Quaker Higher Education QHE A Publication of the Friends Association for Higher Education Volume 9: Issue 2 November, 2015 What is the careful work that we as testimony of integrity and truth-telling, educators, artists and scholars must do to to the secular task of investigating crime. foster “Aha!” moments and perspective From Earlham College, Kelly Burk, shifts for our students, publics, and Director of Religious Life, and Trish colleagues? How do we draw on the Eckert, Director of the Newlin Quaker grace of language in poetry, theatre, and Center, carefully outline the steps and song, as well as the tools of consensus, resources that they and their students forensics, and Biblical exegesis to take have found useful when speaking one’s on tough conversations, realities and truth, listening to others’ truth, and truths? The six essays and works of this moving forward in (very) difficult Fall 2016 issue of Quaker Higher conversations. Education help us address these queries. Stephen Pothoff, associate professor of Bill Jolliff, poet and professor of English religion and philosophy at Wilmington at George Fox University, shares with us College, walks us carefully through the his keynote address to 2015 June’s confounding Markan account of Jesus FAHE conferees. He provides cursing the fig tree. His Biblical and guideposts for enjoying and growing historical “forensics” reveal how Jesus from contemporary poetry that offer was speaking truth to imperial Rome. delight, identification, transcendence, and epiphany. Finally, we present The Healing Blues Project, a multimedia engagement with Darlene R. Graves, Professor of Digital homelessness, co-created by Ted Media and Communication Arts at Efremoff, assistant professor of Digital Liberty University, takes us beyond the Photography and Video Art at Central Friends’ historical aversion to the “lively Connecticut State University. arts” by immersing the development of performances in Quaker process and Submissions: QHE is published twice a queries. She urges us to adapt the power year, in the spring and the fall. Articles of performance and theatre in other submitted for possible publication settings and disciplines and to confront should be sent as Word documents to: the contemporary reliance on violence in either [email protected] or to film, television and theatre. [email protected]. Since QHE is not wed to any particular referencing format, Guilford College associate professor of you may use the professional style of biology Bryan W. Brendly describes your choice. If you would like to discuss how the tools of forensic anthropology an idea that you have for an article, our help his students bring the Friends telephone numbers are: 336-316-2162 (DS) and 860-832-2616 (AEA). FAHE ANNUAL CONFERENCE June 16-19, 2016 Mark your calendars now for June 16-19, 2016. FAHE will meet at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birgmingham, UK, to consider Educating for Action. The call for papers with queries and conference registration is available at the FAHE web site and at this site. Deadline for proposal submissions is November 30, 2015. 2 The Quaker Poet in Community William Jolliff George Fox University “It is difficult / to get the news from today Quaker poets must rethink, and poems,” wrote the poet William Carlos possibly re-invent, the role of their work Williams sixty years ago, “yet men die in our communities: as Quaker poets, as miserably every day / for lack / of what champions in plain coats of the is found there.” His point, I believe, is frivolous, where and how do we serve? that poetry matters; that it is not frivolous. Thankfully poetry does maintain a few niches in our culture. With no intention I take comfort in his words, since of being comprehensive, I offer you historically Quakers have not been three that I think recommend themselves champions of the frivolous. We try to do to consideration by Friends. things that matter. But how does a Quaker poet today do good and Friendly Niche #1: Let's start with self-discovery: service in the place where he or she is the examined life. Such helping folks as situated—situated in both the inner and teachers, spiritual directors, and outer sense, the spiritual and physical? counselors continue to direct their More simply, what is the role of the students or clients to write out their Quaker poet in community? feelings in poetry. Contemporary free verse, with its apparent lack of any A look at our Quaker history is less necessary craft, lends itself to such helpful than one would like: I’m sure it exploration, and sometimes the results never occurred to the poet John are good. They perform a helpful and Greenleaf Whittier that his poems might necessary function for the growth of not matter, any more than it would have individuals; but generally these "poems" occurred to the political lobbyist find that their best or only audience is an Whittier or the journeyman journalist audience of one or two. So how might a Whittier. After all, he used his verse to Quaker poet minister in such community sway popular thought. settings? That’s a concept impossible to suggest Very well, I believe. As teachers who now, given poetry’s lack of any popular help students find a voice for dreams and presence. Poetry today inhabits a much fears, as spiritual directors who help diminished cultural position. The directees look closely at their own souls, functions once performed by poetry in as counselors who help clients make mainstream culture are fulfilled by other sense of their past, their present, and arts and media—by popular songs, their full potential, a Quaker poet may novels, op-ed pieces, movies, talk radio, readily find opportunity for ministry. television, and the ubiquitous Netflix. The Quaker teacher, spiritual director, or counselor skilled in the techniques of Since the avenue of poetry as a broadly poetic discovery can be a Friendly circulating popular medium is gone, paraclete who helps self-discovery 3 happen. The actual poetic craft in such mean that the art doesn't bear cultural contexts comes to the fore as we teach significance. the invention skills, the exploratory methods, the powers of figurative Niche #3: A third community that can be comparison, the surprising recognitions served by the Quaker poet is the remnant in narrative form, even the places of of a popular audience. When poetry is non-judgmental expression—any and all published by Christian Century or techniques that open the way for Friends Journal, the editors are banking everyday miracles. on the fact that just as some of us go occasionally to a gallery or hear a Niche #2: At the opposite end of the symphony, some of us occasionally read spectrum stands the persistent place of poetry. The remnant may be few, but poetry in the rarified air of high art. that doesn't mean the ministry shouldn't When poetry ceased to be a popular be offered to such a community. What form, it became the stuff of specialists, the poet must keep in mind for ministry and its techniques changed utterly. As a in this community, however, is that result, what may seem to the uninitiated readers must be able to access and enjoy like the craftless expression of free verse what the work offers. The poem must be is often, in fact, following complex something more craft-rich than therapy; principles that could never have been and, simultaneously, it must be more conceived by Whittier or, for that matter, accessible than what is offered by the Shakespeare. The inevitable result is that most craft-intensive high art. high art poetry is now the stuff of universities, devotees with carefully As I think about the potential role for the developed tastes, and other poets. Much Quaker poet in these communities, I’m of such work is difficult, even off- struck by the strangeness of our puttingly so; simultaneously, the more particular art form in this particular time. easily accessible and gratifying aspects Is contemporary free verse a craftless of poetic craft have fallen away. That mode of freewriting for self-discovery? isn't bad and it isn't good. It simply is. Or is it an extremely complex and subtle, and occasionally inaccessible, art form? How does the Quaker poet find a way to Or may it be a way of bringing some contribute to, to serve in, that high art aesthetic bliss or deep insight to a more milieu? The most obvious answer is or less general population? Considering difficult but clear: if serious poetry is such a quandary, I’m struck by that same your gift and passion, you do your art, question every free-verse poet has and you earn your status in that fielded from some well meaning student community. The Quaker poet can and or reader or listener: should play a role in that world, practicing her craft with excellence and What makes that stuff you do poetry? rigor, just as a Quaker painter or composer practices her craft among her It’s a legitimate question. fellow experts. Even with professional success, of course, the community If free verse apparently fulfills no easily served will be small; but that doesn't defined standard of craft—no rhyme, no regular meter, no prescriptive form— 4 what makes any offered page of poetry. Even when it doesn’t seem like language a poem? it. Here’s my current answer, dogmatic as it Now I'll become still more prescriptive. may appear. As it happens, I think my In addition to the delight factor, a poem answer comes from a place where my must allow the reader to experience one Quakerism and my craft converge.