Monday, December 11, 2017<\/p>\n
On the McNichols Campus, final exams set the tone of things this week. \u00a0 For more than 1000 \u00a0years, universities gear up for this time when students bring their A-game and their faculties do as well. \u00a0 Both groups try to get exams right because their efforts go on the public record, a credible statement that \u201cthis student has learned how to think at a new level of competence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Makes me proud to be here.<\/p>\n
In honor of students working to find their voices and their teachers keeping watch and hoping for their success.<\/p>\n
Richard \u00a0Wilbur\u2019s 1921 poem reminds me during exam time to pay attention. \u00a0Here\u2019s a post from last October\u2014outloud with pauses<\/p>\n
Have a blest week.<\/p>\n
john sj<\/p>\n
ps Our first snow; not a lot, but thrilling to some of us even so. \u00a0Have a blest week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s \u00a0Post: \u00a0Oct 10 \u2013 \u201cThe Writer\u201d \u2014 Richard Wilbur 1921 Monday, October 10, \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cyoung as she is, the stuff Fall Break on our campus, \u00a0which means that administrative people come to work but students and faculty can sleep in \u2014 \u00a0the mid-October Fall Break. \u00a0Often, the greater your distance in time or space from the work of teaching and research (student research & faculty research and student-faculty research), particularly if \u00a0you\u2019ve just read another dis-spiriting account of immature student behavior, plus a report on the high cost of higher education, the more likely you might be to mumble some at a 4 day weekend when most of the world is working this Monday morning.<\/p>\n As I ruminated about a poem for this particular Monday, I thought of sheer beauty & brilliant colors; Hopkins\u2019 \u00a0\u201cHurrahing in the Harvest\u201d came to mind. Hopkins announces autumn to me each year, but it can wait a week or two until the season has matured some more.\u00a0 But then I remembered why I am thrilled that our McNichols campus, for the second year, now offers this 4 day weekend for students and faculty. \u00a0 I love it partly because October shows more awe within its beauty than any of the seasons (for me. not a universal I know). \u00a0But mostly because, here on our northwest Detroit campus, this 2 day break honors the fatigue of teaching and learning. \u00a0 The ruminations \u00a0led me to Richard Wilbur\u2019s unforgettable poem about a parent paying attention to his daughter\u2019s sheer daring, as she writes her way toward an adulthood where strong winds will blow and sometimes even floods . . . \u00a0writes her way into lifelong courage.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m posting it again, an homage to the quotidian courage of students and their demanding, hopeful, attentive teachers.<\/p>\n Not the peak of autumn yet; most of the leaves outside my window are late-summer, worn-down greens. \u00a0But there are already traces of frost to promise waves of brilliance on their way. \u00a0Yes, please read \u201cThe Writer\u201d out loud, with pauses.<\/p>\n Note: Wilbur wrote this in 1921, \u00a02 years into the rolling \u00a0shock waves at the horrors of chemical warfare twisting the faces and limbs of maimed soldiers returning from Europe and, way too often, not finding jobs waiting to honor their broken bodies: a half-decade of fear and rage, of \u00a0contempt for most immigrants, and for fellow citizens with whom one differed. \u00a0A year not unlike the years in which we live now. \u00a0I love it that \u00a0this poet recognized, in that precise moment of history, the wonder of young human beings risking so much to launch into their futures.<\/p>\n Have a blest day,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n john sj<\/p>\n \u201cThe Writer\u201d \u00a0Richard Wilbur<\/p>\n In her room at the prow of the house I pause in the stairwell, hearing Young as she is, the stuff But now it is she who pauses, The whole house seems to be thinking, I remember the dazed starling And retreated, not to affright it; And iridescent creature And wait then, humped and bloody, It lifted off from a chair-back, It is always a matter, my darling, Richard Wilbur \u00a0March 1, 1921 \u00a0\u2013<\/p>\n About Wilbur\u2019s poems, one reviewer for\u00a0The Washington Post\u00a0said, \u201cThroughout his career Wilbur has shown, within the compass of his classicism, enviable variety. His poems describe fountains and fire trucks, grasshoppers and toads, European cities and country pleasures. All of them are easy to read, while being suffused with an astonishing verbal music and a compacted thoughtfulness that invite sustained reflection.\u201d \u00a0{poets.org<\/a>}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday, December 11, 2017 On the McNichols Campus, final exams set the tone of things this week. \u00a0 For more than 1000 \u00a0years, universities gear up for this time when students bring their A-game and their faculties do as well. … Continue reading
\nPosted on\u00a0October 10, 2016<\/a><\/p>\n
\nOf her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWhere light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
\nMy daughter is writing a story.<\/p>\n
\nFrom her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
\nLike a chain hauled over a gunwale.<\/p>\n
\nOf her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
\nI wish her a lucky passage.<\/p>\n
\nAs if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
\nA stillness greatens, in which<\/p>\n
\nAnd then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
\nOf strokes, and again is silent.<\/p>\n
\nWhich was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
\nHow we stole in, lifted a sash<\/p>\n
\nAnd how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
\nWe watched the sleek, wild, dark<\/p>\n
\nBatter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
\nTo the hard floor, or the desk-top,<\/p>\n
\nFor the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
\nRose when, suddenly sure,<\/p>\n
\nBeating a smooth course for the right window
\nAnd clearing the sill of the world.<\/p>\n
\nOf life or death, as I had forgotten.\u00a0I wish
\nWhat I wished you before, but harder.<\/p>\n