Portrait of a Common Poet

A Story by Paris Hlad

A Coupling of Grace & Fear

Paris Eugene Hlad’s’ Pilgrim Heart is about love and is dedicated to the Gardener. In the end, she is the only reason the poet cared about others at all. It is not that he was otherwise disinterested in his fellow man, but that he was inclined to do things that are different from love. In fact, even when he did love, it was expressed with conditions and a nullifying expectation of personal gain. Still, Paris could think of no better justification for his existence than love, and he never stopped trying to improve his ability to care about others. He chronicled that effort in the inspired and apposite poetry that follows. Writing it made him feel noble and even optimistic about his chances of living with a better sense of grace.

But Hlad’s work is more than a panegyric about the efficacy of love and the glories of poetry. It is also the honest history of an aging man’s search for meaning and his inevitable acceptance of life’s most abstruse reality. For even as Paris conceived of the project, the people he loved began to die. And as they did, he grew increasingly convinced that the universe of his thoughts and feelings belonged only to himself, and that his loved ones were likely to have navigated life in a similarly myopic way. He could only wonder whether what we call “love” is more than a quixotic delusion �" A kind of dubious story that we imagine and choose to believe.

Nevertheless, Paris was ever the optimist. He was born to run life’s cruel emotional gauntlet, and he strove to regain the position from which death had so callously pushed him. He continued to dream and remained that kind of dreamer who decorates gloom with the empyrean bunting of hope. Sadly, he began to realize his vision only in the dregs of old age: He went outside and finally liked what he saw. And he liked being seen by the eyes that watched him. Perhaps they belonged to a being that cared even more about its inventions than Paris cared about his.

The high point of Paris Hlad’s literary career occurred in 1964 when several of his poems were read aloud at a ninth-grade class assembly at Olson Junior High School in Minneapolis. Later, some of his work appeared alongside that of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, John Berryman, in the University of Minnesota Arts & Poetry Magazine.[1] But no comparable obeisance was to follow, and Paris gave up writing verse until he retired from teaching some forty years later. Then, with eternity coming into view, the aging lyrist rededicated himself to the cause of beauty and assembled his magnum opus.

However, no delusions of grandeur are to be found in the work of Paris Hlad. He was comfortable in the knowledge that he was, and would remain, a common poet. His lines are the fruit of an old man’s hobby, rhymes that were written to enrich the lives and inspire the better ambitions of people he loved, not dazzle the minds of strangers, or make anyone wise. He recognized that his thoughts were not new insights, but affirmative statements about time-honored truths, and he wanted our universe to remain ours as much as he wanted his to remain his. Still, a timely coupling of grace and existential fear made Paris Hlad an American garden poet - And that merited the audience that he ultimately obtained.

Yet the Poet’s confidence in his work could be unseemly, and his literary ambitions were at least on some level driven by ignominious vanity - So much so, that he thought it should be read, and even admired, by loved ones and friends. And although that dynamic betrayed his veneer of Christian humility, it provided him an excuse to claim a kind of patrician status in all matters pertaining to his work. Only near the end of his days did things change in any significant way; and then, only with the appearance of the lost souls who began snubbing Paris after church. By then, a better penitent, the poet came to recognize that he was less like others than he had hoped, and more like others than he had feared. Still, that lesson available in aging, made the creation of Hlad’s masterpiece possible.

But Paris was not one to gain much in the afterglow of an epiphany, nor did he ever live up to the standards of his lofty ideals, even in those idyllic years when he looked to refine his thinking in the storied hills of the Hudson Valley. Though he grew confident in his soaring propositions, he failed to achieve much of what he had hoped. In truth, he was only infrequently “mindful of the eternal,” and he never embraced a philosophy or intellectual paradigm that he every time trusted. This, he would freely admit, even though he was regularly critical of inconsistency in others. Like so many of us, Paris was a rank hypocrite; but in fairness to him, he would have been the first to concede that fault and the last to supply an excuse.

That said, Paris recognized his shortcomings as an artist, and he was tentative, even guarded about sharing his work in the public forum. Indeed, he may well have disliked promoting his poetry even more than he yearned for the approval of others. Moreover, he knew he was only one among millions who believe they have something important to say, and he never considered himself particularly interesting or gifted. No, Paris was realistic in that way. But in the nativity of his inmost faith, a magnificent case for hope had been made, and Paris was his whole life a reliable messenger.

Just before the last walk, we would take together on Caswell Beach, Paris was moved to tell me how Pope Francis had once confided to an atheist friend, that he too believed that hell was a myth. I was surprised by the asperity in his voice when he said this. He seemed angry with the Holy Father, and even a bit embarrassed to have shared the story with me. I could not help but marvel at the seriousness of his expression.

Still, Paris was scarcely a dogmatist or “true believer” in any body of religious particulars. He was primarily a generous and open-minded intellectual. He may have proved willing to share his thoughts about life on the physical plane, but he never sought converts to his way of thinking. Consideration? Yes. But the poet feared that his thesis might lead others astray, or even cause them to despair over things that they can do nothing about. He would have much preferred that his readers remain skeptical of his ideas and find their own special way to an unknown afterlife or eternal state of nothingness.

The creation of Pilgrim Heart was the defining activity of Paris Hlad’s old age. Although he wrote many of its lines while he was still in his sixties and teaching college prep classes in upstate New York, he completed what he called a “shareable version” of the work only after retiring to Southport, North Carolina in 2015. There, he devoted an additional 19,000 hours to its revision, periodically publishing it under various titles and distributing it in libraries, book shops, and thrift stores along the Carolina coast. It remained a “work in progress” until his death at age 73 in December 2022.

Early on, however, the poet tried selling copies of his book for the benefit of St. Jude Children’s Hospital and raised about $250. Later, he expressed regret in having done so, as he was financially comfortable and could have easily written a larger check and avoided the shame of having promoted his ambitions on the backs of sick children. This is not to say that the poet’s intentions were impure, but that he was often slow to recognize what his intentions were. Perhaps only the truly vain are capable of appreciating the nuanced evils of vanity. That was an uncomfortable lesson for Paris, but he recognized his error and never again sought to exploit the charity and goodwill of others �" At least, in that way.

In later years, the poet gave copies of his work to family members and friends, as well those associated with the Cape Fear Poetry & Prose Society. He did a number of public readings in the Southport area and made a vigorous effort to share his work via the internet. With some of his posts “trending,” and others honored with recitals on YouTube or special recognition at major poetry websites, Paris could proudly claim more than a quarter-million “reads.” And although such numbers are scarcely spectacular by internet standards, Paris had achieved the aims of a common poet. His work had been read, and no less than a former member of the BBC Poetry Corner referred to Paris as a “poet-comrade” whose work “deserved to be read.[2]

[1] By 1970, Paris’s poems had found their way into some American poetry journals, including the legendary Imprints Quarterly, but by then the young poet had been swept up in a multitude of less noble ambitions and no longer saw a future for himself as a writer or even as an emotionally well-adjusted person.

[2] The poet’s last literary activities involved founding the poetry society mentioned above and serving as the host of its weekly entertainment get-togethers on Zoom. It was during one of those meetings that Paris learned of a purveyor of antiquarian collectibles who sold a copy of Pilgrim Heart on Amazon for $21 �" More than quadruple its production cost and a full year before the poet departed the physical realm!

© 2023 Paris Hlad

Author's Note

This piece is a part of my revised work, previously posted at WritersCafe.org. It is from a book in which some of the entries are written in prose or poetic prose.