On Publishing Peggy Freydberg

By Betsy BornsAugust 25, 2015

On Publishing Peggy Freydberg

MARGARET “PEGGY” FREYDBERG is not another hot young poet. She began writing at age 90, and her exquisitely felt, gorgeously written Poems from the Pond was published this year; she died some weeks earlier, soon after her 107th birthday.


In an age of ephemera, this collection reminds us that some things are eternal. In the words of Billy Collins, two-term poet laureate of the United States, “Reading these poems made me feel like I was being let in on a secret, a secret I’m dying to whisper to lots of other people.”


freydberg


Among the collection of 32 poems are beautifully spare photos of Peggy’s life on Martha’s Vineyard, along with excerpts from her previously published memoir, Growing Up in Old Age. In both poem and memoir, Peggy lays bare the soul of an alternately idolized and infantilized mid-century American woman, and that soul’s salvation through writing, as in the end of “The Book Signing”:


But then,
and I must say,
like the relentless beating of a small hammer,
my mind
raging for its rightful use,
demanded
finally,
its rightful recognition
It had been too long buried,
not to need,
with its deliverance,
the recognition
of those who had been sure
of its non-existence.


“I never knew you could think like that.”
The most treasured words of my life.
Though he had had no way of knowing
about a mind that raged in darkness
for his approval of it.


Escaping a home “drenched in a sense of melancholy,” Peggy married for love. Several years after her husband’s untimely death, Peggy married again, for passion. In “Call Me But Love And I’ll Be New Baptized” Peggy revels in the heat of her winter romance:


As we stood,
Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier
which had been playing quietly in the living room —
solitary, far from our mood,
softening corners —
burst astonishingly into the great crescendo of the waltz.


I turned to look at him.
Grave, startled,
He looked back at me.
And this had a meaning.
It had connection with the sudden blast of music
which was rising up in me like an eruption
of the earth beneath my feet.


Then all at once,
Instead of body,
I was fountain.
I was not woman,
I was water with another name.
With perfect, innate delirium,
I was a torrent
sparkling from the earth
up to the sky


So how is a 106-year-old poet discovered? In Hollywood fashion, it turns out, by Academy Award–winning producer (An Inconvenient Truth) Laurie David.


Full disclosure: I’ve known Laurie, this book’s editor, for many years. I knew her in the ’80s as a talent booker on The David Letterman Show, in the ’90s as a development executive at Fox network, in the aughts as an environmental activist, and most recently as an author (of The Family Dinner Book) and anti-childhood obesity advocate. Like Peggy, Laurie not only nudges aside F. Scott Fitzgerald’s contention that American lives have no second acts, she trounces and kicks it down the road. Recently, I interviewed Laurie about Poems from the Pond.


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BETSY BORNS: What led you to this project?


LAURIE DAVID: I became an empty-nester. When my second daughter went to college, I stayed on my farm in Martha’s Vineyard. Normally I’d go back to LA, get caught up in my kids’ lives, but now I could just stay here. It’s gorgeous, and I still have food in my garden. And since I stayed longer, I made an effort to become part of the community.


How did you meet Peggy?


I heard, thirdhand, about a woman, a local icon, Nancy Slonim Aronie. She runs the Chilmark Writing Workshop on the island. All summer I heard people say, “Do you know about this poet living on Stonewall Pond?” Then I heard Nancy was having a reading of the poet — and it was Peggy Freydberg. When I heard she was 106 years old, I thought, “I have to go. I have to hear this woman.”


So one afternoon, this past fall, I went to Nancy’s reading. I sat in the back and watched this old woman, Peggy, sitting in a chair next to Nancy as different people got up and read her poems (because she can no longer see well enough to read).


Before this, Nancy had reconnected with Peggy after 20 years. When she heard her poems she started weeping and asked Peggy, “Why aren’t you famous? Why doesn’t everyone know your work?” In her humble way, Peggy just said matter of factly, “I don’t know.” So Nancy felt that the one thing she could do for her, at 106, is give her a moment in her studio, with local friends, to be heard — and that’s what I walked in on.


How did you feel about the poems when you heard them?


My jaw dropped. I could not believe how good they were. One of my few skills in life — if you can call it a skill — is that I can recognize talent. I’ve done it with politicians, writers, people in general. I’m very attracted to talent. I know when it’s authentic and real, and I get really excited about it. If you match that skill with another thing I have — which is being a real pain in the ass — you get what’s called an advocate. If I discover something, I can’t just keep it to myself. I have to share it with other people.


If I connect the dots on an issue, I feel it’s incumbent on me to do something to educate other people about it. If I read a book I love I have to tell 20 people about it. It’s the core of who I am. To me, it doesn’t matter if the person’s 106 years old. If she’s brilliant, her poetry needs to be read.


Everything I do has an element of “it has to change people’s lives.” I felt like that about Peggy’s poems, like they would help people. Poetry has the power to change people. Great poems become your lifelong friends, and who the hell doesn’t need more of those? They soothe you, warm you up, and make you feel less lonely. They’re like therapy.


When you read Peggy’s poetry, as a whole, you can feel the element of abandonment — by her husbands, who died, and other people. Did you relate to it because your kids left?


Probably. We have this huge baby boom generation, and we’re aging. We’re in our 50s and 60s now, and I think Peggy’s message is relevant to us. At 90 she felt an urge to express herself. She felt that she hadn’t said what she wanted to say — and started writing the most powerful poems at 90.


Creativity has no age limit, and I think, culturally, we have to embrace that. We have to stop thinking that our lives are coming to an end because we’re over 50. Or even over 70. I’m 57, so it definitely resonated with me. Who knows? My best days could be ahead of me.


I think it’s strange that most products are marketed to people younger than 35, but the people with all the money are over 35.


And those people want wisdom, which is what this book is about. That’s why it says “107 Years of Words and Wisdom” under the title. We’re wiser than we were 10 years ago, everyone is. We have to stop putting the people with experience out to pasture — I feel this book has that message. Peggy wrote most of the poems between 90 and 100. She wrote about falling in love when she was in her 90s! At 92, Peggy wrote a poem about the physical ecstasy of love.


I love that she’s bringing eroticism back to old age.


What I couldn’t get over, when I met her, was that she could not believe anyone was interested in her poems. She wrote five novels that got a little more attention, locally, and I want to reissue them.


Why did Peggy start writing poetry?


She started at 80, because she had a lot of anxiety. She couldn’t bear the fact that she was going to spend her last days being afraid of being afraid. She was married to two publishers, but she was too intimidated to write. She wasn’t loved for her brains — she was loved for her beauty. She was the beautiful appendage on the arm of Nicholas Freydberg, who started Basic Books. Like most women, she had low self-esteem.


Why did you include excerpts from Peggy’s memoir in the book?


I think most poetry is intimidating. I think it’s more accessible if you present the poetry with the poet, and that’s what I wanted to do here. That’s why it includes excerpts from her memoir. If you can understand the poet, the poems will make sense to you. Knowing that Peggy grew up with two siblings who were blind makes you understand a lot of what Peggy writes about. In one poem, she writes about a night when all the lights went out, and she finally understood the terror of her siblings.


And I wanted people to see the place that inspired her — to see the beautiful pond that she saw out of her window when she wrote poetry. That’s on the cover. I want people to feel like they’re Peggy, looking through her window — seeing a bit inside her head.


I think this book proves that creativity has no age limit. Peggy is proof positive of that. I think that’s a message we desperately need to hear, especially now, as our population ages. If you’re still breathing, you’ve still got something left to give.


I love her poems about ritual. She wrote about making the bed every day because it proves she’s still alive. I connected with that so deeply, I now make my bed ever morning.


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Betsy Borns is the author of Comic Lives: Inside the World of American Stand-Up Comedy and is a writer and producer for television, best known for her work on RoseanneFriends, and as the creator of All of Us.

LARB Contributor

Betsy Borns is the author of Comic Lives: Inside the World of American Stand-Up Comedy and is a writer and producer for television, best known for her work on RoseanneFriends, and as the creator of All of Us.

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