The writer Kurt Vonnegut knew a thing or two about suicide. When he was a young man of 21, his mother took her own life. Some four decades later, he attempted suicide himself. At some point, he remarked that “suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers.” While the end for Mr. Vonnegut was not punctuated in such a fashion, the same may sadly not be said of the poet Liam Rector, who yesterday became one of the more than 30,000 Americans who annually perish by their own hand. The New York Post shares more of this tragic event:

TOP N.Y. POET KILLS SELF

Liam Rector, a critically acclaimed poet who taught at some of the nation’s top colleges, committed suicide yesterday in his Greenwich Village apartment, police said.

Rector, 57, who had battled colon cancer and had a heart condition, put a shotgun to his head, police said.

His wife, Tree Swenson, who is the director of the American Academy of Poets, was asleep when the tragedy occurred, police said.

When she awoke, she found his body and called cops to the apartment on West 12th Street.

Police said Rector left a suicide note, but they did not reveal its contents.

His books of poems include “The Sorrow of Architecture” (1984), “American Prodigal” (1994) and “The Executive Director of the Fallen World” (2006). [full text]

Many who ultimately commit suicide have struggled with self-destructive thoughts and feelings for years. Rector was likely no different, as suggested by the following poem from American Prodigal:

The Remarkable Objectivity of Your Old Friends

We did right by your death and went out,
Right away, to a public place to drink,
To be with each other, to face it.

We called other friends—the ones
Your mother hadn’t called—and told them
What you had decided, and some said

What you did was right; it was the thing
You wanted and we’d just have to live
With that, that your life had been one

Long misery and they could see why you
Had chosen that, no matter what any of us
Thought about it, and anyway, one said,

Most of us abandoned each other a long
Time ago and we’d have to face that
If we had any hope of getting it right.

Of course, it is not simply those with artistic careers who punctuate their life with suicide. No career is immune from such tragedy. Indeed, on the very day that the story of Mr. Rector’s death broke, many news outlets were reporting that “ninety-nine U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest rate of suicide in the Army in 26 years of record-keeping.” It seems there is no end or limit to these terrible punctuation marks.

To learn more about Liam Rector and read a selection of his poetry, please visit this link at poets.org.