Thoughts on Esther Buffler, Our First Poet Laureate

The last thing Esther Buffler did was write a poem. That was in August 2002. She was 93. She died the same day. Poets are often depicted as shrinking violets, their souls enclosed almost painfully inside their own introspective worlds. Esther was no Emily Dickinson. She stayed onstage, still swinging and still writing, until the curtain fell.

She will be remembered as the first Portsmouth, NH poet laureate, a post created in many ways to honor her free-flowing coattails. She was known for her floppy hats, her five books, her warbling theatrical performances, and her unquenchable love of life. 

Following her departure, 100 of Esther’s favorite hats were auctioned at the Rockingham Hotel. “Hats Off to Esther” raised funds in cooperation with the Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation. The money went toward poetry programs in the local schools.

Like everyone in town, I knew Esther. And like most of us, she came from elsewhere. She gave Portsmouth her last 25 years. It was a great gift. 

I knew nothing all that time about her many lives before Portsmouth. Born in Pennsylvania in 1908, she married her true love, Robert, in 1930. I didn’t know she had been a puppeteer in the Depression years, the author of three children’s books, a playwright, a mother, a model, a saleswoman, and a Broadway actress. I read all that in her obituary. But it figures. You could tell me Esther had been the first cowgirl on the moon, and I’d believe it. 

Esther Buffler was a poet, but the word falls shy. Poets write poetry, which she did. But a lot of people write poetry, and none of them is Esther. Following her disappearance, I was asked to scratch down my feelings. The words came out like this:

If all the buildings in Portsmouth fell down, this town would still remind me of Esther. Some people make their own skyline. They stand as dignified as architecture. They flow as fast as the Piscataqua. These are the Super Life-force People, the candles around whom the rest of us beat our wings. Esther was like that, and more, able to bend words in her bare fragile hands, to see through walls with her imagination, and forge new friendships with the radiance of a glance.

In a town of stiff brick buildings, Esther Buffler was a storm of color. I usually found her swirling around the Rockingham Hotel where she lived, all capes and shawls, big hats and fluttering skirts. I don’t remember what we talked about, the ghost she saw in the hallway, perhaps, or whatever we were writing that day. We were always writing. It’s what writers do.

The last time I saw Esther she was walking alone down the steep brick sidewalk by The Music Hall, a bobsled ride for a woman on dwindling legs. She took my arm as if I were the one who needed help crossing the icy streets.

She always had radiance, but this time she positively glowed with the transparency of age that tells us a friend is moving on. And then, with cautious steps, shawl and skirt and hat-brim waving, she disappeared.

Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.

NOTE: See “It’s All Ahead,” with 23 of Esther’s final poems, assembled by Susan Kress Hamilton (Phineas Press,(2023). Following Esther’s departure, 100 of her favorite hats were auctioned at the Rockingham Hotel in cooperation with the Greater Piscataqua Community Foundation. The money went toward poetry programs in the local schools.