NEW
Library Project
Volume 4, Number 1 - Fall 2005
Benefit Celebrates Bridge
Between Language and Life
by Anndee Hochman
It was an evening to celebrate the links between literature and life. At the James Stewart Theater in Princeton, 170 people gathered to hear three nationally renowned poets, screen a video about People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos and remember all the ways that words can repair the world.
The May 5 benefit raised more than $20,000 to support the program. But it was as much conscience-raiser as fundraiser, as each poet spoke of the writer’s obligation to speak truth and use words to create social change.
“In
a world in which we’re led to believe that reality equals reality
television, we have to examine our use of language and perhaps our
consciences,” said Paul Muldoon, humanities professor at Princeton
University and author of numerous books, including the 2003 Pulitzer
Prize-winning Moy Sand and Gravel.
The Irish-born Muldoon, whose father could not read and whose mother was a schoolteacher, noted “how moving it was to recognize some of the people in the state prison in Trenton” who appeared in the video, reflecting on the meaning of literature in their lives. “One has a duty to be helping more in the world,” he said.
Robert Fagles, award-winning translator of The Odyssey and The Iliad, drew laughter by noting that, when the Iraq war began in 2003, he received a call from a reporter who asked, “‘Was there a [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld in The Iliad?’ I said, ‘Not that I know of, but isn’t one enough?’”
Fagles read poems of war and love, including a passage from The Odyssey in which Odysseus comes home to Penelope and the two negotiate the long-awaited return to their own bed.
Henry Reath, former chair of the board of People and Stories—Gente y Cuentos, cited the program’s role as a counterpoint to popular culture, emphasizing depth in a sound-byte era and insisting on the value of all voices, not only those of the rich, powerful or politically connected.
“People and Stories has assumed that people, when given the opportunity, will not only be able to experience their own authority, they will be able to share it,” Reath said, quoting former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. “There is a bridge between where we are—on the campus of Princeton University, a place of great culture and wealth—and people touched by People and Stories.”
Yusef Komunyakaa, professor of the council of the humanities and creative writing at Princeton University, emphasized that writers are more than mere observers and chroniclers of events. “Often it is said that the writer, the artist, has been condemned to be a witness…but each of us is a caretaker of language and a caretaker of freedom.”