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THE WAY IT GETS ITS ROOTS INTO YOU: A 50TH ANNIVERSARY KEYNOTE
by Rob Casper
For a half century, people like you and me have moved down the road or across the country to Amherst, to give a few years of their life over to writing poems or stories or even a novel. When the Masters of Fine Arts Program for Poets and Writers launched, in 1964, there werenât many other options. By the time I applied the number of possible MFA programs numbered in the hundreds. Agha Shahid Ali, who I met at an AWP Conference, encouraged me to apply hereâand anyone who knew him remembers how charmingly persuasive he could be.
 It wasnât the easiest transition. I ill-advisedly moved to Belchertown, where it took multiple bus-rides just to get groceries. And the first time I was workshopped at UMass, in a class filled with second-years, only the professor spokeâhe said my poem was full of âthrowaway lines,â a comment as true as it was damning. He followed up with me after class, to chat and find out who Iâd studied with, and even met with me outside his office hoursâhe told me I worried too much, which Iâve been trying to overcome ever since. He also told me to read all of William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, whichâof courseâI did.
In a larger sense, I arrived here knowing only the various devices and gestures that poems employed. During my MFA I learned that a poem could and should say what I didnât already know, that negative capabilityâKeatsâ âuncertainties, Mysteries, doubtsââcould be wildly generative. I learned to reverse the lines of a poem, to cut up a bunch of poems and rearrange them on the floor, into a new one. And a seminar called âForm and Theory in Contemporary Poetryâ changed everything. We read all of Sylvia Plath and Theodore Roethke and James Wright, as well as John Clare and a few contemporary poets. Our central textâwhich we returned to throughout the semesterâwas not poetry, but The Adventures of Lewis and Clark. The professor never gave us any explanation about this; in fact, my classmates and I quickly realized any sort of explanation would be reductive. That class included three future founding editors of the magazine I published, jubilatâits name taken from âThe Jubilate Agnoâ by Christopher Smart, which we also read.
 With âForm and Theoryâ the editors and I had a blueprint to follow. Each issue of jubilat combines contemporary poetry with reprints, interviews, and found piecesâsome of my favorites include a diary of a penguin scientist in Antarctica, an index of wrestling moves, a conversation with a rouge perfumist, and a list of Walt Whitmanâs alternate titles for âLeaves of Grass.â There are no âspecial sectionsââno separating poetry from prose, present from past. It argues for literatureâs implicit connecting qualityâit does not exist in a vacuum, but rather permeates everything around us. I have continued with that mindset ever sinceâit even connects to the project Iâm working on now: the PBS NewsHour series âWhere Poetry Lives,â by our current Poet Laureate (and UMass MFA grad) Natasha Trethewey.
 Looking at the graduates of the MFA program, one can see books and awards aplentyâand even a great album or two. But itâs also striking to see how many literary magazines and presses launched from here. There is a kind of DIY spirit to Amherst and the âHappy Valleyââjust far enough outside the literary hothouses of Boston and New York, just small and large enough for good culture and friendly exchange, and luckily chock full of bookstores. Walking in Wootenâs Bookstore for the first time I felt a different vibe. It was both more homey and more serious, a store in which to apprentice oneself as a writer, and it smartly combined new books and first editionsâvaluing the past while championing the present.
 I also think that, for poets in the program, the spirit of Emily Dickinson held sway. Compared to the rest of the country, we had proximity: the fact that we lived among her home and grave, that we inhabited the future outside her window, seemed to push us towards serious play and a homegrown inventiveness. In places Iâve lived since there were other influences to contend with, but none with Emilyâs slant New England sensibility.
 As a student here, I didnât feel the pressure to do anything but write as well as I could and help my classmates do the same. We felt competitive in the best senseâwe had a sense of working far enough from the pressures of publishing and tenure-track positions. We got to know each other at the coffee shops and bars of Amherst and Northamptonâespecially the World War II Club, where we threw a few dance parties (and thatâs how I met jubilat editor Christian Hawkeyâin the course of some crazy dancing he ended up with my wallet, and called me the next day to return it!). We crowded Memorial Hall for big readings and read for each other at âLive Litâ at Wootenâs and later Amherst Bookstore. And we talked, talked, talked about literatureâthe writers we read in our classes, the other writers in our workshops, the writers weâd long held dear to us. We even debated the list of recommended and required contemporary American poets you could get, like a secret report, from the program secretary.
 Itâs been three years since I handed jubilat off to current publisher Emily Pettitâthree years since I stopped coming back regularly to our little office at the end Bartlett Hallâs fourth floor. But this will always be where I grew up, as important as the rural Wisconsin town Iâm from. That, I think, is the strongest appeal of this program: the way it gets its roots in you. Before participating in my oral exam, I heard an apocryphal story about a professor who apparently tried to say something in that final conversation that would stay with his students forever. Well, I can tell you: so much of what I experienced here has shaped my life. In my work at the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, the Poetry Society of America, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and now the Library of Congress, I have acted as I learned to act here. Like my first professorâhe of the âthrowaway linesâ critiqueâI am demanding, and as forthright as I can be, about literature. But I am also more than willing to have my mind changed; in fact, thereâs nothing so rewarding as having my sense of the art expanded. I try to be always generous towards the writers and editors and teachers and nonprofit staffers who have, like me, devoted themselves to literature. For this, and for all the great friendships I have developed with my former classmates and my professors, and for my continually deepening sense of what poems and stories offer us, I cannot thank this place enough.