In Memoriam Robert Buttel (1923–2023)

In Memoriam Robert Buttel (1923–2023) Peter Hanchak, John N. Serio, Milton J. Bates, and George S. Lensing Editorial note: Our Editorial Board Member Robert Buttel passed away on April 20, 2023, at the age of ninety-nine, at his home in Providence, Rhode Island. Bob had been the longest-serving Board Member of this journal: he started out in 1984, thus serving for nearly four decades. Below we would like to honor him with four personal testimonies by Wallace Stevens’s grandson, Peter Hanchak, our Honorary Editor John Serio, fellow Board Member Milton Bates, and former Book Review Editor and Board Member George Lensing. In the world of Stevens criticism, Bob’s name is remembered especially for two major books that have continued to be used by subsequent generations: his monograph Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium (Princeton UP, 1967), whose title we will italicize in its entirety below to make for easier reading; and a volume of essays, edited together with Frank Doggett, Wallace Stevens: A Celebration (Princeton UP, 1980), which not only showcased the work of a range of stellar critics at the time but also included important personal recollections by Holly Stevens and a variety of previously unpublished poetic and prose writings by Stevens himself. Personal Recollections I am privileged to have had the pleasure of Robert Buttel’s company over a significant span of years and in a variety of settings. He and his wife, Helen, were some of the most naturally gracious people I have ever known. They also maintained a wonderfully warm friendship with my mother, Holly Stevens, until her death in 1992. In the 1960s, after two trimesters at Beloit College, I visited Bob and Helen over the Christmas holiday and they asked me if I would recommend Beloit for their son, Jeffrey, who was one year behind me. Jeff liked his visit to Beloit and decided to attend, where, in fact, he also met and married a classmate of mine. After a year in San Francisco, I then transferred to Temple University, where I was able, once again, to spend more time with the Buttels. In the early 1970s, my first wife and I decided to flee the urban chaos of Philadelphia and join the “back-to-the-land” initiative by moving to rural Maine. After a nine-year stint, I returned to Philadelphia as a journeyman electrician and renewed my friendship with Bob and Helen. They had moved from their large home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, to Front Street [End Page 262] in South Philly, where they had converted an old mattress factory into a spiffy modern home. I soon discovered Bob’s enthusiasm for tennis and I set up a spot and date and we bashed away for several hours, during which I received a precious tutorial. I later found out Bob had a national ranking in singles for his age class(!). In one of our wonderfully easy conversations, he confided to me that he was thinking of taking up golf, even though he was at an advanced age. I had played golf all through my youth and picked it up again in my thirties, becoming a respectable player and keeping a handicap in the 11–12 range, frequently scoring in the seventies. Bob and I played a couple of my favorite courses and, man!, was he a quick learner! A little over a year later, he already had a hole in one, something I never managed to accomplish. He had the disposition, the long arc of a 6’3” guy, and the dedication to keep strictly to good form. He was a dear friend, a wonderful conversationalist, and an inspiring athlete. I will miss him. Peter Hanchak A Renaissance Man Robert Buttel, although a literary critic, possessed one of the characteristics that Ezra Pound once said of artists: they are the antennae of the race. Bob possessed that rare quality to be among the first to discern distinction in a poet. In the late 1940s, when there was not one book devoted to Wallace Stevens and most articles were in the form of reviews, Bob selected for his MA thesis “Credences of Summer,” which had...