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More From the In Box
Write to us! Care to comment on an Ohio Today story? Or share a memory about your days on campus? Then drop us a letter to the editor. Here's how: Send e-mail to ohiotoday@ohio.edu By regular mail Letters Fax Fax letters to (740) 593-1887 Letters to the editor may be edited for space and style
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Loss of Review bugs poet I had the good fortune of writing and studying poetry under both of The Ohio Review's co-founders, Wayne Dodd and Stanley Plumly, at Ohio University in the early 1970s (fall 2001 Ohio Today). That's when the poetry bug -- which made young writers want to give body to their emotional restlessness, natural curiosity and physical vitality in verbally magical ways -- was really going around. Once infected, I'm afraid I found no way to shake it and to this day must keep toiling on my poems in relative obscurity just to keep the bug from killing me. If The Ohio Review is going out of circulation because readers don't find contemporary poetry relevant, as Jess Goode's story on Dodd's retirement indicates, I guess that must mean they find older poetry much more applicable to their lives. They're much too busy reading the poetry of Whitman and Dickinson (or Bishop and Lowell) aloud to each other over their cell phones to bother with the newest work of Louise Gluck and Yusef Komunyakaa (or Rita Dove and C.K. Williams). I agree with Wayne Dodd when he suggests, first, that poets haven't at all "stopped writing about significant social and political matters," and second, that "the physicality of words" can give those matters (which more often than not are suggested rather than addressed by the poem) a vivid presence. If anything, American poetry, I think, has gotten more relevant and more musical since the early '70s, when it was retreating to the hearth, in a sense, from the burning villages of Vietnam. A scan of poetry shelves in a college bookstore should show you that. Modern sanitation and upgraded inoculation practices may have killed the poetry bug in the roughly equivalent, formally educated households that used to be infected with the works of the Brownings, Longfellow, Tennyson and Emerson. But the bug that makes American poets unable to stop writing, no matter how small their diseased audiences, probably wouldn't have survived as well as it has, in such a virulent strain, without the 30-year journey Wayne Dodd gave it as the chief infector general of The Ohio Review. Unfortunately, I can't quite gather from Goode's article why the journal is going under now that Dodd has retired. I'm tempted to infer that the decision-makers at my alma mater have decided it's time to join the inoculated majority. If that's so, I wonder if the serum will cost as much as it did to help keep the bug alive in a fine literary magazine. Scott Ruescher, BA '75 Cambridge, Mass. Editor's note: Hotel Amerika, edited by Associate Professor of English David Lazar, will replace The Ohio Review as the University's professional literary magazine. It will include experimental and international work in all literary genres. The debut is planned for 2003. Koon Band was a jazzy crew Rarely do I come out of hiding from numerous attempts on the part of two universities to draw me back into the scenes of my youth for ostensibly nostalgic but essentially monetary reasons, truth be told. However, the article on The Local Girls (fall 2001 Ohio Today) tugged at my heartstrings as a lifelong dance band musician (and erstwhile music major at Ohio U.). My earliest exposure to dance band music was at age 19 playing at The Varsity Inn beneath Logan's Book Store. Needless to report, once hooked on the joys of performing this type of music vs. attempting to play the "Minute Waltz" in less than a minute as a piano major, I gladly returned to my old faithful tenor sax and have been happily married to the same for lo these many years (with my deceased wife's approval, of course). What really caught my eye was the reference to Vern Smolik and Rex Koon. My second dance band experience at Ohio U. was in the Rex Koon Band. Rex was a very nice man and easy to work for; Vern was a very likeable young pianist who had little difficulty with the ladies (full head of wavy hair, thin moustache, "fetching" smile). But I was unaware of his having written "Four-Year Heaven." I do recall his coaxing me to insert inappropriate words into the lyrics of "I Haven't Anyone 'til You," however, just to see if anybody noticed (I was the vocalist for this outfit); nobody did. The mere mention of jazz in the music school during the '30s was an automatic ticket to the front door. My piano instructor was Dr. Alan R. Kresge, organist at the local Methodist church. He gave my sister (an excellent pianist and organist) her first and only "B" because he caught her "relaxing" at the organ in the music school knocking out some pop tunes. Thanks for listening and very best wishes. Loren Pace, AB '36 Findlay, Ohio Airport pioneers applauded I was thrilled to read about the expansion of Ohio University Airport with new terminal facilities and extended runway (winter 2001 Ohio Today). This is a far cry from the small strip and shack on East State Street that was the original OU Airport. I appreciate David Snyder's generous donation making it possible. Certainly for that kind of money he should be recognized by having the terminal named in his honor. However, I hope his donation does not overshadow the recognition that the true pioneers of OU Airport and its aviation program deserve. Their dedication, perseverance and leadership were every bit as valuable. Among them: Dewy Laughlin, who kept the airport going when OU's interest in it seemed nonexistent; former President Vernon Alden, who had the insight and imagination to develop the airport as a center of aviation education and transportation for OU; Dave Vaughn, Roland Ismert and Dave Thomas, who implemented President Alden's vision; Francis Fuller, who developed the airport and Aviation Department into what we recognize today; and Gordon Bush, who provided insight, support and guidance as a leading businessman and member of the OU Board of Trustees. Though I am surely overlooking additional pioneers who deserve recognition, only a few more names come to mind: Dave Hoover, Tom Wheeler, Joan Mace and Elaine McCoy. Final recognition should go to the early officers and members of the OU Flying Bobcats, who started and saw the club through its early growing pains. Robert Martin, BBA '65 Hampstead, N.H. Radio ran rampant! I enjoyed the article on WOUB (always a great station) and the recent letter about WGAM in the '50s (fall 2000 and fall 2001 issues of Ohio Today, respectively). There was another WGAM broadcasting from Gamertsfelder Hall during the mid-1960s ("1460 on your radio dial"). It was a low-power station using the dorm electrical wiring as the antenna. We were "on the air" for a morning wake-up show and in the evening with classical and "study music" (and sometimes the Beatles). Ken Fisher, BS '67, MED '72 Winfield, Ill. Trautwein chimed in I was pitching in an intramural softball game when I injured my back. The opposing team was pounding the ball all over the field. I turned around to talk to Big Bill Trautwein, a longtime fixture in Ohio University Athletics, who was umpiring behind the pitcher's mound. Jokingly, I said, "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." To which Big Bill replied in his booming voice, "I'd hate to tell you how you're playing the game." Emden Schulze, AB '40, MA '42 Willoughby, Ohio Correction Ninety-four of the Athens campus' first-year students in fall 2001 were high school valedictorians. An incorrect figure appeared in the fall 2001 Ohio Today. |