Posts Tagged ‘Daniel Rifenburgh’

Not a bad place to hide. Queen Mary in its heyday. (Creative Commons)

It’s tough for poets to get attention for their poetry. But some writers start young and get a head start on fame … or even  notoriety.

So it was for Dan Rifenburgh (we’ve written about him here and here), who found infamy sooner than most, at age 15. The poet, veteran, and former truck driver  shared his story on about his 1964 experiences as a stowaway on the legendary British ocean liner Queen Mary. In Dan’s own words:

“I walked on board in Manhattan. My folks figured out I might be on the Mary. The ship was searched at sea. I was found and put in the brig. At Southhampton, I was given a small cabin and had two guards on me (Cunard pensioners). I gave them the slip and hitchhiked to London. My last ride, a Polish bulldozer driver, put me up with his family.”

A more lasting kind of fame…

“I saw the Tower, the Palace, St. Paul’s, Trafalgar Square. My face was on the cover of all the English papers. I had no money. I walked into a police station and gave myself up. I spent two weeks in a juvenile Remand Home and played soccer and cricket, then was put on the Queen Elizabeth and home to New York.”

“My Dad had to pay, but we sold my story to a journalist for enough to cover the trip. My photo was in the centerfold of the Daily News and I was on all New York television and radio for days. In our town of Port Chester, New York, I was something of a celebrity. They still remember.”

The ocean liner was retired a few years later (nothing to do with Dan), and is now permanently moored in Long Beach, California. The newspaper clip above is from a Liverpool or Manchester paper – Dan can’t remember which.

Reuters verifies the story below, which is recounted in The New York Times, too – here and here. 

SOUTHAMPTON, England, July 15 (Reuters)—A 15‐year-old American stowaway escaped from the Queen Mary here today and vanished.

The boy, Daniel Rifenburgh, whose father is vice president of a Port Chester, N. Y., glass manufacturing concern, was trying to travel to Switzerland to visit a friend.

He walked down the ship’s gangplank and mingled with workers going through the dock gates into town.

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I met poet Daniel Rifenburgh ohhhhh… a dozen-or-so years ago.  We’ve stayed in touch since.  We had an unforgettable June evening together at the West Chester Poetry Conference.  We were in a rented car crammed with people, en route from the university to the home of Michael Peich, conference’s co-founder (with Dana Gioia).  As I recall, David Slavitt was piled into the car, too.  Can’t remember who else … plenty of people pushed into a small vehicle.

Dan was driving – as I recall he was a taxi-driver at that time, so he was pro.  Later, he taught at the University of Houston.  Now he drives an 18-wheeler flatbed rig, hauling steel out of the Port of Houston.  On that particular night, however, he had the misfortune to appoint me as his co-pilot and hand me the maps.  We quickly became confused and lost in the suburban Pennsylvania neighborhood, with its winding, pointless streets, but we were having fun, anyway.  We may have been the only ones in the car who were.  We found the party eventually, and stayed in touch over the years, respectfully addressing each other by title, always – “co-pilot.”

So I was pleased to receive in the mail his newest volume of poems, Isthmus (it was signed – what else? – “To my co-pilot, Cynthia, with admiration and affection”).  I was also pleased to hear that we have a mutual friend, Anne Stevenson.  Here’s what she wrote about his poems in London Magazine, after recounting a career that included serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era, and working his way through Latin America as a reporter: “Rifenburgh is enjoyable because he ranges at large over many subjects, testing, exploring, reporting, celebrating; he has many moods … Yet, for all his ironic witticisms, Rifenburgh is, au fond, a profoundly spiritual poet, committed, like Hecht and Wilbur, to declaring his seriousness.”

A better way to get around Pennsylvania?

Other supporters include Richard Wilbur, who says his poems “can also stun the reader with a brilliant, slow-fuse image. What governs the movement of the poems is a genius for the speaking voice.”  Isthmus is dedicated to Donald Justice, who said Dan’s poems “are terrific: so fluent, so smart, and brimming with charm.”  Both Justice and Anthony Hecht figure in the poems, as dedicatees or the source of subject matter or epigrams – and Adam Zagajewski, who taught with Dan in Houston, makes a welcome guest appearance, too.  Hecht wrote, characteristically, “These poems are startling in their vividness, skill, their originality and solidity. I find that lines and images resonate long after they have served the purposes of their local contents.”

Dan said I could reprint a poem – but which?  Sometimes the first choices are best.  When I opened the book, my eyes fell on this one, and I liked it.  It grabs me still, though I haven’t read them all, so I can’t claim it’s my favorite yet.

The Fragments of Heraclitus

The name of the bow is life, but its work is death.
.                            The Fragments

The fragments of Heraclitus,
Compact, trenchant, inscrutable,

Are lovely in their resistance
To analysis. Therefore, from sympathy,

And, being immortal,
They sometimes assume human forms

To attend unnoticed the burials of critics.
They hold by their brims dark fedoras and,

Standing aloof, stolid, anonymous,
Listen respectfully to brief eulogies

While the great world sifts noiselessly
Down through time’s latticework

And the bow named life,
Accomplishing its work, later

Sends them strolling like slow arrows
Away from these shaded gravesites,

Pacing back cleansed
Into birdsong and light.