"Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall" by Anne Sexton

Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall by Anne Sexton : The Poetry Foundation

The Campus on the Hill by W. D. Snodgrass : The Poetry Foundation

Recently I visited once again the University of Indiana in Bloomington, one of my very top choices for most beautiful campus and most pleasant college town in the United States. Almost every campus building is grandly made of local limestone, so there’s an architectural harmony that I’ve found unusual in large state universities. In the midst of those acres of lofty academic structures is a small woods. 

For a large school, the campus is well-defined relative to the town. A half-mile of shops, restaurants and bars connects the university to the town square, its courthouse dominating from on high. (Majestic courthouses seem to be an Indiana tradition).

To this outsider, the strained town-gown relationships portrayed in  Breaking Away, the famous bicycling movie, are not immediately apparent, but what non-resident knows that real scoop?

As I walked around, I felt like photographing every stone and student. All those stories . . . .  Then there's my tendency toward sentimentality about campuses and the college life in general; it led me once again to look for new poems that were related to scenes I'd witnessed. I couldn’t have gotten luckier, thanks again to Poetry Foundation. What a luxury, to wander so easily and casually through all kinds of verse and commentary.

At least for now, I love Anne Sexton’s “Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall.” If it weren’t so new to me, I’d say it’s as powerful and important as W.D. Snodgrass’s “Campus on the Hill,” posted here September 9, 2010. We'll see how Sexton's poem holds up, with its haunting interplay of different voices.

"The Campus on the Hill" by W. D. Snodgrass. What Is College?

 Portrait of an Old Woman on the College Tavern Wall by Anne Sexton : The Poetry Foundation

The Campus on the Hill by W. D. Snodgrass : The Poetry Foundation

If anyone wants to revisit the discussion of the college experience, I'm all ears.

By the way, I've just learned that yesterday's poet, Dean Young, earned his MFA at Indiana. 

**

"The Campus on the Hill" by W. D. Snodgrass. What Is College?

The Campus on the Hill by W. D. Snodgrass : The Poetry Foundation [poem] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

What is it with me and college campuses? You didn't ask, so I did.

In September of 1963, the United States and I were on the brink of everything: Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, environmental awareness, and the rug of trust in America, that rug pulled out from under everyone who wasn’t hiding in the cellar, where the apples were rotting. Parents, teachers, politicians, clergy—everyone had lied.

Of course, we didn’t know what we were on the brink of. That’s what made it . . . fun?

I was a freshman at Donut College, a small liberal arts school, on a hill overlooking a quaint small town. I’d drawn for a roommate a guy who, unlike me, was aggressively interested in politics and the workings of the human animal.

It was maybe our second conversation when, for lack of a better topic, he said, “So, are you a Republican or Democrat?”

“Oh, Republican,” I said, as if I were saying ketchup, or Kleenex—and as if I were saying, “Isn’t everyone?”

“Yeah?” he said. “How come?”

There was only a hint of challenge in his tone; he wasn’t pulling the wings off a butterfly. He was just interested in the subject—human nature—and each person's place within it.

My response was a grin as silent as it was stupid. He had me, without even trying. We both knew I had barely managed to stifle the infantile response, “Because my parents are.” But I couldn’t find a useful word to utter, so I kept still.

That was one of the most embarrassing, important exchanges of my life. A little voice in me hissed, “You will never let yourself feel this stupid again. Or this childish. See to it.”

So when W.D. Snodgrass’ poem critiques the elite white morons of “The Campus on the Hill,” it is both right and wrong. I entered that campus as a bumpkin, and, while my grades didn’t show that I learned much over four years, I was somewhat proud of learning to demand Why and How of things and people, including myself, though there haven’t always been answers.

The main defense for Snodgrass’ argument, I suppose, is that so few college graduates seem to have learned the sacredness in Why and How, and responding to detail, in detail, seeing both the forest and the trees, along with all the ways they are wrong. The being wrong will never stop; everyone must see and accept that, then plow forward all over again. It seems that most people feel that, if they're getting the rent paid, they should not have to ask hard  questions, no matter how intriguing they are. That probably applies to a lot of liberal professors, as well as Republican money-grubbers who protect their piles with ferocity more than thought.

Otherwise, why the great . . . unpleasantness we’ve seen? Look back at the irrational resistance—fire-hoses and German Shepherds, that resistance—to civil rights, or the ten-year, murderous struggle in the war in Vietnam, or the 2008 presidential campaign with its casual references to candidates “Hillary” and “Barack” by a supposedly liberal press, which addressed the Republican candidates as “Governor” or “Senator” or simply “Mr.”

Yet I cannot wholeheartedly accept Snodgrass’ critique of the college experience. There’s a lot wrong with the undergraduate scene, but it’s one way for dumb youth to bumble into a better understanding of themselves and their world. It is indeed a second birth. Or at least it can be.

Obviously the college experience doesn’t have to happen on a pretty hill, but it can.
And it might be youths' first exposure to, or last chance at, living and working in a place of beauty, which might inspire more careful thinking—about how to make more things more beautiful. It can do that, and that’s a very big deal.

*