Franklin D'Olier Reeve

Franklin D'Olier Reeve Poems

Franklin D'Olier Reeve Biography

Franklin D'Olier "F.D." Reeve (September 18, 1928 - June 28, 2013) was an American academic, writer, poet, Russian translator, and editor. He was also the father of "Superman" actor Christopher Reeve. He was the grandson of the first American Legion national commander, Franklin D'Olier. Reeve was born in Philadelphia, the son of Anne Conrad D'Olier and Richard Henry Reeve. He was brought up outside New York City. Reeve worked in the wheat fields for a while during college and, after graduation, was a Hudson River longshoreman for a while. He graduated from Princeton University (1950) and Columbia University (1958), and in 1961 was one of the first exchanges between the American Council of Learned Societies and the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the late summer of 1962 he accompanied Robert Frost to Russia for his meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, where Reeve served as Frost's translator. Reeve started his academic career teaching Russian language and literature at Columbia University. After teaching at Columbia, Reeve moved to Wesleyan University in 1962 as chairman of the Russian Department. In 1967, he joined Wesleyan's inter-disciplinary College of Letters where he taught literature, humanities and creative writing until his retirement in 2002. During the course of his career he had visiting appointments at Oxford University, Yale, and Columbia. Since 1994 he lived in Wilmington, Vermont with his wife the novelist Laura Stevenson. Reeve was an officer of the Poetry Society of America, the founding editor of "Poetry Review," the secretary of Poets House in its formative years, and was associated with the New England Poetry Club and the New York Quarterly. He published over two dozen books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and translation. Reeve died on June 28, 2013 at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in Lebanon, New Hampshire from complications from diabetes. He was 84 and is survived by his fourth wife, Laura C. Stevenson, a novelist: his son Benjamin; a daughter, Alya, and two sons, Brock and Mark, all from his second marriage; two stepdaughters, Katharine O’Connell and Margaret Staloff; his sister, Anne Reeve Childs; his brother, Richard; and 18 grandchildren.)

The Best Poem Of Franklin D'Olier Reeve

Identity Crisis

He was urged to prepare for success: "You never can tell,
he was told over and over; "others have made it;
one dare not presume to predict. You never can tell.

Who's Who in America lists the order of cats
in hunting, fishing, bird-watching, farming,
domestic service- the dictionary order of cats

who have made it. Those not in the book are beyond the pale.
Not to succeed in you chosen profession is unthinkable.
Either you make it or- you're beyond the pale.

Do you understand?"
"No,' he shakes his head.
"Are you ready to forage for freedom?"
"No,' he adds,
"I mean, why is a cat always shaking his head?

Because he's thinking: who am I? I am not
only one-ninth of myself. I always am
all of the selves I have been and will be but am not."

"The normal cat,' I tell him, "soon adjusts
to others and to changing circumstances;
he makes his way the way he soon adjusts."

"I can't,' he says, "perhaps because I'm blue,
big-footed, lop-eared, socially awkward, impotent,
and I drink too much, whether because I'm blue

or because I like it, who knows. I want to escape
at five o'clock into an untouchable world
where the top is the bottom and everyone wants to escape

from the middle, everyone, every day. I mean,
I have visions of two green eyes rising
out of the ocean, blinking, knowing what I mean."

"Never mind the picture, repeat after me
the self's creed. What he tells you you
tells me and I repeats. Now, after me:

I love myself, I wish I would live well.
Your gift of love breaks through my self-defeat.
All prizes are blue. No cat admits defeat.
The next time that he lives he will live well."

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