By Tim Holm
France
The down-home Iowa people I knew always thought proudly of Paul Engle and loved and considered him as the friendly, local farm boy from Cedar Rapids who had made good and had become a kind of legend in his own day, though not just anyone from there could say exactly what he had done other than become an outstanding and beloved American poet and true patriot.
I supposed that being a literary Johnny Appleseed in deep farm country had its disadvantages when Paul told me in a letter in 1987 that as much as they enjoyed being in Iowa City, that it was "healthy for Hualing Nieh and him to get out of the confining and at times oppressive atmosphere..."
His mild show of frustration may have been due as much to their passion for travel, to see new places and meet people of other cultural backgrounds. International travel was deeply embedded in their nature and after all was said and done, he confided that "Hualing Nieh was so taken by Paris" during their visit in 1987 that "she was trying to arrange to sublet a French IWP program member, the playwright Liliane Atlan's apartment for 6 months soon after program director at the time and co founder, Hualing Nieh's "official resignation goes into effect" the following year.
It pleased them both that I had made arrangements for an Embassy reception at the Tallyrand Hotel on the Place de la Concorde for them with many of Paul's French admirers as guests including Robert Sabatier, René Tavernier and Michel Deguy, among many other fine poets and writers, and also an evening of American Poetry at the Maison de la Poesie where Rita Dove and C.K. Williams would read with Paul and all of the poems read in English were translated into French by 9 poet / translators including Jacques Darras, Jean-Jacques Celly, Claude Held, Jean Joubert, Jacques Demarcq, Catherine Mauger, Serge Fauchereau and René Tavernier, and which were also read aloud by Gérard Delfe.
Paul wrote after we first met at their home in Iowa City to talk about my becoming Representative in France for the IWP that the IWP "brings established and published writers (not students) from all parts of the world to make a community of literary imagination" in Iowa City. As Paul was not self serving, he didn't talk about to what great extent the long-term benefits of the IWP also include the spreading of human cooperation and understanding through his efforts and the work of its hundreds of program members from all over the world who have attended the program. But I got started right away upon my return to Paris meeting and trying to recruit writers for the IWP and got to meet Yann Queffélec, Eugene Guillevic, Alexandre Jardin, Annie Cohen Solal, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Jean Echenoz and others.
As I was leaving the Engle home at the end of that memorable first day of talking, eating and being introduced to the IWP staff by them, and after accepting me as their representative in Paris, Paul told me something which gave me an additional semblance of confidence in working with them. He assured me that "no one who helps the IWP will ever be left forgotten." I assumed that he was talking about me and that somehow I would be rewarded. What I didn't realize right then was that pleasure in working with them on the IWP would be the biggest reward and that my role in effect was to spread that pleasure to others.
I will always remember Paul as a simple poet from Iowa who accomplished the work of three men and was the kind of person you want to be with and believe in at your first encounter without ever getting let down later.
