EDWIN HONIG

He was so kind to my late wife, Louise, and me as grad students from '59 to '64--unfailingly including us at receptions he hosted for visiting poets. Admonished me not to measure out gin in drinks, but to slosh it in right from the bottle. Asked me, genuinely puzzled to hear that I liked John O'Hara's poems, what it was I saw in them. Told us freshman comp instructors to suggest to our students that, in their essays, they try not to lie. In class, how he listened to, and could wait to hear,...