Margotlog: Trish Hampl's "Pilgrim Soul"

Margotlog: Trish Hampl's "Pilgrim Soul"

It's as if I've been waiting to use Yeats' astonishing phrase until my dear friend and honored writer Patricia Hampl was about to retire from the University of Minnesota. Little did I know, years ago, that she'd been hovering in the fields where I would eventually spy my husband-to-be, sitting across from me at her townhouse. This was long after they'd worked together on the Minnesota Daily, long before I knew either of them. But when W. B. Yeats wrote "When You Are Old," he traversed the life of a woman he loved and discovered within her a love that belonged "amid a crowd of stars."
     Trish lost her dear husband Terry Williams, one of the most self-effacing and meticulous people I've ever known. I lost my first husband via divorce, but kept the daughter. Perhaps being a pilgrim  means walking along rough paths as well as catching glimpses of perfection.
     For me, some of the finest prose written by anyone in our era has come from Patricia Hampl. My favorite of her memoirs remains A Romantic Education, published after she'd established a name as a poet. Reading about her romantic education felt a lot like reading about my own, except it was so exquisitely expressed. I had to read some paragraphs over and over, perhaps because reading it as I did, before I knew her better, felt like entering a romance so enticing that I had to be a part of it.
     This evening, Trish will be honored as a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota. She is retiring. I and many others will be there to applaud dear Trish, who has traced her path among the stars, even as she has held hands with us, given voice to her marvelous gifts, and continues to make so many of us happy. May she be the same.