Unlike that yattering Krishna of Indian legend and religion, I have but few tales to tell--- and none tonight. Instead I have patched together some sort of odd talk out of remembrances and wishes.
The unfair love that develops in a concentrated boy or girl for the words of the dead-- this is the central college experience. It makes us harsh and discontent with our contemporaries. For how can the home and dorm-bred cry lifted from behind a cheap desk compare with that Shelleyian lilt and agony passing time has patinaed with an ineluctable grace? An institution of publishing, such as our small review, works against this cynicism-- which every great creator has disposed of in his time-- and permits the clear registration of value to enter the ear with the intent impact of a whisper. The page of a review is as serviceable a blank for our Elroy as for any England's Shelley. And the context of the times, which bookends such productions, does not subtract from the effort of any individual but rather lends its substance to the impact of a voice raised from amidst its mass.
I forget what voice described literature to me as "an education of the emotions," but that phrase seems to me to touch upon some central complexity, the crux of some nexus in human perceptions too immaterial to remain, as with so much in our lives, unreal.
And it is such talk, and the notion of such talk that must, when our lives have lapsed, remain imperishable; for all our individual voice is but a semi-tone in the dialog. But remove that semi-tone... and the entire house of cards must collapse, the harmony dissipated, stale and flat. These are the voices one can catch--- in an interview, or in the lifting song of a poem handed over during some knowledgeable or serious talk. These are the voices that talk in praise of the process and the objective joy of creation--- nothing less. there are our voices, on occasion; and they may shape a life, or give implementation to an impulse, even out of the mere incidental energy thrown off by such a subject and such seriousness.
We are about the have come before us a man who was witness to such talks, and a prompter of such commotions. He will talk of a writer's club and of its once living presence on this campus, its effect on conversation and action, its feeding and care of a lively review, and of a present wish for its reconstitution. Let us not wait for a break in the courses of our efforts to ourselves begin to take some such meaningful action.
The consecration of such action must come, in its communal form, not with a deliberate grandee's flourish, but with a slow and conniving accumulation of all our best and most cherished and most characteristic efforts. We must come, to steal a metaphor from the national preoccupation, as depositors to such an account, and not flashy spenders of a generation's worth. Advice, connivance, a little money on occasion, a helpful ear: these are our great resources.
Disputatiousness, anger, violent action,-- all may help turn the great wheel. But in this case we must all bring but balm and guidance to our successors. Any tradition is only as alive as those who press for its ressussitation. gather your hands to this chest with me, and we may find a burning pulse there yet....
Do not let us have the rush of our current lives and livelihoods whirl our convictions away.
Dip your hands once again into that stream of life which in this place flows as black as ink, and freshen your minds with the cool water offered by this opportunity, and let some writer's club or other effort sharpen its dull quill once again by the aid of your stinging wits. And I give here as invocation to our duties and in homage to the past trials of our young lives these words: it is the passion of the old man that renews the eternal youth.
From the collection "Hymns"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.