A Tribute To Grace Paley, Vermont Poet Laureate and NWU member
On Wednesday, August 22nd, Grace Paley died at her home in Thetford, Vermont
after a long battle with breast cancer. Grace, one of the country's outstanding short story writers and poets, was also a human rights activist and strong supporter of the labor movement and writers' rights. Small wonder that she happily served as an NWU Advisory Board member and spoke on several occasions at our Vermont chapter's annual meeting.
Last year, we asked if she would agree to our establishing a Grace Paley Fund for Vermont Writers. With the kindness, warmth and genuine enthusiasm she always showed to other writers, she graciously accepted -- even while admitting that she was somewhat embarrassed! She never let her designation as Vermont's poet laureate to go to her head. As she met with Vermonters all over the state -- in libraries, schools, and social gatherings, she was down to earth and modest to the end.
You can find more about the Grace Paley Fund here. Although the NWU administers the fund, it is open to applications from all low income Vermont writers who need some financial assistance for their writing projects.
Obituaries in The New York Times and The Washington Post are fitting tributes to Grace's creative skills. (Additional obituaries can be found, among others, at Democracy Now and maudnewton.com; Grace's last major interview was with the Los Angeles Times in June.)
We will miss Grace terribly, and offer the Union's sincerest condolences to her husband Bob Nichols and her family.
posted by paul @ 5:02 PM
2 Comments:
The last time I saw her was during the effort to bring the troops home, and the protest at [Congressman] Peter Welch's office, a few months ago. We all walked together down from the Peace and Justice Center to Welch's waterfront office and she waited with us for a word from Welch. Six were arrested as I recall. Her philosophy seemed to be to make 'little disturbances' by putting her body on the line regardless of the law or what people might think; but she always found kindred souls to do it with, which made it a cause rather than a lonely mission. She just made it a reasonable way to live a life.
Amazing Grace: we'll try to keep your steadfastness and humor with us in the difficult months ahead.
9/17/07 I first heard of Grace Paley years ago in the late 1970s when I was living in NYC and she was very active in the anti-nuke movement. It was therefore quite eery, or perhaps appropriate, that the news of her death appeared in the August 24, 2007 edition of the Burlington Free Press opposite a huge headline: "Nuclear Plant damage [at Vermont Yankee] is worse than reported." I'm sure Grace would have been very concerned about the obvious structural weaknesses revealed by the collapsed cooling tower and I'd like to think her work and the work of so many others will be taken even more seriously now.
The last time I heard her read
her poetry was at Johnson State College in June. 7 Days writer Mike Ives, who wrote a fine tribute for Grace, rightly described the scene:
"I felt as if everyone were admiring a prized gem in a traveling museum collection." I thought she was pretty feisty and
that maybe she was winning her battle with cancer. Her words that night struck me more than ever, however, and when I praised her afterwards for a particularly courageous poem that she wrote about her activism on the subject of the Middle East, she turned to me and said "That's what writers have to do. They have to be true and they have to be fearless."
We writers have so much to learn from her. But it was her fearlessness, her speaking truth to power, that will always stand out most in my mind.
Charlotte Dennett
Cambrige, VT
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