December 1999
W.D. Ehrhart '73, Beautiful Wreckage: New and Selected Poems, Adastra Press, Easthampton, Mass., 1999
Who taught you to believe in words?" That devastating question at the heart of W.D. Ehrhart's Beautiful Wreckage mocks poet and reader alike with a generation's soured idealism. In poem after poem, Ehrhart--already a veteran of the war in Vietnam before he began his studies at Swarthmore in 1969--traces the profound disillusionment radiating out from that conflict. For the boy-soldier who can't distinguish Vietnamese civilians from the Viet Cong--"They all talk / the same language"--and so comes blandly and horrifically to "quit trying"; for the mature man whose cries against injustice fall on deaf ears--"Everywhere you go, the blade of your contempt / draws blood. No wonder people hate you"; for the husband who tells his wife, "I give you the worst gift first / as a warning: the sullen silence . . . , / the quick tongue slashing"--for all of these, language itself has been tainted, can't be trusted, can't be controlled, bites back: "If sorry has a name, it must be mine."
Yet words are all a poet has. In Ehrhart's wrenching poem "Guns," a father, speechless before his daughter's questions, asks us, "How do you tell a four-year-old / what steel can do to flesh?" Our answer matches his--you don't--but the poem's last lines make us think again, as "yet another generation / is rudely about to discover / what their fathers never told them." Indeed, the poems gathered here, some new, some selected from the 12 books Ehrhart has published since 1975, are particularly effective in conveying the threatened vulnerability of children and the distressing paradox that to preserve their innocence is to risk perpetuating ignorance, violence, regret: "What fire will burn that small / boy marching with his father? / What parade will heal / his father's wounds?"
In "The Heart of the Poem," Ehrhart imagines, with visceral intensity, opening a body to find the heart. Despite the disturbingly violent medical imagery, the poem's title leads us to assume that its strong beating heart is what keeps body and poem alive. Yet Ehrhart concludes: "Get rid of it. / Sentiment's for suckers. / Give us poetry." As these lines suggest, this is a poetry of clear-eyed witness, of plain-spoken testimony, of grounded integrity, but that's not to say it's heartless. The speaker of these poems finds solace in love, in friendship, in a child's trust, in the unanticipated astonishments of the natural world: "the lake so still, the stars fall in." And he returns to Vietnam, where he finds, in lives broken by the war and then remended, circumstances that illuminate his own. "The Distance We Travel" concludes with a Vietnamese man repeating the name of the speaker's daughter, "touching / the stranger's heart with his open hand." Surely these are open-handed poems--dropping their weapons, showing their wounds, touching the stranger's heart.
--Nathalie Anderson
Professor of English Literature
Ann (McCaghey) Keene '62, Peacemakers: Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, Oxford University Press, 1998
It has long been rumored that Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the peace prize that bears his name because he felt guilty for making money from the manufacture of weapons. In fact, the Nobel fortune came from chemical inventions and the peaceful uses of explosives, such as engineering projects, railways, canals, and road building. The idea for the Nobel Peace Prize actually emerged in Paris in the 1880s, where the Swedish industrialist met the Baroness Bertha von Suttner, a well-known supporter of international peace efforts. Von Suttner nurtured Nobel's interests in world peace and suggested he fund an annual prize for peace work.
The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901, five years after Nobel's death. It went to two men: Henri Dunant of Switzerland, one of the founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross; and Frédéric Passy of France, the organizer of several international peace groups and a supporter of peaceful arbitration between governments. The most recent prize, awarded in 1998, was given to John Hume and David Trimble for their efforts to find a peaceful solution to the long conflict in Northern Ireland.
One prize winner had a close connection to Swarthmore College. In 1931, Jane Addams, the legendary founder of Hull House, became the first woman in the United States to win the Nobel Peace Prize--the same year that Swarthmore College awarded her an honorary degree. Addams had a long acquaintanceship with the College, having been invited to speak in 1918, when her popularity was at an all-time low because of her opposition to World War I. In 1930, Lucy Biddle Lewis, a member of the Board of Managers, convinced Addams to donate her personal and professional papers to Swarthmore. These formed the core of an archive on the peace movement around the world, first known as the Jane Addams Peace Collection and now as the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. Ann Keene doesn't mention Addams' connection with Swarthmore in her book on Nobel Peace Prize winners, but it is filled with other inspiring stories.
Wonderful illustrations are included with each entry. In addition to portraits of the prize winners, there are many pictures illustrating the kinds of work they did, such as the relief work in France after World War II performed by the American Friends Service Committee and the Friends Service Council, two organizations that shared the prize in 1947.
A glance at the appendix on the "Century of Peace Prize Winners" reveals that most prize winners have been North Americans and Europeans. Not until 1936 did a South American receive the honor; it was another 14 years before the prize went to an African and an additional 13 years before the first winner from an Asian country. More than half of the winners in the last 20 years have come from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The Norwegian Nobel Committee that selects the winners is finally looking beyond the United States and Western Europe to honor those working for peace and a better world. Books such as this one will help spread the word.
--Wendy Chmielewski, Curator
Swarthmore College Peace Collection
Carl Abbott '66, Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., From Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis, University of North Carolina Press, 1999. In examining the contested social construction of Washington's identity, Abbott explores issues central to national character.
Brent Askari '92, Not Ready for Prime Time, Carroll & Graf, 1999. A tough young singer with a hard-rock girls' band tells all in this upbeat debut novel.
David M. Bressoud '71, Proofs and Confirmations: The Story of the Alternating Sign Matrix Conjecture, Cambridge University Press, 1999. This introduction to recent developments in algebraic combinatorics is accessible to anyone with a knowledge of linear algebra.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth '79 and Christine Stolba, Women's Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America, AEI Press and Independent Women's Forum, 1999. This fact-packed analysis is a salute to American women's economic progress; it shows how they have substantially achieved equality in key areas of education and employment.
Eleanor M. Gates '52 (ed.), Leigh Hunt: A Life in Letters, Together With Some Correspondence of William Hazlitt, Falls River, 1998. Using 70 manuscript sources, Gates reveals this quintessential man of letters in new and surprising ways.
Gilbert Harman '60, Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind, Oxford University Press, 1999. Harman presents 15 interconnected essays on fundamental issues at the center of analytical philosophy.
Marc Elihu Hofstadter '67, House of Peace, Mother's Hen, 1999. Kindness toward one's own experience underlies the poems in this book.
Susan Holahan '61, Sister Betty Reads the Whole You, Gibbs-Smith, 1998. These often prose-like poems present a multifaceted tableau of our life and times.
Mark and Matthew Lore '88, Rubberneckers, Chronicle Books, 1999. This travel game entertains families on long car trips and makes traffic jams fun.
Mike Mather '65, Tomorrow's Headlines, Buy Books, 1999. This book demonstrates where the media's obsession with sex and politics will take us next.
Lewis Pyenson '69 (ed.), Fortiter, Feliciter, Fideliter: Centennial Lectures of the Graduate School of the University of Southwestern Louisiana, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1999. This book served as a preview of two lectures by invited speakers at the University of Southwestern Louisiana's centennial celebrations in June 1999. Lewis Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises and Sensibilities, HarperCollins, 1999. The authors explore the interaction between scientific practice and public life from antiquity to the present. Lewis Pyenson (ed.), Value: Pondering Goodness, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1999. This volume describes the proceedings of the fourth graduate colloquium, devoted to the question of value, at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
Don E. Wilson and Sue Ruff '60 (eds.), The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999. In this work, more than 450 photographs illustrate written depictions of the varied world of North American mammals.
Martha Shirk '73, Neil G. Bennett, and Jo Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet, Westview Press, 1999. Personal profiles combined with demographic analysis offer a vivid portrait of family life below the poverty line.
Jeremy J. Stone '57, "Every Man Should Try": Adventures of a Public Interest Activist, PublicAffairs, 1999. In this memoir, Stone describes some of his most fascinating experiences as an activist.
Peter J. Weiden '77, Patricia L. Scheifler, Ronald J. Diamond '68, and Ruth Ross, Breakthroughs in Antipsychotic Medications: A Guide for Consumers, Families, and Clinicians, W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. This book aims to share science-based information in a form consumers can understand and find helpful.
Douglas Worth '62, Some Sense of Transcendence, William L. Bauhan, 1999. This collection of poems, written between 1983 and 1998, offers a lyrical depiction of the crises and joys of life and human relationships.
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