Dear Judy,
A very close friend, a prominent member of the community and serious professional died of a massive heart attack recently and I was devastated.
It got worse after we – her other friends and I — discovered what was in her Will. In it she asked me to help have her poems published. Trust me, I never discussed this with her before she died. She was a great professor (of physics), taught beautifully. But she wrote very badly. And the poems are agony to read.
Yes, she set aside a sum of money to pay a vanity press publisher. But when her stuff sees daylight, it will undermine her memory and reputation.
Question: Should I maintain her dignity or her last wishes?
Fiona
Dear Fiona,
Stop worrying and abide by your friend’s last wishes. If the poems are as awful as you claim, and the publisher has to be paid to turn them into book form, then I’ll bet anything distribution will be minimal.
No one will see them. And no one will read them. Your late friend will remain in everyone’s memory exactly what she was in life: a brilliant and gifted professor.
Thank you for writing
Judy
I just bet Fiona’s friend knew how bad her poems were: if she left enough money to have them published after her death, she also had enough cash to do it while she was still alive, right? But hey, she chose not to! No one knew the woman was a poet back then, did they? She also perhaps knew how people might judge her “poetry.” So — publish and be damned!
That friend was trying to deliver a message to the living: “Surprise! I was not exactly the person you thought I was. There was a hidden side to me.” Fiona should be glad her friend was not a clandestine stripper who wants her films put on Youtube. Publish the book, and forget it.
Someone should tell Fiona to clarify in the book’s introduction that she’s simply complying with her late friend’s explicit wishes. That should solve the problem, right? (Hey, Judy, I should be doing thecheckoutline instead of you!)
As a librarian, I can tell you that most poetry which sees the light, including poems written by so-called serious poets, is mediocre. Sometimes an agony to read. So what if a dead woman had her thwarted (maybe deservedly thwarted) dreams? Be glad she found a way to express herself to herself.
Who the hell know why someone so successful in one field spends a life yearning for recognition in another? Did Fiona’s friend see herself as what she was? No, she viewed herself as a failed poet. Publish her now!
Spend the money on a grant for a struggling student, which is a much more fitting - and beneficial - memorial.
She asked you to get them in print. She didn’t specify the distribution. So get them in print, say 50 copies, and give them to her family.