Warren Wilson Commencement Address 7/14/17
To our amazing class of graduates, and to their devoted, forbearing, patient and generous parents, children, spouses and friends, I want to begin by saying how privileged I am to be up here to officially congratulate you all on this happy day of celebration. This achievement surely belongs to all of you. Think back, beloved graduates, to the day you announced to your families your intention to pursue an MFA, or even further back when you revealed to them your passion for writing. In my case, I was sixteen years old when I let slip to my parents that I intended to make my way in the world as a poet. I come from a long line of MD’s, not doctors, but meat dealers. You can imagine how my parents took the news. My father said, “A what?” as if I’d just announced plans to become a shepherd or a male belly dancer. “A poet.” I said. I want to write poetry for a living. Was I joking? Was I trying to disprove the stereotype that all Jews make money? Didn’t I realize I wouldn’t make enough to buy a pair of slippers. I said something to the effect that making enough isn’t what I want from life. My dad shot back, “Then be a lawyer for god’s sake, you’ll make more than enough!” Your families, I’m sure, weren’t quite as nonplussed as mine. For here they all are, today, not just to applaud your achievement, how far you’ve come, how hard you’ve worked, but to give you hope and courage for the marathon you’re about to run.
The undeniable and irreducibly unique abilities that got you accepted to this program in the first place have now been challenged, cajoled, goaded, and “annotated” into what I think of as the two ingredients indispensable to a writer’s life: humility and arrogance, humility that acknowledges the need to never stop learning, and the arrogance that assumes you’ll always be smart enough to learn anything that someone else is smart enough to teach you. Above and beyond refinements of craft, this program has taught you that writing is itself a life long non-degree conferring program from which there is no graduation, and that the longer you work at the art we love, the more of a beginner you become. As graduates of Warren Wilson, you have now officially entered the Ground Hog Day Academy of the writing world, in which everyone’s a permanent freshman and every day’s the first day of class. Read more
