Several WGSS faculty have created celebratory messages to the WGSS class of 2020 for the #WGSSGraduation2020 blog. Here are contributions from Professors Victoria Hesford, Liz Montegary, and Francesca Spedalieri. Enjoy!
Professor Hesford reads Emily Dickinson’s poem “‘Hope’ is a thing with feathers.”
Professor Montegary shares some messages for the “graduated feminists!”
And Professor Spedalieri shares this contribution:
Greetings and celebrations, WGSS graduates!
In this particular space-time vortex we find ourselves in, I wanted to share the words of Gwendolyn Brooks — a Pulitzer Prize winner, iconic 20th-century poet, author, and teacher. [A dear friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Wellman, introduced me to this quote.]
In an interview in 1973, Brooks was asked “if poems arrived to her complete.”
This is what Brooks said:
Image Description: A wide-shot photo of the Wang Center from the entrance to the Zuccaire Gallery at the Staller Center. It is a sunny day despite the cotton-candy clouds that punctuate the sky. Overlaid on the image in black type are Gwendolyn Brooks’ words. They read:
“A poem rarely comes whole and completely dressed. As a rule, it comes in bits and pieces. You get an impression of something—you feel something, you anticipate something, and you begin, feebly, to put these impressions and feelings and anticipation or rememberings into those things which seem so handleable—words.
And you flail and you falter and you shift and you shake, and finally, you come forth with the first draft. Then, if you’re myself and if you’re like many of the other poets that I know, you revise, and you revise. And often the finished product is nothing like your first draft. Sometimes it is.”
For me, Brooks’ words about poetry seem to reflect the journey of and beyond college. And, in the present moment, they also resonate loudly with hope.
So here is to you, your journeys, and those who have and will support you along the way.
Congratulations, Class of 2020!