OBITUARY | DONALD FINKEL

Finkel was acclaimed poet, longtime Washington U. teacher

BY ROBERT A. COHN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF EMERITUS

Donald Finkel, a highly acclaimed and honored poet and longtime teacher at Washington University in St. Louis, died Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008, from complications from Alzheimer's disease, at Schuetz Manor assisted-living home in Creve Couer. Mr. Finkel was 79, and a longtime resident of University City before moving to Lafayette Square.

Mr. Finkel was poet-in-residence at Washington University, where he taught from 1960 until 1991. He published 14 books of poetry. His work was described in an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by Michael Sorkin as poetry "with long narrative and frequently humorous free verse." "Admirers described it as a new form, a fusion of text and poetry," Sorkin added.

Mr. Finkel won numerous prestigious awards, among them the Theodore Roethke Memorial Foundation Award for his book of poetry, Adequate Earth, named after a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who died in 1963. Adequate Earth is a book-length poem based on the history of Antarctica. In 1969, Finkel was invited by the National Science Foundation to visit the American McMurdo Station because of his interest in exploration and in the Antarctic. His book, Answer Back, published in 1968, was based on Admiral Richard E. Byrd's experiences and the idea of survival underground. Mr. Finkel is the only poet to have gone on an expedition to Antarctica.

Sorkin's obituary in the P-D quotes Howard Schwartz, a former student of Finkel's and now professor of English at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, and himself a poet and author, as saying of Mr. Finkel's Antarctic sojourn, "He loved the idea that he would be the first poet to go there."

Sorkin adds that a group of Russians was there in Antarctica at the same time as Mr. Finkel, and he befriended them, trading "shots of vodka, and Mr. Finkel traded parkas with one of them." He recalled that he had given the parka to his father, and "My dad wore that parka for years."

Mr. Finkel and his family for a long time lived a block from River Des Peres in University City. Sorkin noted, "While most residents paid little attention to what normally is little more than a drainage ditch (although it recently had a major flood), Finkel was fascinated." Finkel "wanted to know where the river came from, where it went and its history. He and his dog walked its entire length. He wrote a poem, a slim volume called Beyond Despair, a play on the river's name."

Mr. Finkel was born in New York a few blocks from Yankee Stadium, in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. He completed high school at a boarding school in Connecticut, from which he once ran away with a classmate, Elliott Adnopoz, later famous as the folk singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott, according to Sorkin.

Mr. Finkel taught at the University of Iowa, where he met his future wife, and writing partner, the late Constance Urdang. They married in 1956, and spent a year-long honeymoon in Mexico before moving to St. Louis.

In 1977, Washington University started a graduate writing program with Ms. Urdang as the coordinator, Stanley Elkin teaching fiction and Mr. Finkel running the poetry workshop. Sorkin quotes David Clewell, poet and professor at Webster University, who came to St. Louis to study under Mr. Finkel and became his longtime friend. "He was a bearded skeleton, a belt-buckled force of nature. He dug into life as long as he could with a zest that really was unparalleled."

Sorkin points out that Finkel was fascinated with the Chinese poets who wrote about democracy during the Cultural Revolution "and got in trouble with the Communist government." Mr. Finkel and poet Carolyn Kizer translated a collection of the poetry in A Splintered Mirror.

In addition to the Roethke Memorial Foundation Award, Mr. Finkel was nominated for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award.

Mr. Finkel's wife died of lung cancer in 1996. Sorkin quotes their son, Tom Finkel, editor of The Riverfront Times and a resident of Webster Groves as saying, "She held him together," the two of them working as a team, editing and reading each other's work.

When Mr. Finkel grew unable to write, he returned to his earlier interest in sculpting. He constructed hundreds of works, from plastic bottles, odds and ends, anything he could find around his apartment. "His creative impulse never died," Sorkin quotes Howard Schwartz as saying.

Washington University plans a memorial service at a time and date to be set. For information, call the English Department at 314-935-5190.

In addition to Tom and Amy Finkel, among the survivors are another daughter, Liza Finkel of Portland, Ore.; a half-brother, David Finkel of New York and two grandchildren.

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