What Do Poets Talk About?

J. D. McClatchy with his husband, Chip Kidd.

J. D. McClatchy, one of America’s foremost men of letters, died in his home Tuesday at the age of seventy-two. He was the author of eight volumes of poetry and a string of acclaimed opera librettos. He also was a prolific editor, anthologist, translator, critic, the longtime editor of The Yale Review, and the president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He won too many awards and fellowships to list with brevity here. His poems appeared frequently in The Paris Review, and his appeared in our Fall 2002 issue. I first met him when I