Synchronicity for La Ketch

Today I was listening to NPR as I put away some laundry, and I found myself pausing to scan the bookshelves, something I tend to do more of when I'm between books (even though I'm ninety-nine percent certain I'm gonna read JJS's copy of Midnight's Children next). There I saw The Poems of Stanley Kunitz 1928-1978, and I thought Ol' Stanley, trying to remember where I'd just heard that phrase. Oh yeah, it was in that poem I read last week in APR ("Proust" by John Koethe):

I read The Past Recaptured on the plane and on a bench in Harvard Yard
And on a Greyhound to New York to ship my things and vist John.
I told him I was nearly done. "This must be a tender moment,"
He replied. "Do you want to be alone?" I said I didn't,
So we went downstairs where I could meet "Old Stanley" Kunitz
(Old!--he's ninety-nine now; this was almost forty years ago)

Less than thirty seconds later the radio said, "And we remember poet Stanley Kunitz."

My jaw dropped. He died Sunday. He was 100.

I got to see him read once, in high school with my mom. I was shy so she got him to sign my book. She said, "I told him 'my son is a poet.' He wasn't very nice about it, a real snob."

He was a fine poet. RIP, Old Stanley.