RE Log Fall 2019

FALL 2019 Ransom Everglades LOG 87 From Jeffry Freundlich ’70 Sean Killian ’70 , died last winter. It was sudden. For those of us who knew Sean, it was like being hit from behind. The blow came from nowhere, with no warn- ing, and we are left with only pain. Pain – and memories. They don’t seem to add up to quite enough. Classmate Steve Pearson’ 70 , for example, remembers that Sean loved music. “We really heard a lot of great concerts together.” True – but ter- ribly inadequate. Others recall his passion for radical politics and social justice. But foremost, we remember his intellectual prowess. Dan Bowden once said, “Mr. Killian is the most well-read student I’ve ever encountered at The Ransom School,” Timothy Greenfield-Sanders ’70 recalls. “That remark gave me a greater understanding of my very good friend … and a deeper insight into the quick-witted, politically-minded radical thinker we all knew Sean to be.” And Sean always was a radical thinker – in poetry as well as politics. He always seemed one step ahead of everyone else, whether in the latest strategy for politi- cal action or, more especially, aesthetics. And so one thing I remember most vividly is my realization that with Sean Killian in my class, I would always be the second-best writer. His poetry, even in the 10th grade, had a mature and layered brilliance that seemed so far beyond the rest of us that even envy was never an option; only admiration. At age 17, while the rest of us were still trying to find good rhymes for “love,” Sean wrote, I write to word away The fat and the bloody. (line omitted) I write, and write, And lessen the tumult. (seven lines omitted) And finally resort to the better evidence of words. Above all else Sean was a poet. It was no surprise that he made writing poetry his life’s work. But in his poetry Sean flew perilously close to the sun. There’s a saying among comedians and musi- cians: “Too hip for the room.” It means that what you do is so far above what the audience can appreciate or even understand that they will never get you. That was Sean. Over the years I watched and waited for some sign that the rest of the world had finally recognized his talent. It never came. But Sean kept writing. That may be the best epitaph. The final spasm is neither pleasure or pain, false opposites; the final being neither woman nor man, of no color, no origin except an irreducible spark that will never divulge its name or knowingness (its unknownness is a given) – From “Fourth (Forth) Sonnet”; Feint By Feint , by Sean Killian; 1998; Jensen/Daniels; Jersey City, NJ 1982 photo of Sean taken by classmate Timothy Greenfield- Sanders ’70 (left) 2018 photo of Sean taken by Timothy Greenfield- Sanders ’70 (right)