In his remarks during the opening of the exhibit “Hyam Plutzik: Poet” on October 3*, John Michael, University of Rochester English Professor and Chair, spoke of Plutzik’s hiring by the U of R as among the first of its kind. While it’s a commonplace in academia today, as many of today’s most accomplished American poets hold positions on one or two faculties at high-ranking colleges, in the 1940s when Plutzik was hired, rarely if ever before had a poet been hired as a poet to teach in a University department. Professor Michael went on to celebrate this event as the beginning of an excellent tradition at the U of R to keep poets on the faculty—among subsequent U of R poets have been Anthony Hecht and W.D. Snodgrass—which has fostered an environment of fluid and constant interchange between creative and critical study. As a recent graduate of the program, I can attest that this is markedly to the student’s benefit, as he both reads and composes texts across forms and genres, becoming ever more aware of his own preconceptions, questioning them, learning to listen to his own utterances and ever better to the utterances of others—writers, teachers, fellow students, whether living or of ages past.
The department today includes four accomplished writers—poets Jennifer Grotz and James Longenbach, and novelists Stephen Schottenfeld and Joanna Scott. All four of them teach both critical courses and creative workshops, but if you take one lit course and one workshop from any of the four, at times you won’t know the difference. In a class on Contemporary American Poetry with Professor Grotz in my senior year, for example, coursework included the option of writing a poem imitating one of the poets we’d read (I tried my hand at a “lunch poem” a la Frank O’Hara), with an accompanying essay examining the writing and reading experience with reference both to the original and to the imitation. Doing this kind of work, you see that literary analysis is no less creative than storytelling is; you begin to see that the same kinds of thinking occur when you’re working with language whether it’s lines of verse or paragraphs of prose, fictional or highly critical and abstract. You begin to feel freer to use your words how you will, and at the same time to take greater care of the ways others will try to use or misuse them (words, that is, both yours and their own). It’s all part of the total account; it’s all part of the process. Poets and novelists can and do communicate, heatedly, joyfully.
This Saturday,** Professors Grotz, Longenbach, Schottenfeld, and Scott will read together for the second time, as the Plutzik Centennial Reading Series continues. Is that a giveaway?—yes, this is a plug piece, and I’m just trying to get the readers of this blog pumped about attending this reading. But my point is, they (you) should be! Pumped, that is. It’s a celebration of one of the great and unique things of the U of R English Department. Furthermore, all four of these writers are accomplished artists in their own right, and their work is well worth reading and listening to. But to all of you Rochester alumni heading back for Meliora Weekend, especially you English Department alumni, it’s the perfect opportunity to revisit, intensely for one hour, that climate of boundary-free exploration and thoughtful reading and conversation. I can’t wait, and I hope to see you there.
Phil Witte, UR 2010 (English)
Literary Programming Associate,
Hyam Plutzik Centennial Committee
P.S. — Please feel free to post comments–stories and memories from classes with these teachers are especially encouraged.
*The exhibit “Hyam Plutzik: Poet,” curated by Sergei Kriskov (UR 2012), is on view in Rush Rhees Library, Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections (2nd floor, through the Great Hall) until January 15, 2012.
**The Plutzik Series Reading featuring Grotz, Longenbach, Schottenfeld, and Scott is on Saturday, October 22 (Meliora Weekend) at 3:30 pm, in Lander Auditorium, Hutchison Hall, University of Rochester River Campus. Free admission; open to the public.