#rob casper

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 didn’t already know, that negative capability—Keats’ “uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts”—could 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 “Form and Theory in Contemporary Poetry” 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 text—which we returned to throughout the semester—was 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, jubilat—its name taken from “The Jubilate Agno” by Christopher Smart, which we also read.

  With “Form and Theory” the editors and I had a blueprint to follow. Each issue of jubilat combines contemporary poetry with reprints, interviews, and found pieces—some 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 Whitman’s alternate titles for “Leaves of Grass.” There are no “special sections”—no separating poetry from prose, present from past. It argues for literature’s implicit connecting quality—it does not exist in a vacuum, but rather permeates everything around us. I have continued with that mindset ever since—it even connects to the project I’m working on now: the PBS NewsHour series “Where Poetry Lives,” 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 aplenty—and even a great album or two. But it’s also striking to see how many literary magazines and presses launched from here. There is a kind of DIY spirit to Amherst and the “Happy Valley”—just 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 Wooten’s 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 editions—valuing 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 I’ve lived since there were other influences to contend with, but none with Emily’s slant New England sensibility.

  As a student here, I didn’t 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 sense—we 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 Northampton—especially the World War II Club, where we threw a few dance parties (and that’s how I met jubilat editor Christian Hawkey—in 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 “Live Lit” at Wooten’s and later Amherst Bookstore. And we talked, talked, talked about literature—the writers we read in our classes, the other writers in our workshops, the writers we’d 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.