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CLASSICALLY COLLINS
A GIFT THAT’S CLASSICALLY COLLINS
Menelaus Paris Diomedes Odysseus Nestor Achilles Agamemnon
Ordinarily, Billy Collins can, in a single sitting, write a poem of the sort that has made him a national treasure.
I try not to hate him for that.
It helps to know that the native New Yorker, a former two-term U.S. poet laureate whose books are perennial bestsellers, spent decades refining the rare ability to “put the fun back in profundity,” as one reviewer phrased it, while addressing the simple mysteries of everyday life — from trying to fathom what dogs think of their owners to wondering why a teenager steeped in the raw energy of adolescence can’t muster enough of it to clean up her room.
Collins, a regular contributor to this publication who retired to Winter Park several years ago, just turned 80 and published his 13th collection, Whale Day: And Other Poems. But he has arrived at a stage in his career when his attention is divided between his next volume of verse and the larger legacy he’ll leave behind.
He placed his notes, diaries and other historical papers at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, where they’ll be in good company among the archives of such fellow literary luminaries as T.S. Elliot, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, Anne Sexton and Dylan Thomas.
Then, more recently, he donated $250,000 to create an endowed scholarship for promising college students, though the gift didn’t go to an institution with a noted creative writing program, as you might expect.
Instead, he bequeathed it to his alma mater, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, to support a somewhat more obscure program: classics, a subject that traditionally involves the study of ancient cultures, particularly that of the Greeks and Romans.
A good deal of personal sentiment is involved here. But there’s a bit more to the story than that — and not just for poets and professors.
When Collins graduated from Holy Cross in 1963 with a degree in English, all his classmates had been male (it would be nine years before women were admitted) and the faculty consisted entirely of Jesuits, the highly educated, hard-core order of priests who were essentially the Roman Catholic equivalent of the Marines.
Their charges wore coats and ties to classes and the cafeteria, were rousted out of bed at 5 a.m. for misbehaving — and studied Latin and Greek, both the languages and the classical cultures and philosophies in which they evolved.
Collins learned to love poetry from his mother, who read it to him as a child; absorbed conviviality from his father, an Irish-Catholic insurance executive who could walk into a tavern and turn strangers into back-slapping friends; and discovered the danger of indulging in too much self-importance from his classmates.
But press him for the bedrock of his success as an English professor for 35 years and a poet with a worldwide fan base, and he’ll tell you it was what he learned at Holy Cross about both the humanistic philosophies and rhythms of language invented by the ancients.
An interviewer once described Collins as “the class clown in the schoolhouse of American poets.” Fair enough. But he was a clown with an education in the classics, and that made all the difference — as it likely did for scores of his fellow graduates, whatever their professions.
Though he didn’t plan it this way, Collins’ ges-
A portrait of the poet as a young man (above): Collins’ 1963 yearbook picture from the College of the Holy Cross. The former two-term U.S. poet laureate (right, during a recent visit to Paris) has endowed a classics scholarship for his Worcester, Massachusetts-based alma mater.
ture of support for the discipline arrives at a time when classics departments are not only looking to remain relevant but are caught up in the cultural clashes of the day.
One reason for that recent development is that white supremacy groups have seized on classical iconography and a twisted interpretation of Greek and Roman cultures to support racist ideology. This has led some classics scholars to reexamine their responsibility to study and present the realities of Greco-Roman attitudes about race.
A key figure in the debate is Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a Princeton University classics professor who has dedicated much of his career to researching slavery as it existed in Greece and Rome.
Peralta has even suggested that, given the historic misappropriation of Greco-Roman ideals ranging from the Nazis to present-day extremists, classics departments should be disbanded, rebuilt from scratch and focused exclusively on combating such views.
Although such an all-encompassing shift is unlikely, the way in which the classics are taught has changed radically over the decades. There’s an example of this seismic shift close to home.
The founders of Rollins College envisioned it as a traditional 19th-century liberal arts institution, one whose bedrock would include introducing students to the wisdom of ancient Roman and Greek scholars.
“This was in an era when educators talked about providing students with the discipline and ‘furniture of the mind’ that they would need to lead meaningful lives — and the best method to make that happen was thought to be through a close study of the classics,” says Jack Lane, author of a seminal Rollins history.
The modern evocation of classical studies at Rollins is on the opposite side of the spectrum from the rooms-to-go, rubber-stamp approach imposed upon students a century or so ago.
Vander Poppen is an archeologist. The remainder of the interdisciplinary teaching staff consists of professors with backgrounds in theater/dance, philosophy, and history.
The program, like many others across the country, is broad ranging not just in methodology but in content, delving into the wisdom traditions and lifestyles of the civilizations in Asia and Africa that surrounded and influenced the Greek and Roman empires.
Classics educators across the country are also giving heightened attention to race and ethnicity as it played out in ancient times.
Rebecca Futo Kennedy is an associate professor of classics in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She leads discussions on these thorny issues in her classroom.
Says Kennedy: “The responsibility rests with all of us to look at how and what we teach, especially when it contributes to the continued use of the classical past to support modern white supremacy.”
Kennedy is careful to emphasize the long-standing tradition of the Romans to allow anyone — both the descendants of freed slaves and people of other ethnic groups in the provinces — to earn citizenship as a Roman.
She says that this policy doesn’t mean Romans didn’t have prejudices. What it does mean is that Romans must have had a fundamental understanding of diversity as an alloy that strengthens a culture.
By the way: You probably know what an alloy is. It’s when you blend two metals together to create another metal with more strength and durability.
But you might not know the word’s derivation. It’s from the Old French alijer, which means “to join,” and the Latin alligare, which means “to bind.” Mark that down as yet another lesson the ancients passed down to us — and rest assured that Billy Collins appreciates it.
Collins, for his part, sees all of this through two lenses. It’s a perspective that gives him an abiding faith that the wisdom of the ancients will continue to maintain a presence in our culture — even if that wisdom is more critically analyzed.
As a wordsmith, he’s keenly aware that Latin-derived words make up roughly 50 percent of the English language. The percentage is much higher in certain categories. Words that represent abstractions are largely Latin-based, while words with Anglo-Saxon roots tend to describe concrete, specific things.
As an educator, adds Collins: “I just never considered the classics to be in need of defending. They’re so foundational to our common understanding at all levels. You might as well bring math and physics into question.” —Michael McLeod
