“Let us go then, you and I” crackles T.S. Eliot in his particularly deep, unhurried manner. And I follow. I follow directly up to the love song he has generously “spread out like a patient etherized upon a table” for me and within moments, I am crawling up alongside him into the corners of an ever changing masterpiece, a poem that opens my eyes like none other, that leaves me spinning in place for hours. And even as a young girl, I felt this way. As a girl who bought the record for the fun of it, for the fun of owning a rare piece of memorabilia, I saw each raspy word, each cigarette burn of recording breathtakingly exciting. I felt exhilarated by the invitation of his opening line, felt as if Eliot’s eager fist was grasping out to me from the sea of black tar vinyl, hungry to drag my mind across the generational gap that separated his from mine. I could hear hunger as the poem searched, line by line, for a pair of willing ears. And was more than honored to answer the call, impatiently ready to dive deeper into poem after poem; eager to get lost in its dissection, lost to the point of no return, or more accurately: to the point where it becomes impossible to return to the surface unaffected. And that’s where I would pause the record, catch my breath, repeat the words, write it down, sink into my own thoughts, and then struggle my way out, attempt to wiggle my way into another perspective and then listen to it from the beginning. I would read along with the recording, read it with my own set of eyes and then read it again with his. And I would fall in love with literature letter by letter.
Looking back, now with the proverbial “bottoms of my trousers rolled,” it is obvious that those were the evenings, those spent at home repeatedly listening to the first track of T.S. Eliot Reading Poems and Choruses, where I first fell in love with literature. It’s where I first learned the art of exploring a poem, first learned how beautifully one syllable could fit with another and how those syllables, finally united, could blend into sentences that arrested a power so strong it could unite generations. It was on those nights, nights spent walking the “half deserted streets” of poetry that I first fell in love with American literature, with America, with the American story and the American people. I became fascinated by the soundtrack these artists had taken it upon themselves to create; they had supplied a generation of quiet suffering with its long awaited voice and I had nothing but a desire to sit and listen to it unfold on the page. A desire that still strangely consumes me, because like the art, my love for it is timeless, I found it magical in youth, mystical in school, found it beyond me several times, but have always found it standing right beside me when in need. In 8 minutes and 32 seconds, I hear volumes, I see places I’ve never seen, faces that can’t be imagined, and it is that voice, a voice that in such simple elegance can capture catalogues of photographs with a single omitted word that I find myself begging to study. I want to commit my life to studying the art of the lost generation and if given the opportunity to read the greatest generation of American prose and poetry with your esteemed staff of professors, I would consider myself beyond blessed. At this point, after proudly accomplishing all that I did with my undergraduate coursework, with a short but exciting tour of life outside of academia, I am starving to return to an arena where I can meet with colleagues who also feel the magic that lies bound between two hard covers of leather. I am forever in awe of art, of literature’s ability to insight chaos or ignite change and I find myself inspired daily by the magnitude not only writers, but of readers and desire nothing more than the opportunity to study at xx university.
Many years ago, on nights spent at home with T.S. Eliot on vinyl that I first decided to dedicate my life to reading, teaching, appreciating, critiquing and spreading literature in every facet I could possibly imagine. It was those nights I decided to become the woman who would come and go, talking of Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, and Stein. But today is the day I ask to pursue that dream. Please allow me to do so.