1. I just heard that I’m going to have two poems in The Georgia Review.
2. It looks very likely that I will be taking a group of Clarkson students to Vietnam next May.
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Mentors
You hear a lot of talk about mentors and mentoring around a university and that’s certainly not a bad thing, but I wonder to what extent real mentoring can be institutionalized. I had a dream the night before last that has stuck with me — or parts of it have. I was traveling and having difficulties making my connections and getting my baggage right at the airport. It wasn’t frantic and people were helping me, but it was complicated and difficult. I was worn out and found myself in a room with a large mattress and I lay down to rest. At that point my old teacher HC came and put a light blanket over me. I think I remember him smiling and saying something reassuring, but I can’t be absolutely sure of that. A little later, after waking, I was in a nearby room with the poet David Wagoner, also a former teacher of mine. He was showing HC and me his father’s suit, which appeared to be made of light flannel — “I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach.” Wagoner handed me his father’s suit jacket and told me to put it on. I think the sleeves were a little long. And he let me hold the trousers up to see how they were for length, but I didn’t try them on. There may have been more after that, but I don’t remember.
Convocation
Clarkson held its Convocation — our opening ceremony — last night and I marched in with the rest of the faculty (to bagpipes blaring!) wearing full academic regalia, something I never did until I came to Clarkson, where they bought my gown and hood for me when I received tenure. The speaker was James Ransom, a Clarkson grad and the elected Chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk tribe. He structured his talk around our summer reading book for this year, Sherman Alexie’s Flight, a book I didn’t like all that much, though I’m an admirer of Alexie’s work in general. I thought the novel too didactic, which actually turned out to be appropriate for that most didactic of forms, the address to the entering class. Ransom gave a wonderfully articulate reading of the story that, incidentally, taught the literature professors in the audience a thing or two, in which he invoked the hero’s journey and the ghost dance in order to offer advice to the incoming class. Occasionally I thought he tended a little too much toward a Chamber of Commerce / Kiwanis vibe, toward what William James called “healthy-mindedness.” But then I would think that, given my own “sophisticated” and post-modern perspective.
Another Kind of Life
Lt. William Calley stood before a Kiwanis Club meeting the other day and apologized for the My Lai massacre [also: 1, 2]. Reading the article, I take it as a sincere apology and a real expression of regret, though I understand how the prosecutor who tried Calley felt, too:
William George Eckhardt, the chief prosecutor in the My Lai cases, said Friday he was unaware of Calley ever apologizing before. Eckhardt said that when he first heard the news, “I just sort of cringed.” ”It’s hard to apologize for murdering so many people,” said Eckhardt, now a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “But at least there’s an acknowledgment of responsibility.”
And while I would have liked to hear a more unequivocal statement from Calley, I have to say I appreciate his long silence and the modest setting for his first public discussion (since his trial) of his actions at My Lai. He should no go back to being quiet, as silence from him is the only adequate response. Two things: In order to live with myself, I have to believe in the possibility of redemption, of turning away from evil, in others; also, he was in fact a scapegoat: Colin Powell, Captain Ernest Medina, and others were equally responsible for the murders of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. This second point does not lessen Lt. Calley’s responsibility, but it puts it in context. So, I accept his apology, at least provisionally. The effects of his actions continue to ripple outward through the histories of both Vietnam and the US and, paradoxically, out of evil some understanding can emerge.
But what I really wonder about is that “standing ovation” the Kiwanis gave the aging William Calley. What was that about? When I was in high school, before the My Lai massacre, some of us graduating seniors were given dinner by the local Kiwanis and then lectured by a congressman about our duty to be “patriotic,” which was framed in terms of supporting the Vietnam war. I got up and left. (I didn’t wait for the standing ovation.) Were the Kiwanis who listened to Calley applauding his courage for admitting he committed murder in their service? That seems unlikely to me. Were they subtly applauding the murder, excusing it? Perhaps that is too harsh a judgement. I suspect they were applauding their own sense of relief: Well, that’s finally behind us. Maybe William Calley believes he can put it behind him and in a sense he can, by keeping quiet and doing good. To the Kiwanis, I’d say: Don’t let yourselves off the hook so easily. Lt. Calley served in your army — in our army — and he acted in our names; so, while, yes, the event is behind us, it is still there. The murdered are still murdered. Going forward, that is what we bear.
Back in the Classroom
I’ll be returning to the classroom after eight months away on Monday and I do so with a little trepidation, if not anxiety. I was on campus Friday and saw groups of new students roaming about, excited and curious and, probably, anxious. But mostly to me they looked tall and slim and terribly young. I actually still remember my first day on campus — the first day of classes, that is. It was raining in Seattle and I was headed to an introductory anthropology class. I had scouted out the location the day before, so I knew where I was going, and it felt very important to be going there. I come from a family without much academic achievement and being on a university campus, headed to a class, felt like a success. I wonder if any of those new students flocking the campus yesterday felt that way. Some of them must. And some must be filled with dread, or boredom. When they plunk themselves down in front of me tomorrow and Tuesday, the students facing me will bring all those attitudes and more to the work I will ask them to do.
I wonder how many of them, though, will take their education personally. How many will see what they do in the classroom and with all those expensive books as something integral to their development as persons? (Not in those terms, of course.) How many will have that sense of signifigance I had on that first day of classes in Seattle back in 1970? I was just leaving the church of my parents when I went off to school, turning away from a fundamentalism that had come to seem narrow and cramped and invasive and simply mean; I had begun to find literature, especially poetry, as a scaffolding on which to build a new set of values. That’s what I mean by taking education personally. Is it really true, as I suspect, that most of my students lack this sense of personal commitment to their educations? I fear that for most of my students going to college is about earning a credential that will allow them to live what they imagine is the good life. Ironically, my college mostly prepares students to function effectively in a corporate culture, but does not really prepare them to lead in that culture (though of course a few leaders will emerge from any group). And my incoming freshmen, while they will be trained in skills that will allow them to earn a solid middle-class income, will not become nearly as successful (read: wealthy) as they imagine.
When I was a freshman at the University of Washington in 1970, I read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. (Bad scholarship, like bad translation, has the paradoxical ability to reveal, sometimes, deep truths.) Anyway, this was long before “follow your bliss” pop psychology, but I understood that the meaning of those stories was the possibility that one might lead a meaningful life. I remember trying to explain to a girlfriend — I can recall the exact position of my hands held in front of me — that I wanted to be a “hero” in that sense, the sense of leading a life that has a shape and even a purpose. “Oh, no one can live like that anymore,” she said, laughing. Was she right? I don’t know if I’ve succeeded — perhaps we never know — but what about my students? Do they aspire to lives that have a meaningful shape?