“Veni Creator Spiritus,” the monks chant. In the humble brown town of Taizé in southern France—the sky wide, navy blue, then salmon—if heaven nears heaven nears there. Crowds in the gymnasium-size sanctuary repeat the chants of the monks, beckoning the Holy Spirit in Latin. The chants grow loud as the sea, the chants fall like rain. Chants sung by strangers from all over the world. Hundreds of young people wander in, chanting—a surprise for Europe where we think of church as dead. But sometimes the dead resurrect, especially with art. Thousands every year chant, calling out for the Holy Spirit. They chant now. “Veni creator spiritus,” they chant.
I went there in the middle of composing this poem—this poem I shrunk, expanded, erased and rewrote over ten years, finally landing on the death of Steven Hobbs. I address William Shakespeare regarding Jesus Christ—the bard no fervent Christian. And yet. I wanted Shakespeare to know Jesus on this speed date in my poem.
I sang with monks, drank horrific granular coffee, slept in bunk beds with lumpy mattresses, scrunched up on the hard floor with hundreds in the worship space that smelled of sweaty armpits and dirty feet. I prayed one night with a Spanish Catholic priest. What I beseeched him for I cannot recall. Perhaps a shred of that prayer survives in this poem today. A desire to celebrate life, perhaps.
Acts took ten years to create and complete. I wanted to make a new sound, break sounds I had made in The Clerk’s Tale or The Road to Emmaus. I made up a nonce form, influenced by Henri Cole in his book Nothing to Declare, a way of talking to a poet I admire. I used short, short lines, sometimes one word, and occasionally dropped punctuation. New for me. In my previous book I’d run miles in the other direction, creating long-lined poems, poems that pushed the boundary between prose and poetry. Now I compressed. Sought lyric instead of story.
Grief the weather over my desk as I wrote some of these poems. Grief fogging up the windowpanes in particular poems. Grief came with its own weird chant, grief that strange emotion where you know what you miss before you understand why.
My father died. Louise Glück died. My uncle died. Friends died. The priest in Jackson Heights died. My coworker at Brooks Brothers died. College classmates died. Dying tracked me. Poetry was a chant to ward off the grief.
In this poem, a young man dies. Like in the poem, his name is Steven Hobbs. The name engraved into my tombstone of a poem. The ambition of the poem? Remember Steven Hobbs. The labor of the poem? Love. The words my Doric column for Eternity.
I met Steven Hobbs at Yale Divinity School. I was in my mid-forties; he early thirties. Thick Germanic locks of blonde hair, pale blue eyes like church windows, bright white teeth, horn-rimmed glasses, jeans, tweed jacket, light stubble peppering his upper lip. Movie star handsome. A dreamboat. George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Yet Steven didn’t pay much attention to his appearance, unlike gigolo Peppard in that film it wasn’t something he used—at least not with me.
Weirdly, an older gay man becoming an Episcopal priest, single, late to express my romantic self, I was not attracted to Steven “in that way;” no Henry Jamesian hope of even a mental tryst, but instead I became mentor, friend, father. Quickly, I felt this role I took up with him was necessary for him without knowing why. Every class we were in together, he sat next to me.
Steven, whom I called “Hobbs,” wanted to be a writer more than anything. He wrote short stories about his fundamentalist Christian childhood that did not serve him in his adult life. He was drawn to God, to unconventional me becoming a priest, but not conservative Evangelicals. He wrote about failed pastors in Florida.
Yale sent our class to Germany. Hobbs and I spent time on buses, between museums and Bach lectures. We chuckled through that trip. I told him my dream was to live in Europe. He told me his was to be published. He showed me his stories. I provided comments. I encouraged. “Hobbs you can do this, I believe in you.” “Hobbs, you’ve got talent.” When discussing the quixotic awarding of prizes, I focused on the work; what might be irresistible for the shelf after we were gone? “O bookshelf —/where is/Steven Hobbs?”
Married to Abigail Dunn, when he spoke of her, he gentled into a manly glow. Although I met her only once in passing, his love of her filled me with love. A Jesus love. A priestly love I suppose. I liked the feeling. To have joy for others is one of life’s balms. I loved when he told me about their life in New York City in an apartment the size of a sacristy, how he missed Abby when he commuted up to New Haven. Later I loved that he had a fruitful career as a college teacher in Brooklyn, loved that he was beloved by his students, loved that he started a reading series. Loved him.
Our last meeting was eight years after graduating. I lived in Spain. We met in New York City for coffee. We sat at Jack’s Coffee Shop, West 10th in the Village. He shared confidences with me I will take to the grave as a priest. I was floored that he trusted me with his vulnerability, things he’d only ever shared with a therapist or his wife. All we don’t say in this life. The world cooled.
Daniel Day Lewis walked past the window with an orange scarf, aloof and fabulous. Fame, coffee, and poetry jacked us up. We masticated sugar donuts. We talked about his new agent. New York City chanted its chants: the city a religion all its own.
Close to the end of my years in Spain, Hobbs was diagnosed with cancer. The pandemic hit in 2020, my parents’ health failed, I left Spain, and landed in a parish, St. Mark’s, in Jackson Heights, New York, for two years.
During this time, he promised to come for dinner to check out the Indian and Columbian cuisine in my neighborhood. But jazzy zippy New York City kept us on the phone and not in person. He was teaching on Zoom. I Zoomed bilingual Bible studies. Masking, distancing, vaccines. We kept in touch across the abyss of the virus.
Last call he said he saw Jesus in all the people in New York, as he stood on a street corner. His tone eerie, half in the world, half on the other side. I moved on to my next church task. I thought: Hobbs won’t die. I placed him on the prayer list at St. Mark’s. He’ll get better. He’s at Sloane-Kettering. Queens went on—Regatone, ambulances, rats.
On June 10th, 2022, Abigail wrote me: “This is Abby Dunn, wife of Steven Hobbs, I wanted to write you myself with the heart-shattering news that Steven has died. He passed around 2 AM yesterday. He died in my arms with his father beside the bed. Your friendship meant so much to Steven. I think you know that.”
If I didn’t know sorrow, Jesus, I knew sorrow now. I wanted my poem to shake the reader. His novel wasn’t finished. Wanted Hobbs alive. But no.
Unfair world. I opened the window, turned my head up the airshaft. My eyes scanned a narrow corridor of Queen’s sky between the pre-war brick buildings. I said to that azure rectangle: “God dammit, Hobbs.” I turned back to this poem in Acts. Buses opened their accordion doors. The 7 Train shot into the station. Humanity sluiced through Jackson Heights. I changed a word or two. Did I have the age right? Was he forty-one? Was it bile duct cancer? Was that right? Was it true he just had one story published?
The poem addressed to William Shakespeare: grand, I know. But why not something grand for Hobbs? In this book, I was thinking much on Shakespeare—his poems, his plays. Sonnet 18 lurks here: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see/So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
Because we met in seminary at the Institute of Sacred Music which provided us both scholarships, because literature and religion defined our chats, I wanted Shakespeare to do-si-do with Jesus in my poem. Hobbs, I thought you’d like that.
Finishing this poem in Queens, I spoke to Abigail on the phone: more silences than words. My poem refused to accept Hobbs forgotten. We have his short story published in Harvard Review. So, there’s that. I wish there was more for us. Wanted death not to be proud. Wanted Hobbs alive. But no.
Steven Earl Hobbs
(1980 – 2024)
“The Substance of Things Hoped For,” link to the short story by Steven Earl Hobbs: https://www.harvardreview.org/contributor/steven-earl-hobbs/
