RIP Gerrit Lansing (1928-2018)

This week we were saddened to hear of the death of Gerrit Lansing, as remembrances and tributes on social media have poured in. Earlier in the week, Pierre Joris wrote at his blog Nomadics: 

A man of wider & deeper knowledge than almost anyone I have known, Gerrit was as familiar with, and brought as much care to contemporary poetry & poetics than to older literatures, to the traditionary sciences than to modern science, to the making of music than to the preparing of food. A conversationalist sans pareil, he moved with grace, enthusiasm & profound savoir & savoir-faire from, say, a poet such as Henry Vaughn to his friend Charles Olson, or from the likes of John Dee to the likes of Harry Smith, or from Roland Barthes to Stephen Jonas — and knew the traceries that connected all of them.

An obituary posted yesterday at the Greely Funeral Home in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where Lansing had lived since the 1960s. A little from the top of the obit:

Poet, bookseller, and incomparable host and conversationalist Gerrit Lansing died peacefully at his Gloucester home on the evening of Sunday, February 11, 2018, in the company and loving care of close friends. Gerrit Yates Lansing was born on February 25, 1928, in Albany, New York, the son of Charles B. and Alice (Scott) Lansing. After a brief stay in Colorado Springs, Gerrit and his family moved to the Cleveland area, where his father, an engineering consultant and metals executive, served as Chairman of the Western Reserve University board of trustees. At Harvard College, which Gerrit graduated from in 1949, his social set included the artist Edward Gorey, poets Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, and childhood friend Kenward Elmslie. After graduation, Gerrit moved to New York City, working for Columbia University Press, and receiving a master’s degree from Columbia in 1955. In the heady atmosphere of 1950s New York City, Gerrit partied with theatrical and literary celebrities too numerous to mention, but the stand out figure in his social circle was the lyricist John LaTouche, who at one point hired Gerrit to adapt the writings of H.P. Lovecraft into a film treatment. Through LaTouche and Harry Martin, Gerrit befriended the inventor John Hays Hammond Jr., prompting Gerrit to move to Gloucester, where he initially lived in Hammond Castle. In Gloucester, Gerrit met two men who greatly shaped his life: poet Charles Olson and sailor Deryk Burton.

Read on at the Greely Funeral Home.