The Prism Across Time Selected Writings from the Lynchburg College Literary Magazine, 1907-2007 Edited by Casey Clabough and Jennifer La Plante
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The Prism Across Time Selected Writings from the Lynchburg College Literary Magazine, 1907-2007 Edited by Casey Clabough and Jennifer La Plante The Prism Across Time Copyright 2010 by Casey Clabough Table of Contents 1907-1909 “Youth’s Yearning” Richard H. Thorton 8 “Meditation” Myrtle C. Bell 11 “Driven From Home” Viola Lupton 12 1910-1919 “Withered Leaves” A.L., probably Anna Lewis 15 “When Jack Rings the Bell” Rosa Lewis 18 What Now? The staff of the Argonaut 21 1920-1929 “Apropos Social” A. Muser Watchemm 23 “Sea Longing” Joseph W. Stone 25 “Some Hypotheses” H.L. Hughes 27 "Sad Optimists, Gay Pessimists" Francis A. Henson 29 1930-1939 “The Bridge-Builder” Will Allen Dromgoole 30 “Five O’clock, October 9” Marguerite Graham 32 “Poem” Margaret Fuller 33 “Tobacco Market” Marguerite Graham 36 “Blind Man’s Bluff” Jimmy Wynne 38 “Fill the Seats of Justice” Henry Solter 40 “Pulling the Athlete Through” Betty Brydges 44 1940-1949 “Americanism” William Garbee Jr. 45 “Lynchburg’s First Poet: Bransford Vawter” Harold Thornhill 47 “Why a College Magazine?” Kingsley M. Stevens 49 “Merry Christmas?" E.F., probably Elaine Fitch 51 “What to Do In Case of An Air Raid!” Editors of The Prism 52 “Soliloquy of a Campus Draftee” Regina Thomas 53 “The Meaing of Good Citizenship in Wartime America” Carol Potee 54 “Campus Evolution” Marjorie Harmon 57 “Liberated” George Williams 58 “The Chief Value of a College Education in War-Time" Marjorie Harmon 60 “Before Ultimate Victory” Joseph F. Jones 62 “The Last Wait” Bob Owens 64 “I Won the War with a Shovel” Bob Owens 66 “Reflection” Norma Bowen 69 “My Journey by the Rails” Bill Seay 71 “The Almost Perfect Professor” Ed Hiestand 73 1950-1959 “The Granite City” Mrs. Aurora del Carpio McQueen, trans. by Kenneth Knight 77 “The Green Light” Van Veatch 80 “I Remember Now” Van Veatch 83 “The Devil’s Own Dance” Staff of The Prism 84 “Welcome Freshmen!” Don McAfee 85 “Lynchburg College is a Flame Within the Heart” A.B. Stanger 88 “Hero” Bob Seward 90 “Elegy on the Death of a Tree for All Its Friends” Gertrude E. Teller 92 “College Is...” Patricia Berry Martin 96 “You Call Me 'Beat'” Pauline Rose 97 1960-1969 “Ode to a Hangover” Dick Wynne 99 “The Question of Justice” Sheldon VanAuken 99 “We Came to a Field Whose Only Name Was Peace” Carol Edwards 100 “October Journal” A. Kenneth Lloyd 105 “After the Battle” Kenneth L. Arnold 110 “The Unknown Soldier” Ted Walsworth 112 “Do or Die” Tom Pumpelly 113 “PASS/FAIL: Or, A Half Hog May Be Better Than a Whole Hog” Mervyn Williamson 116 1970-1979 “On returning to the simple things in life, or Positively 5th Street” Kenneth Crawford 120 “Song of America” Dave Hartman 122 “The Hunter” Jeffrey W. Blum 128 “Icon” Anonymous 130 “Portrait” Janie James 132 “Blood Relations” Carole Symer 135 1980-1989 “At Trotter’s” Bob Thomas 141 “Virginia Ten Miler” Nancy H. Harper 143 “The Test” Orrie A Stenroos 145 “Kisses on the Playground” Paul Randall Johnson 147 “Coming Home” Barbara Scotland 149 “Resurrecting Maude” Barbara Moore 152 “Flight from Reality” John Muniz & Pam Lowe Cox 154 “New World by Thumb” David Compton 155 1990-1999 “Blue Ridge in Winter” Dr. Elza Tiner 158 “The Ballade of the Blue Boy” E.d. Lowe 159 “Please see DEATH, Page A-11” John P. McCaughan 161 “Glory” Simone Monteleone 164 “Society for the Reclamation of Intelligence in the South” Jenny Sandman 165 “Down in Virginia” Jean Stewart Wake 168 “Cinnamon Rolls and Lemon Meringue Pie” Ginna Bruce 170 2000-2009 “Coffee Stains” Ian Moore: 173 “Blue Squall” E. Dane Phelps 175 “The Dorm of My Life” Melissa Andrews 177 “Mo’m Ling” Seth Meeks 178 “Origami” Britni Lightfoot 181 “November in Lynchburg” Erika Seay 182 "The Shadow Under Lynchburg, or Ragnarok at College Lake" 183 Note from the Editors Typographical and spelling errors appearing in original documents have been corrected, but the texts of these pieces are otherwise identical to their original form. The Editors would like to thank the following individuals for their support of the project: Ariel Myers, Clélie D.D. Steckel, and Taranée Tabaian. Foreword The idea for this collection began, appropriately enough, in LC‘s Knight-Capron library, down in its remote bowels, in the old President‘s vault, beyond the big steel door in a claustrophobic chamber where the administration used to keep the campus payroll, but now lies home to a crammed and overflowing assortment of drab grey boxes containing a vast array of moldy papers from the college‘s past. I was down there looking for something (I think it was one of Sheldon Vanauken‘s late-life articles on the South) and had become distracted by some old English Department memos from the 1960s. These documents fascinated me on account of the fact their topics and con- tents were, despite the chronological separation of nearly half a century, almost exactly the same as those sent around via email in the department now (curriculum, deadlines, committee reports, hiring, etc.). The faculty had long since changed but not the events; it was as if new actors had arrived to take up venerable parts in a curious production destined to run forever. In the midst of these musings I noticed on the shelf beneath the English Department boxes a row of grey containers all marked Prism. Below that assortment sat an identical row, and another followed it chronologically on the top shelf of the next bookcase over. On and on it went, the rows and shelves seeming to continue indefinitely, forming together a veritable wall of oldPrism issues. I experienced a sensation akin to awe as I opened the first box and gazed down upon the first volume of thePrism ‘s literary predecessor, The Argo- naut. Yet even as I did, my eyes began to water and I sneezed convulsively: a violent, loud report in the closed space of the dusty vault. Hastily returning the box to its long undisturbed resting place, I hurried out in search of fresh air, though not without promising myself a return visit. What ensued over the next few months at snatched intervals between classes and meetings and the other predictable phenomena of campus life was a haphazard browsing of all these volumes—a fair amount of skimming and scanning and even some downright reading that came to be a real pleasure despite the ungainly dust filter and lab goggles I found myself wearing to foil the effects of the mold. A peculiar scene this likely constituted and there were those on the library staff who reckoned I was hiding in the vault from some odious duty or, less likely though certainly possible, had perhaps traded in my humanities training in pursuit of some dark manner of illegal chemical research. In reality, I was merely developing, slowly and steadily—with a sneeze or choke here and there--a genuine interest in and appreciation for LC‘s literary and cultural history over the course of the last century. What, after all, is a little mold if one has some riveting reading material on hand? * The volume you now behold owes its content and appearance chiefly to a superb librarian,Ariel Myers, and some immensely talented English graduate students, each of whom pored over endless old Prism issues in search of memorable narratives and artwork. The end product you can cheerfully survey and judge for yourself. For me, the collection constitutes a kind of indirect cultural history of Lynchburg College and, to a certain extent, Lynch- burg. You‘ll find in these pages names that are familiar on campus even now: Richard Thornton, for whom the college‘s visiting writer endowment is named; Sheldon Vanauken, winner of the National Religious Book Award for his book A Severe Mercy and perhaps LC‘s most successful faculty author of all time; and many others, both vaguely resonant and fully recognizable. The collected writing and visual matter that appear in this book are as varied and interesting as its personages. Thornton‘s poem for the 1908 senior class offers timeless advice to any of the graduating classes that have followed his, and much of the collection‘s work, both visual and written, reflects notable changes in the college even as it captures the archetypal essence of what it means to be an undergraduate in any era. There are embodiments of the social aspect of the college experience ("Ode to a Hangover","Trotters," etc.) as well as concern for society and the world as a whole (see, for example, the written reflections on various social initiatives and wars). And some of the pieces ("Apropos Social"and "The Devil‘s Own Dance," for instance) are just plain fun, capturing the excitement and whimsy of young people caught up in the euphoria of artistic creation. This is a collection for those young at heart and eager to recall their undergraduate days on campus, for many of the best days and memorable times of the last hundred years are recorded here—from turn of the century winter afternoons upon the Skating Pond to late twentieth century nights out on Vernon; from Bill Seay‘s 1940s verse to Erika Seay‘s 2007 poem which concludes the volume. It‘s all here—shiny, alive, and completely devoid of mold: the essence of Lynchburg College that A. B. Stanger likened in a 1955 poem to "a flame within the heart": Whether you walk this sacred soil, Or fellowship with friends, Or lift a silent prayer, It is a flame within the heart, and it will not die.