Te keynote speaker at graduation was Kim Stafford. Mr. Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, most recently Te Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. He approaches writing as a chance to set down stories we have carried into poems, essays, radio commentaries, blessings, rants, parables, and other forms of tikkun olam, a Jewish concept referring to the healing of the world. Te following is an excerpt from his speech.
KIM STAFFORD
“When I was in college, I turned in a poem to my creative writing class, and the following week, after class, the teacher took me aside, and held out the poem to me.
‘What are you going to do with this?’ he said.
‘Do with it?’ I said. ‘I turned it in for the assignment you gave us.’
‘But what are you going to do with it?’ he said again.
‘Do with it?’ Looking back, I see the answer is this: I’ll make of my private writing practice a source for gathering words for listeners like you, words from the hidden path of my own obsession for the city beyond myself. Tat teacher’s question was a turning for me from my major in school to my personal calling as a writer.
Outwardly, I have had many jobs, and found ways to support myself and my family. I’ve been a good economic citizen. But inwardly, every day, with helpless curiosity and pleasure, I make artifacts with words— poems, songs, stories, blessings, manifestos, letters to the world. My formation has called me to follow the big road, but be informed and sustained by the less-visible path that is my own.
So, friends, I invite you to forge forth with gusto in all realms of formal learning you can find. Tere is treasure there, no question. But as you travel from this day, I invite you to surrender also to the small path of personal obsession, passion, the hidden genius of your unique curiosity. I think you will find that in the long run, pleasure in what only you can find is supremely practical, for it will sustain you, keep you, give you life.
To the Class of 2016: All my love.”
Summer 2016 25
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