Small, Precise Acts of Attention: Claude’s Life in Six Poems
This is the first in a two-part exploration of Claude’s life as a poet — private, luminous, and essential to understanding the whole arc of his creative life.
This week, I share four poems from Selected Poems (2005), each accompanied by a personal story or memory. Together, they trace six decades of Claude’s lyric vision — through youth, loss, friendship, longing, and, at last, enduring love.
In the paid section of this post, I’ve included two late, previously unpublished poems: Footsteps in the Snow (2007) and On Making Love with You: Ground and Divisions (2009). These were gifts Claude gave me — shared here alongside scans of the original working drafts and final versions, with a few reflections.
Next week, I’ll return to Claude’s early poetic work with a focus on several masterful poems from the 1940s and ’50s — searching, formally daring, and fiercely alive with intellect and desire.
Claude Fredericks (1923–2013) kept one of the longest personal journals ever recorded — more than 65,000 pages spanning eight decades, now housed at the Getty Research Institute. A poet, playwright, printer, teacher, and diarist, he recorded everything: daily rhythms, private longings, and moments of profound artistic insight. His Selected Poems (2005) gathers six decades of lyric work — intimate, philosophical, and formally exacting. Through his Banyan Press, he published works by Gertrude Stein, André Gide, James Merrill, and others. In the 1950s and ’60s, his own mythic, lyrical plays were staged Off-Broadway. Since January, I’ve been sharing excerpts from his journal here on Extracts — a life fully observed, and fully written.
The Poetic Thread
Claude’s Selected Poems (2005) gathers together verse written across more than six decades. If the plays offered a public invocation, the poems were often private spells — small, precise acts of attention. In Claude’s world, both mattered.
He chose as the book’s cover a painting by his close friend Marjory Morse, completed in the summer of 1944. It depicts Claude at twenty-one, writing the first lines of the seventeenth poem in the collection — a poem entitled ‘Six A.M.’ Look closely and the painting becomes its own kind of poem: a solitary young writer, caught mid-line, shadows deepening behind him, with two male figures standing in the distance, one with his arm around the other. Two classical statues stand in shadow — one headless, the other ghostly and watchful — beside a long corridor that recedes into darkness. The painting becomes a study in memory, longing, and vocation. It has hung in the dining room here ever since Claude moved into the house in 1948.
At the end of Selected Poems, Claude writes this:
These cries and whispers — of loneliness and yearning and loss, of brief joy and long grieving... lead finally in the last of the poems in this book to the love that was always sought but never found till then... All these poems are glimpses one after the other into the life that the long journal that was written simultaneously with the poems but is only now at last in the process of being, volume by volume, published gives detail and context and particularity.
The phrase ‘cries and whispers’ is a nod to Bergman’s 1972 film — a favorite of Claude’s. Like that film, Claude’s poems are concerned with intimacy, rupture, silence, and spirit — with what remains after language fails.
Here are four poems from that book — each drawn from a different decade of Claude’s life. Each with a story of how it came to be, what it meant to him, and what it came to mean to me.
A Very Young Girl’s Song (1941)
The fly spends his day
in satisfying
his two pressing lusts
and ends it by dying.
When cold he sleeps or dies,
both save, and when
hungry he settles
on bread. He has been
taught from that to settle
on his love’s back, sin,
chase her if she flies,
then to bread again.
O that I might die
by ending my day
or even sleep. I
cannot even pray
the hunger stop
that has devoured my head.
How can I seize him and
kiss him alone in my dark bed?
11 September 1941
Beginnings in Harvard Yard
Claude wrote this poem when he was eighteen, and a first-year student at Harvard. It was 1941–42, and war had just broken out. He had grown up in Springfield, Missouri — born there in 1923 and leaving for Harvard in 1941 — years I’ll return to soon on Extracts, especially that formative stretch of childhood and early adolescence. He landed at Harvard after acing his college boards, especially in English, and was excused from the required English A course. Even more unusually for a first-year student, he was admitted to a graduate-level tutorial on Oriental art with Langdon Warner (1881–1955), Curator of Oriental Art at Harvard’s Fogg Museum — and to a Greek course with the legendary classicist John Finley (1904–1995). Both men made rare exceptions to allow him in.
More important than coursework, though, was a poetry workshop that met in attic rooms above Widener Library. It was made up of six or eight undergraduates — all young men — and led by two extraordinary poet-mentors: John Berryman (1914-1972) and Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966). Claude became especially close with Berryman, sharing evenings with him and his wife on Charles Street in Boston, listening to classical records and talking long into the night.
Each year, the group selected a winning poem from among those submitted. That year, A Very Young Girl’s Song was the clear choice. But Claude later learned that, because of its homoerotic theme, it couldn’t be officially awarded the prize. Rather than choosing another poem, the group simply declined to name a winner — a gesture Claude always remembered as quiet, and deeply meaningful. Berryman, offering wholehearted encouragement to the young poet, told him at the time: ‘It’s as fine a poem as any Eliot wrote when he was an undergrad at Harvard.’
In S. Maria Aracoeli (1951)
Ecce ara primogeniti Dei Would I have dared such a journey? To leave behind me all the royal equipment, the barges and swans, the hungry and homeless, all I had been taught to assume, my childhood’s vast inheritance, push aside the thickets, wade the swamps, penetrate the snakefilled night, cool the flycaught fever, dare behold at last the sleeping child enveloped in his green adoring pod of angels, dare find the place the Sybil said time had stopped, dare, since it was he who was king, kneel at his feet and lay all my riches there? Now at last the very columns of the temples, the architraves of all the splendid forums, impaired by time and fallen in its dust, have been incorporated into that worship, not by one bold deed but by history’s perseverance. Could one pilgrim, even one golden pilgrim, even had he had the future in his hand like a map, have dared act on his knowledge? And am I now to encompass the centuries in my one, brief, and transitory life, absorb the destinies of an empire in the mere multiplicities of my blood? Is a child the promise of a world to one who inhabits what he calls a world, is there wisdom in the lisping, is there good in the small and awkward hand? She has come again and said where and how and on which day. Do I go? The phoenix flies away, and all I see are its great wings trailing, splendor even in the seeing more than I have known, like an emperor’s robe trailing in the expanding sky. July 1951
A Pilgrimage in Rome
Claude wrote this poem while living in Rome during the final period of his relationship with the poet James Merrill (1926–1995). After traveling together through Europe, including time in Mallorca, they settled in Rome in the early 1950s. Initially, they shared a residence, but over the course of several months, they took separate quarters and eventually parted ways romantically. Despite the end of their romantic relationship, they remained lifelong friends. Claude deeply admired Merrill’s poetry and was an early encourager of his work, including the ambitious long poem that would become The Changing Light at Sandover (1982). Their time in Rome marked both an ending and a beginning—of enduring friendship and mutual artistic respect.
Claude once described to me an almost mystical experience he had at S. Maria Aracoeli during this period — the 6th-century church perched atop the Capitoline Hill (built over the ruins of the ancient Temple of Juno Moneta). There are two grand staircases leading up: one to the Capitoline Museums, the other to Aracoeli. Claude took the latter route, ascending alone. When he reached the top, a sudden thunderstorm broke out. Fierce lightning flashed across the rooftops of the city. Claude told me he had never seen such a violent storm in Rome — or anywhere else.
That moment seems to animate the poem. Claude places himself not just in the grandeur of ancient Rome, but within the long procession of pilgrims, emperors, and seekers who came before him. There’s a deep humility in the voice — a questioning of worthiness, of how much one person can carry, of what it means to offer oneself wholly. It’s a poem about belief and doubt, radiance and ruin, and the risks of devotion — to a god, to a city, to love itself.
To Shirley Jackson: For Hermes To Take When He Goes That Way (1965)
You did it so— . . .courteously, Shirley,
with such modest simplicity.
You were in fact gross and ungainly in all that perishes,
in house and garden, in field and stream,
looking like some harridan from a comic book.
But in all that endures,
words first, sacred written words,
that capture all the spirit’s subtleties,
in intimacy with child and animal,
in knowledge of the mysteries,
you were fine and elegant,
and one could only have expected this courtesy from you.
It was Artemis, sitting on the hill in North Bennington,
who let fly a single arrow and zing! you were
liberated from all that grossness you never understood,
and that fine slim girlish spirit, yours,
free from those forty-five years of body dungeon,
stepped forth like a princess from an orange
and, strolling toward Lake Paran, wandered— . . . ah, where?
Cats mewed softly as you passed.
Sweet gentle spirit.
23 August 1965
Sweet Gentle Spirit
Claude loved the writer Shirley Jackson (1916-1965). At the time, she was the wife of his colleague at Bennington College, the critic Stanley Edgar Hyman (1919-1970). She is now firmly in the American canon — known for The Lottery, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and more. But even then, she was finding national recognition. Her memoir Life Among the Savages, about raising four children, is both hilarious and sharp.
Claude enjoyed visiting Shirley and Stanley at their house in North Bennington. She was, like him, an excellent cook. They exchanged recipes. Stanley could be difficult — a heavy drinker — and their household was often tumultuous. But there was a real warmth between Claude and Shirley. She and Stanley visited Claude in Pawlet several times. Years later, he became close with their son Laurence Hyman, a gifted photographer and someone I’m still in touch with. He subscribes to Extracts, and has asked when I plan to write about Bennington in the ’60s (soon again, I hope.)
When critic Ruth Franklin began researching her biography of Jackson, A Rather Haunted Life (2016), I worked to locate and send her passages from Claude’s journals (from my copy here at home), though she also visited the originals at the Getty. We became friends during that time — and I even adopted two kittens from her: Castor and Pollux. (Castor is still with us.)
In 2023, the Folio Society reissued We Have Always Lived in the Castle with an afterword by Donna Tartt — Claude’s former student and longtime friend. She writes movingly about Claude’s friendship with Jackson and quotes this poem directly:
Claude, who taught classics, talked instead about Shirley’s greatness in all that endures and, not long after she died, he wrote a poem about the gracefulness and modesty of her all too premature death—slipping away into the underworld like a kore, during an afternoon nap… It pleases me to think how Jackson would have—for once—felt herself seen and understood by [Claude’s lines]. The charm and grace Claude saw in her as a person is the same unearthly charm we recognize in the Blackwood sisters [the novel’s reclusive protagonists], with their cordials and their silver, picking herbs for kitchen magic and conversing with their black cat.
A Thousand Hyperboles All Of Which Are Sterling Truth (2004)
Like that juggler at midnight
before the silent altar in the empty church
who, having nothing else to show his love with,
threw his oranges and limes—all nine of them—high in the air
and gaily laughing at his own skill
kept them all in festive motion
until she whose face an icon there depicted
herself appeared and blessed him
with all he had ever dreamed of having,
preferring his gift—his only capacity—
to all the gilded artifacts
the other brothers had celebrated the saint’s feast day with,
so I now you—I who have only words to give, these,
the only thing I ever had
as my single inalienable capacity,
the fruit of which is now in every way yours, whatever I ever wrote or shall,
you who are the one I love,
the one I waited a lifetime to find & have as my true & loyal friend,
waited until that moment, chastened by suffering
and strengthened by renewed yearning, made ready & worthy at last,
I saw you swoop all the way down from that faraway heaven
where you were for aeons of time patiently waiting
there to that little café at the river’s edge in Peterborough
and afterwards to that inn and all its billowy bliss in Wilton
in an epiphany that fulfilled in fact
all those dim intuitions I had had the very first time I’d seen you years before,
John in the wilderness but this time announcing his own self,
and finally brought you at last to the house and land in Pawlet
that is our true Eden.
Now it is nine years since that moment, since the revolving heavens
came back to the spot they had left two solstices added to two equinoxes before
making each of those nine years, making the months—
and the days and the hours and the minutes in them—
that sweet & undying bliss, love’s, ours, neither you nor I had ever known before,
to begin, this very day, the tenth of these beatitudes that fill our whole being,
you, who are the perfect embodiment of all that most beautiful is,
most beautiful and most perfect, the only one
capable of loving and being loved,
a single act that is miracle like no other,
and I, who love you with all I am and have and know.
30 July 2004
The Juggler and the Gift
Claude gave me this poem to mark our ninth anniversary — July 30, 2004. It was his gift to mark the day I had moved to Pawlet nine years earlier. His poem dates itself precisely: ‘Now it is nine years since the revolving heavens / came back to the spot they had left…’
Sometimes he gave me objects. But now and then — always a treat — he gave me poems, typed in blue and marked by hand in red. These were gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, or holidays, wrapped with care in exquisite papers from his Banyan Press stock: marbled Italian, patterned French, or delicate Japanese sheets. Unwrapping them was part of the offering — a gesture as intentional as the poem itself.
In this one, he compares himself to the juggler of Notre Dame — the humble figure from the medieval French tale who, having no gold or incense to offer the Virgin, performs his juggling as a pure act of devotion. Claude echoes that gesture: the man tossing oranges and limes in an empty church becomes a stand-in for the poet, offering up his words. Claude saw his poems that way — not as monuments, but as offerings. Small acts of love, thrown high in the air.
It ends with a plainspoken blessing — one of the most direct and encompassing declarations of love Claude ever wrote.
[Y]ou, who are the perfect embodiment of all that most beautiful is, most beautiful and most perfect, the only one capable of loving and being loved, a single act that is miracle like no other, and I, who love you with all I am and have and know.
A Quiet Autobiography
These poems — written over sixty-three years — form a quiet autobiography. One that runs concurrently, as Claude said, with his journal. If the diary recorded days, these verses distilled them.
While preparing this post, I stumbled on a black springback binder Claude had labeled simply: POEMS. Inside were two unpublished pieces, written after Selected Poems — one from Christmas 2007, and one from Thanksgiving 2009. Typed in blue, corrected in red, they were gifts: love poems he wrote for me.
For Paid Subscribers: Two Late Love Poems
Footsteps in the Snow (2007) and On Making Love with You: Ground and Divisions (2009), with scans of Claude’s original typescripts.
Coming Up Next
Next week, I’ll continue exploring Claude’s life as a poet — returning to his early work from the 1940s and ’50s, including several luminous and formally ambitious poems that first revealed his voice. I’ll also share more journal entries written while we were preparing Selected Poems (2005) together — pages that reflect on craft, memory, and the meaning of lyric expression late in life.
If the plays offered a public invocation, the poems were often private spells — small, precise acts of attention. In Claude’s world, both mattered.
Stay Engaged and Share the Journey
Are you finding meaning in these glimpses into Claude’s world? I’d love to know what resonates with you — leave a comment, or share this post with someone who might feel a kinship with Claude’s work: as a poet, a diarist, a seeker of form and feeling.
Do you write poems? Keep a journal? Have a private creative practice that shapes how you move through the world?
Claude believed it all mattered — that attention was a kind of devotion, and that even the most personal acts of making could carry a sacred charge.
If these poems sparked a memory, or reminded you of your own creative rituals, I’d be honored to hear about it.
—Marc
Copyright Notice: All journal entries and photographs are © Marc Harrington. No portion of these materials—whether photographs, full journal entries, excerpts, or extracts—may be used or reproduced in any form without written permission. With gratitude to the Getty Research Institute for preserving the original manuscripts.
P.S. On This Week’s Title: Small, Precise Acts of Attention
I considered a few titles for this post — including Cries and Whispers, Claude’s own phrase from the afterword at the end of Selected Poems. But I kept returning to Small, Precise Acts of Attention. It felt closer to the spirit of these poems — and to Claude himself.
His poems didn’t announce themselves. They noticed. A glance, a silence, a print of a foot in snow. They stayed with the moment — then shaped it with care, line by line, into something lasting. Even in the drafts I’ve shared here, you can see it: every word considered, every mark deliberate.
Claude believed that kind of attention mattered — not just in writing, but in love, and in how we live. That’s why I chose it. It’s how he moved through the world.
—MH
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