret Trudeau once remarked
About Zend's book, "From Zero To One,"
And I can fully understand
Her saying that.
Zend translates serious things
Into funny things
And funny things
Into serious things.
He also translates himself
Into other people, and
Other people into himself--
And where does one of us end
And the other begin?
And where does Zend begin
And where do I zend
I mean, end?
And it goes on,
A chocolate lawnmower?
An inexhaustible flower?
Or a reader who escaped
From some interstellar library?
Rock Musician in residence
At the University of the Moon?
----
I scribble these few lines tonight in Santa Cruz, California, and find myself moved, unexpectedly emotional. Soon after Robert died, pushing 50, a nervous, anxious, hungry, under employed Canadian-American immigrant with a melancholy, Russian-born, French-Canadian wife and two Canadian-born children, our family applied for and obtained visas and moved back to the U.S., where I took up a teaching position in California.
Call it "postponed mourning," but only now, 30 odd years later, do I truly grieve… truly realize my loss.
I missed Robert's funeral, missed hanging out with his family in the aftermath of his passing, missed and still miss Janine and their daughter Natalie, both of whom I felt close to and, somehow, I've come to understand that Robert Zend, the eldest of the Three Roberts, our dazzling Hungarian sophisticate, had served for me as something of a father and, at the same time, a brother, a worldly wise older brother with a Hungarian accent.
Three distinct voices, three distinct talents, three distinct ways of honoring the craft. Three distinct ways, too, of being in the world, the world at large and, too, God knows, the little world of poetry.
I love Robert (Z)end. I weep and honor the man and his work, his unconditional love for his family, his unconditional love for his art, his gifts and his accomplishments. And for his Self love, yes, that too. And why not?
I loved him then and I love him now, for his celebration of life, his zest for and love of life, his cigarettes, his coffee, his family, his friendships, his love for his own and for the poetry of others, and of course his books books books, and, that rarest of affections, his unconditional love for himself. And too his love for others.
I don't have Robert's deep-seated compassion, his unconditional love for life and, indeed, for himself. I don't have Robert's gift, far from it, but I recognize it in others, as in (Z)end, as in Priest, and, now and then, inspired by my brothers’ example, in myself.
Under CBC Radio producer Eithne Black's tutelage I'd been learning how to conduct, edit and produce a radio interview for a national audience of several hundred thousand listeners and, in classic British-Canadian style, keep myself in the background, keeping the use of the interviewer's "I" to a minimum.
Interviewing Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy, Earle Birney and many others, I learned the value of editing myself out of the conversation and keeping the focus as much as possible on the ideas, the content, the personality and workings of the writer's mind accompanied almost always by the poet or fiction writer reading aloud from his or her finished books and/or works in progress.
Putting oneself in the background, listening to an illustrious guest, really listening, paying unconditional attention, and, listening, listening afterwards to the broadcast, editing with a razor blade, as we did at the time, I felt I learned something I hadn't known about love. Love, as I came to understand it, is, in part, paying unconditional attention to another individual. It wasn't always easy, but I came to love a number of Canadian writers.
Apart from teaching, which I still love, working for the nationally broadcast CBC Radio show Anthology was by far the best job I ever had.
It was at CBC Radio studios in Toronto that my heartful and knowledgeable guide, Eithne Black, excitedly introduced me to my "brother-to-be," internationally known poet, Hungarian-born, witty, sardonic, self-possessed, multi-media artist, Robert Zend.
It was there too, thanks to CBC, that I met my other "brother-to-be," fellow performer, British-born, singer-songwriter, internationally known man of letters, the gifted, versatile musician Robert Priest. Of course, I could be wrong. Robert remembers our meeting at a publisher's office, Dreadnaught Press in Toronto, c. 1983.
Three Roberts! We loved performing, that is, singly, on our own, but also as one of a trio of poets, one Hungarian, one British, one American and yet somehow, so it seemed to me, three nationalities, three very distinct voices and yet, recognizably, uniquely Canadian. Altogether, I lived in Canada for 14 years (1969-1984) and I never felt more at home, more in my element, more "Canadian" than I did performing with my Hungarian and British brothers.
Many times over those 14 years of a self-chosen exile, I felt lonely, homesick for the U.S., homesick for the music, homesick for the humor and poetry, and, indeed, the looney bin politicians and their looney bin supporters… a wrenching sadness. Asking myself, "What am I doing in Canada?"
Winter. Winter, winter after winter of… the winter(s) of my discontent. But a phone call and a fresh hot meal at a Hungarian restaurant, followed by coffee, dessert and a rehearsal for a new performance with our eldest brother, Robert Zend, and younger Brother Robert Priest, and I was home. Home. A loyal Canadian, pro-multiculturalism (a buzz word at the time) and proud of it! God save the queen!
In the early 1980s, already a fan of Robert Zend's work, I wrote in a three-page, three-line-stanza poem called "Three Roberts,"
"I had a very pleasant afternoon
While reading your poems,"
Margaret Trudeau once remarked
About Zend's book, "From Zero To One,"
And I can fully understand
Her saying that.
Zend translates serious things
Into funny things
And funny things
Into serious things.
He also translates himself
Into other people, and
Other people into himself--
And where does one of us end
And the other begin?
And where does Zend begin
And where do I zend
I mean, end?
And it goes on,
A chocolate lawnmower?
An inexhaustible flower?
Or a reader who escaped
From some interstellar library?
Rock Musician in residence
At the University of the Moon?
----
I scribble these few lines tonight in Santa Cruz, California, and find myself moved, unexpectedly emotional. Soon after Robert died, pushing 50, a nervous, anxious, hungry, under employed Canadian-American immigrant with a melancholy, Russian-born, French-Canadian wife and two Canadian-born children, our family applied for and obtained visas and moved back to the U.S., where I took up a teaching position in California.
Call it "postponed mourning," but only now, 30 odd years later, do I truly grieve… truly realize my loss.
I missed Robert's funeral, missed hanging out with his family in the aftermath of his passing, missed and still miss Janine and their daughter Natalie, both of whom I felt close to and, somehow, I've come to understand that Robert Zend, the eldest of the Three Roberts, our dazzling Hungarian sophisticate, had served for me as something of a father and, at the same time, a brother, a worldly wise older brother with a Hungarian accent.
Three distinct voices, three distinct talents, three distinct ways of honoring the craft. Three distinct ways, too, of being in the world, the world at large and, too, God knows, the little world of poetry.
I love Robert (Z)end. I weep and honor the man and his work, his unconditional love for his family, his unconditional love for his art, his gifts and his accomplishments. And for his Self love, yes, that too. And why not?
I loved him then and I love him now, for his celebration of life, his zest for and love of life, his cigarettes, his coffee, his family, his friendships, his love for his own and for the poetry of others, and of course his books books books, and, that rarest of affections, his unconditional love for himself. And too his love for others.
I don't have Robert's deep-seated compassion, his unconditional love for life and, indeed, for himself. I don't have Robert's gift, far from it, but I recognize it in others, as in (Z)end, as in Priest, and, now and then, inspired by my brothers’ example, in myself.
