JACK LEAX

Just got word from the new exec director for alumni at my alma mater, Houghton College, that one of my favorite professors, Jack Leax is retiring. They're planning a reception and reading in April, to which past writing majors are invited -- and we're also invited to submit work for a special edition of the Lanthorn, the college literary magazine.

Back in the day, I had a couple dreadful poems published in the Lanthorn -- when Rand Bellavia was the co-editor, and he can probably attest to their dreadfulness if they were memorable at all. These days, however -- though I don't kid myself any more about being a Poet -- I have a poem or two that are significantly less dreadful. Life experience coupled with professional wordsmithing will do that, sometimes. I'll send a piece called "Excavation," loosely based on repeated encounters I had with an often drunken, paranoid-yet-genial WWII veteran when I was working as the editor of a Steuben County weekly. hazmatplaytime and snakelegs may remember that one; I shared it with the No-Talent Hacks a few years back.

I had Prof. Leax for a periodical-writing class my senior year, as well as a two-semester writers'-workshop, in which I worked on a novel that was even more dreadful than the poems. (Rand was in that class, as were mrgoodwraith, Brad Wilber and others in the Ooklaverse.) I don't remember a lot of specifics of his pedagogical style, but I do remember him helping me realize the need for a consistent voice and to trim away a lot of my allegedly arty flourishes that would detract from the thrust of what I was writing. (A skim through the last few years of this blog may reveal how much or how little of that advice has stuck with me.) I've long admired his own writing, plain-spoken verse and prose that explore the deeps of life through the minutae and daily routines and relationships -- and, occasionally, moments of decision. I would recommend his poetry collection Country Labors to anyone, along with Standing Ground -- a Lenten journal that ended up tracking his involvement in the community resistance to the (later-scrapped) planned siting of a nuclear waste dump. Grace Is Where I Live is quite good, too, though aimed at a slightly narrower audience, writers of faith. (He said it was the kind of book he wished someone had written when he was young.)

So yeah -- I can't really isolate out specific things Jack Leax taught me, but I nevertheless believe he was instrumental (if only by example) in my development and maturity as a writer. So I'll be carving an April weeknight out on my calendar.

Words: Martin Van Buren by Ted Widmer, one of the "American Presidents" series.
Sounds & Images: Somewhere in England by George Harrison. It's the one with "All Those Years Ago," though I'm particularly partial to "Blood From a Clone," with the great couplet: "They want some old crap-a/Nothing like Frank Zappa."
State O'Mind: Appreciative