Responses

• Mark Schoenfield
  

  December 5th, 2011

  The excitement on campus, conveyed in Carolyn Pippen’s blog about Kathryn Stockett’s visit, reminded me of another day on campus, long ago in 1995. That year, the poet Philip Levine, was our visiting writer in the English Department, and while he was sitting in his office, he learned that his book from the previous year, The Simple Truth, had won the Pulitzer Prize. A spontaneous celebration arose, crackling with excitement. Such different writers, Stockett and Levine; one a novelist, the other a poet; one a new writer concerned with capturing a moment of southern history from a certain perspective, the other writing for decades about class struggles in Detroit and across the range of America’s industrial landscape and now named the Poet Laureate for the United States. But both changing how we think about important questions, and both bringing that change to Vanderbilt. And that they share in common not only with each other, but with a wide variety of writers who spark conversations on our campus.

  The various series of writers Carolyn Pippen mentions (and links to) bring writers at every stage of career, from poets whose first volumes are about to appear to Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. Sometimes they are writers I have read for years; sometimes they are alumni, including Leah Stewart, author of the equally enchanting and disturbing Husband and Wife, who took one of my first Freshmen writing courses; and sometimes they are writers I have never heard of, but having heard them read, when they leave, I have a neat stack of new, signed books awaiting me on my nightstand. These authors do public reading, have lunches and workshops with students, and like Levine and Stockett, contribute to a literary discussion that reaches across the campus.

  Mark Schoenfield, Professor, Department of English
  mark.schoenfield@vanderbilt.edu