乐播传媒

Rob Farnsworth has just won the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, but today he feels ill so he phones to ask if we might delay our morning interview. 鈥淚 hope this doesn鈥檛 throw sand in the wheels,鈥� says Farnsworth, a writer-in-residence at 乐播传媒 since 1990.

The clich茅 is effective, acknowledging his concern for process. But after the recuperative postponement, I have to ask Farnsworth if a student of his could effectively use such a clich茅, straightforward and without irony, in a piece of fiction or poetry.

No, he says, but then offers how a grad school professor at Columbia did once talk about rescuing clich茅s 鈥渂y following them back to their literal roots. In some cases they can be excavated and played with. But that demands a willingness to play around in the sandpit that is the clich茅.鈥�

I smile; Farnsworth has reintroduced 鈥渟and鈥� in a way that鈥檚 both sly and, importantly, instructive: the craft of writing isn鈥檛 sandbox stuff.

When I arrive in his Pettigrew office, the slightly flushed-with-fever Farnsworth is staring at his bookshelf as if trying to find a star in a suddenly jumbled sky. 鈥淚鈥檓 looking for a book,鈥� he says to the wall. 鈥淚 know what its spine looks like…but I long ago stopped trying to keep my books in alphabetical order.鈥�

Now, most every professor has a well-used bookshelf, but you can easily imagine books leaving Farnsworth鈥檚 shelves like blocks at the beginning of a Jenga game, for reading is the cornerstone habit that Farnsworth demands from his writing students. The apprentice writer must read 鈥渙mnivorously,鈥� he says, because the motivation to write seriously should 鈥渃ome from wanting to participate in the spellcasting that reading makes you aware of. It should make you say, 鈥業 want to add my voice to that. I want to sing along with that, descant with that.鈥欌��

Craig Teicher 鈥�01 is one of two young-alum spellcasters and former Farnsworth prot茅g茅s who won first-book prizes in 2007. He received the Colorado Prize for Poetry for Brenda is in the Room and Other Poems, while Gabe Fried 鈥�96 won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize for Making the New Lamb Take.

Both express an appreciation for Farnsworth that borders on wonderment. 鈥淢y life as it is wouldn鈥檛 exist except for Rob,鈥� says Fried, an editor at Persea Books in New York City.

Teicher, also an editor in New York City (at Publishers Weekly, where he鈥檇 just interviewed novelist Elizabeth Strout 鈥�77 about her new book, Olive Kitteridge), arrived at 乐播传媒 trailing a belief in the communal and communional power of poetry. 鈥淢y family bottomed out a bit in high school,鈥� he recalls. 鈥淚n poetry I found companionship and something to identify with.鈥� Farnsworth, right from his first meeting with Teicher, noticed how 鈥渆arnest鈥� his student was about 鈥渨hat poetry could do. He came with that inkling.鈥� Farnsworth says that he and others were merely 鈥渙perating the bellows鈥� to fan Teicher鈥檚 creative flames.

I share the bellows quote with Teicher, who e-mails me back: 鈥淩ob鈥檚 being modest. He was my gatekeeper to the ways one could actually participate in literature.鈥� Later, on the phone, he explains. 鈥淗ere was a guy who, if I said something intelligent in class, was going to come back with something more intelligent that pushed the conversation further with other students, making it bigger and bigger.

鈥淎ll of a sudden, literature was personal and exciting.鈥�

Farnsworth, who majored in English at聽Brown and earned an M.F.A. at Columbia, teaches workshop courses in writing at 乐播传媒 in addition to literature courses, including one on modern Irish poetry this past winter. 鈥淩ob isn鈥檛 a Ph.D. scholar kind of guy,鈥� says Teicher. 鈥淗e鈥檚 a practicing reader and writer, and you鈥檙e not going to find a guy who has, for example, an earthier, more intimate knowledge of 20th-century Irish poetry. He knows what鈥檚 in the bones of it.鈥�

Widely published, Farnsworth is highly regarded in Maine for his many appearances as a poet, scholar, and facilitator for literary gatherings in small towns and cities.

But there鈥檚 more. Teicher and Fried especially praise the restraint in Farnsworth鈥檚 mentorship. 鈥淗e was really good about being cautious and making me aware how hard it is to have a successful career as a poet,鈥� Teicher says. 鈥淩ob understood that my college wish to be a poet was very much about my fantasy life, and he didn鈥檛 want to be a creature in my fantasy life. Once I was older, and was an adult, he was excited about treating me like one.鈥�

Says Fried, 鈥淩ob allowed us to explore our ambitions while making sure we could live with our shortcomings.鈥�

Farnsworth reads and discusses his poetry www.fishousepoems.org

By H. Jay Burns