JUSTICE DONE

“I am not sure that Don Justice would want much said about him. He was a fastidiously private person where it mattered, that is, in public,” said poet Mark Strand at a tribute to the late poet Donald Justice at the National Arts Club, hosted by the Poetry Society of America and Alfred A. Knopf.

“He did not like to call attention to himself, at least not overtly, and cultivated an amiable distance between himself and others, which, over time, would close and finally cease to exist. He was the ‘thin man’ of his poem ‘The Thin Man'”:

I indulge myself
In rich refusals.
Nothing suffices.
I hone myself to
This edge. Asleep, I
Am a horizon.

Justice, a Pulitzer Prize winner who died in August at 78, was known for “poems of great formal beauty about the evanescent moments of life and treasured scenes of childhood and youth,” Poetry Society executive director and New Yorker poetry editor Alice Quinn poetry told the Knickerbocker.

In her introduction that evening, Ms. Quinn paid homage to the late Harry Ford, the former poetry editor at Knopf, Justice’s lifelong publisher; and to Justice’s last editor, Deborah Garrison, the current poetry editor at Knopf, whom Ms. Quinn said, “published Don’s last book with characteristic elegance and energy.”

The National Endowment for the Arts chairman, Dana Gioia, spoke about Justice being a painter as well as a poet, and one who took both seriously. (Mr. Strand later said that Justice “wanted his paintings to look like they were done by a painter and not a poet.”)

Poet and critic William Logan described Justice as a mentor and Iowa Writers’ Workshop teacher, who became a colleague and friend; Debora Greger spoke about their friendship and his influence on her work. She read a poem she wrote dedicated to Justice and recalled discovering his poetry in the New Yorker when she was teenager.

A graduate of the Juilliard School and the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Tomoko Uchino, performed Justice’s modern composition “A Simple Suite for Piano.”

National Endowment of the Arts chairman Dana Gioia closed the evening by reading two of Justice’s poems, “An Elegy Is Preparing Itself” and “Absences,” which had been printed on a special keepsake made for that evening by Michael Peich at Aralia Press.

Throughout the program, slides were shown from Donald Justice’s life. Also shown were slides of his paintings, some of which are reproduced on the cover of his “Collected Poems: 1943-2004” (Knopf).

“Donald Justice’s great subject was memory – particularly of the Depression-era Florida of his childhood,” audience member David Yezzi, director of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y, told the Knickerbocker. “He was one of our greatest poets, and he wrote with a heartfelt lyric beauty that is rapidly disappearing from American poetry.”

In the audience was the poet’s widow, Jean Justice. Also in attendance were Paula Deitz, editor of the Hudson Review, a magazine where Justice’s work first appeared in the summer 1954; New Criterion associate editor James Panero; poet Elizabeth Macklin; Joshua Mehigan, author of “The Optimist” (Ohio University Press) and recently named as a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Prize; poet Rachel Hadas, author of “Laws” (Zoo Press); Samuel Menashe, author of “The Niche Narrows: New and Selected Poems” (Talisman House Publishers); and Cor Van Den Heuvel, author of “Play Ball: Baseball Haiku” (Red Moon Press).

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SOTHEBY’S STYLE

“If you want to be drop dead gorgeous, why not be a Hitchcock heroine for the day?” “Sometimes a well dressed man is the best accessory.” These and other sayings on the walls at Sotheby’s greeted many well wishers the other night who came to celebrate Lulu Guinness’s new book, “Put on your Pearls, Girls!” (Rizzoli) and raise funds to benefit the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation. Along with Rizzoli’s publication of her new book, a Lulu Guinness Collectable Handbags exhibition is on display until Saturday at the auction house.

Ms. Guinness’s book, like her handbags, exhibit upbeat humor and optimism. A spread in her book devoted to chocolates and her “Chocolate Box” handbag provides this advice, “A moment on your lips is a lifetime on your hips.” On another handbag she writes, “We suffer to be beautiful.” A plain black clutch bag scattered with pearls has scrolled on it, “Pearls of Wisdom.” Her octagonal-shaped “Birdcage” bag with a painted bird on it has a hidden button that when pressed, plays music of the bird singing.

Her former husband Valentine Guinness said, “I’m thrilled about the book because it’s a manifesto or testament to her.” Mr. Guinness is a scriptwriter for “Burmese Days,” based on the George Orwell book. He and Ms. Guinness, whose maiden name was Lulu Rivett-Carnac, met when he was a 22-year old singer in a rock band and she was the back-up singer at 21 years old. “Now she only sings in the car,” said Mr. Guinness.

Spotted in the massive crowd were the designer’s aunt from London, Mary Guinness; cousin and friend Elizabeth Holland-Bosworth; Governor Richards, Isaac Mizrahi with Marisa Gardini, and Jayne Harkness.

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FAIR AND BALANCED (BREAKFAST)

Author Ken Auletta interviewed Fox News Channel’s chairman and chief executive officer, Roger Ailes, yesterday at a breakfast at Bryant Park Grill hosted by the New Yorker magazine and Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Mr. Auletta asked the provocative Mr. Ailes what advice he gives Fox journalists. Mr. Ailes replied that if they make a mistake, they must get on the air immediately and say so. His other advice included, “Try not to get to the point where you have an attorney general investigating you.”

“Is there anything that CNN does that you envy?” Mr. Auletta asked. “No,” Mr. Ailes promptly responded, but added, “They get better press.”

He later said that General Washington, who did not have a victory for a few years, would not have survived as general under today’s press scrutiny.

Mr. Ailes said that Fox News and the Wall Street Journal vigorously pursued the United Nations oil-for-food scandal where $42 billion dollars were stolen from poor people “to pay for anti-Americanism.” Mr. Ailes said this was in contradistinction from most of the reporters in the city who, he said, want to go to Le Cirque and say, “Hey Kofi, here’s a drink” instead of saying “Hey Kofi, where’s your kid?”

Mr. Ailes said he was in Central Park recently and admired how it was created by Olmsted and Vaux but said, referring to the work of artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, that he never came to the conclusion “You know, I miss those orange door frames.” Referring to Cristyne Nicholas of NYC & Company in the audience, Mr. Ailes said the art did bring in millions of dollars to the city from tourists who drove to the city and said, “Let’s park and walk through an orange door frame.”