Mac Hammond's last appearance, a quasi-public one, was a year or so ago at Rita and Dick Lipsitz's summer place by Lake Ontario, when Kristen Prevallet was filming her version of the Ancient Mariner. It was late afternoon--a time I have been told when the light is polarized and great for photography. A few of us in the geriatric set had been invited to stand as extras for the wedding scene, and Mac Hammond was to be the Ancient Mariner. He had gone for a walk by the lake while everybody else up on the high green lawn was involved with the grace of Kristen's directing, and then at an unexpected pause, we all noticed Mac Hammond coming back from his walk, with that impressive bearing of his, formally dressed and with a huge white fedora, an imposing and calm figure of a well-fed Ancient Mariner, against a background of water, row-boat and illuminated clouds. He had a touch of magic: how could anyone be so elegant and even grandiose, and yet immediately lovable? Or more simply, how could he look so elegant, given the clothes he would sometimes wear--wide and brightly colored suspenders over a dark shirt, or a vibrantly blue sweater, About forty years ago, Mac Hammond's name appeared in Esquire, at that time a glossy magazine for affluent males, a mixture of serious articles an full page four color cartoons of scantily clad women, a very mild version of what was to become Playboy. In one issue they featured a chart that set forth the structure of the Poetry Scene, that included Mac. He went on to publish in Poetry, Paris Review, and Northwest Review and he edited his own magazine Audit He was invited to the White House during the Carter administration; and for many years distributed a Valentine from Sherry Robbins' letter set press. But I mainly remember him as a friend, We came to Buffalo just as the sixties were getting under way, a time of extraordinary activity, which prompted Mac to say at a department meeting: "The English Department is the Yellow Submarine." The Beatles, (also Simon and Garfunkel's "The Seven O'clock News") had given me the notion of having an Electronic Poetry Workshop, which was essentially to explore the use different channels. For most people, it was a lot of fun for a while, and then they went on to other things, but Mac was the only one who came out with a book, Cold Turkey, that includes a vinyl record of multi-channel readings. (Vinyl!) Mac always had an interest in movies, video, stereo--the media, as they say. His Horse Opera evokes a western movie with Jack Palance; he helped found Squeaky Wheel, set his poems to videos. On several occasions I had driven him to the hospital for radiation treatment. He was in pain, and as he said, he was "staring death in the face." And then one day, he was able to move far more easily, and he told me that the pain was gone. The radiation seemed to be working, and he had reasonable hopes of at least six months, and the loss of those months shocked us.. In his papers, I found a penciled sentence: "I am afraid and I am not afraid of death."