{"id":42694,"date":"2016-10-11T10:16:56","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T14:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=42694"},"modified":"2022-09-28T16:03:04","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T20:03:04","slug":"poetry-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2016\/10\/11\/poetry-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"David<\/a>

David Lee Garrison, Wright State emeritus professor of modern languages<\/p><\/div>\n

In 2007, Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell went incognito to play six intricate Bach pieces on a Stradivarius worth $3.5 million during rush hour at a Washington, D.C., subway station.<\/p>\n

It was part of a social experiment organized by The Washington Post, which wanted to know if people perceive beauty in an unexpected context and pause to appreciate it. Thousands of people streamed by Bell during his 45-minute concert, but only a few stopped.<\/p>\n

The story so struck David Lee Garrison, Wright State University emeritus professor of modern languages<\/a>, that he wrote a poem about it titled \u201cPlaying Bach in the DC Metro\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u2026Partita No. 2 in D Minor
\n<\/em>sang to commuters in the station
\n<\/em>why we must live\u2026
\n<\/em>A caf\u00e9 hostess who drifted
\n<\/em>to the door whenever she was free
\n<\/em>said Bach gave her peace,
\n<\/em>and children waded into the music
\n<\/em>as if it was water, listening
\n<\/em>until rescued by parents
\n<\/em>who had somewhere to go.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAll the children who came by were intrigued, drawn into the music,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cMy poem is about the power of art, the power of music, the power of poetry. Poetry is all around us, but people aren\u2019t always aware of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garrison\u2019s poem has received a lot of attention. Most recently, the British Broadcasting Corporation has decided to read it over the air on Sunday, Oct. 16, as part of a program titled \u201cViolins\u201d on the London-based radio show \u201cWords and Music.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Playing Bach in the DC Metro\u201d can be heard on BBC radio Oct. 16 and for 30 days after that on the BBC website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople often don\u2019t realize how powerful poetry is, what a force it is in their lives,\u201d said Garrison. \u201cThey say they don\u2019t like poetry, but they like music, they like songs. And songs are essentially poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garrison believes poetry means finding an original way to say something. Once he comes up with an original idea and puts it into words, he repeatedly revises it to eliminate unnecessary verbiage so that the poem is all muscle.<\/p>\n

For the most part, Garrison doesn\u2019t wait for inspiration to write poems. He takes a workmanlike approach, trying to write poetry every day. Some poems take him a long time to write; however, he came up with the first draft of \u201cPlaying Bach in the DC Metro\u201d inside of 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

Garrison said some poems can be opaque and difficult, but \u201cmine are easily accessible \u2014 you can understand them on a first read,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I show someone a poem and that person doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s about, I feel I\u2019ve failed because poetry is about communication.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI started writing at 16 out of adolescent angst,\u201d Garrison said, \u201cand I still write about high school experiences sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took writing in earnest after a high school English teacher in his hometown of Bremerton, Washington, encouraged him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s much easier to write about things that happened 30 years ago because memory edits out the unimportant images and leaves you with what is poetic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Garrison earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in romance languages from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He taught Spanish for three years at Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland, and had notable students there, including the sons of Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, newscaster David Brinkley and Army Gen. William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Garrison went on to receive his master\u2019s degree in Spanish from Catholic University of America, his master\u2019s in comparative literature from Indiana University and his Ph.D. in Spanish from Johns Hopkins University. He taught Spanish at Indiana University, Washington College in Maryland and the University of Kansas before joining the faculty at Wright State in 1979.<\/p>\n

While at Wright State, Garrison wrote the lyrics to the Wright State Alma Mater after being approached by an administrator who said the university needed one. A colleague in the English department, Thomas Whissen, had previously written some music for an alma mater, but couldn\u2019t think of any lyrics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turned out that the words fit the music. So it seemed to be fated,\u201d Garrison recalled.<\/p>\n

For 30 years, Garrison taught Spanish, Portuguese and comparative literature at Wright State, and he chaired the Department of Modern Languages<\/a> from 1999 to 2007 before retiring in 2009. His wife, Suzanne Kelly-Garrison, is a law lecturer in the Raj Soin College of Business<\/a> and author of \u201cStolen Child,\u201d a novel about growing up as an Irish-American in the Midwest during the Kennedy years.<\/p>\n

Garrison\u2019s work has appeared nationwide in journals and anthologies. Two poems from his book \u201cSweeping the Cemetery\u201d were read by Garrison Keillor on \u201cThe Writer\u2019s Almanac\u201d and one was featured by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser on his website \u201cAmerican Life in Poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinclair College awarded Garrison the Paul Laurence Dunbar Memorial Poetry Prize in 2009, and he was named Ohio Poet of the Year in 2014 by the Ohio Poetry Day Association.<\/p>\n

Garrison reads his poems on a WYSO public radio program called \u201cConrad\u2019s Corner\u201d and gives poetry readings at universities, libraries and coffee houses. He even read once to inmates at the Lebanon Correctional Institution, who received his work with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

The author of 12 books, Garrison is currently finishing a new collection of poems tentatively titled \u201cLight in the River.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Lee Garrison taught Spanish, Portuguese and comparative literature and chaired the Department of Modern Languages before retiring in 2009. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":42696,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2037,2023,725,747,715,4855],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-arts-scene","category-faculty","category-home-news-sidebar","category-liberal-arts","category-news","category-social-sciences-and-international-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42694"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42698,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42694\/revisions\/42698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}