A chapbook collection of poems that honor the life and art of D. Eric Bookhardt, is now available for pre-sale orders. The Last Time I Saw You by Diane Elayne Dees is published by Finishing Line Press.

Bookhardt died in 2019 at age 73. He was a New Orleans renaissance man. A noted photographer and art critic, he was also a celebrated author, editor and museum curator. Bookhardt was born and raised in New Orleans. He attended the University of New Orleans and, in the late 1960s, moved to New York City, where he worked as an archivist at the Museum of Modern Art. Bookhardt later returned to New Orleans, where he pursued his own photography and became an art writer.

Bookhardt was the co-author of Geopsychic Wonders of New Orleans. He wrote art reviews and features for Gambit, OffBeat and Sculpture, and he was the regional editor for Art Papers. Bookhardt also archived his coverage of the New Orleans art scene, and reported international art news, on his website, Inside Nola. He was president of the Center for Gulf Coast History and Culture.

In The Last Time I Saw You, Dees pays tribute to Bookhardt’s career in the arts, but also to his lifestyle in New Orleans. The author recalls her decades-long friendship with Bookhardt, his dedication to Buddhism, his love of his hometown, and her grief surrounding his death.

“What’s really difficult to take is the realization that the last time you saw an old friend whom you haven’t hung with in a while—how quickly and finally that person passes from your life, with no repeat performance, no write-up, no review,” writes poet Dennis Formento. “Diane Elayne Dees owns that feeling in The Last Time I Saw You. Her poems are a long letter to her late friend, art critic Eric Bookhardt, floating her grief through balmy sea to sky.”

Dees, who lives in Covington, Louisiana, has published poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction in numerous journals and anthologies, and her poetry has also been read on several radio shows, including Martha Stewart Living Radio. She is a member of the Northshore 100,000 Poets for Change group.