Wyman's Place in My Poem

Edited: The parts in italics below I added prior to going through my prepared remarks:

I wrote out what I wanted to say today and showed it to my wife. She told me I was remiss in not mentioning one of her favorite stories about Wyman that I told her. I forget where we were, but Wyman and I were at a public gathering of some kind, and someone that hadn't seen her in years walked up to her and made the remark, "You haven't changed a bit." Wyman was very gracious to her, and when the lady walked away, Wyman turned to me and said, "I hate it when people say that, because it means I looked older than dirt 10 years ago."

I remember the first time I met Dr. Wyman. I was a transfer student in to Lincoln and told her I wanted to study English Literature. She asked me what my favorite poem was. I told her Good Friday Riding Westward 1613 by John Donne. She responded, "Ooh, I'm going to like you."

I can’t tell you how honored I am that I was asked to speak today. I continued to call Dr. Wyman “Dr. Wyman” after I graduated from Lincoln. She and I were eating lunch together one day, and she asked me about that. I told her that it was kind of awkward for me to call her Linda, but I knew that “Dr. Wyman” was too formal. She said, “When you think of me in your head, what do you call me?” I said, “Usually just Wyman.” She said, “Well then, you should call me just Wyman.”

You’ll have to forgive me, that’s still the way I think of her in my head.

Wyman had a love for T.S. Eliot. That’s no secret to any one here. I can’t help but think of an image that T.S. Eliot used when he discussed the great literature of the ages. He used the image of a book shelf, in which a great work of literature takes its place. Of course, when you add a book to a book shelf, all of the other books in the book shelf need to be adjusted. The great works of literature do not stand alone, but stand with every other great work through out history, and affect our experience of all of those great works that came before and will come after.

Another image Eliot uses is a “sentence that is right, (where every word is at home, taking its place to support the others).” A word is just a word, but in the context of a sentence, it creates a commerce with all of the other words that both receives its beauty from them, and contributes beauty to them, until they all become poetry.

That is Wyman. Wyman’s life is a great work of literature among the lives of others.

Wyman is one of the” words” of my life that has contributed to the beauty of my life. I hope in some way I was able to contribute to the poetry of hers.

She dedicated her life to shedding light on the great writers and people that had come before her, and has had an impact on all of those who entered her wake and followed her. I know that she changed my life. She introduced me to Dylan Thomas and Ezra Pound and to her beloved T.S. Eliot. She helped me understand Gerard Manley Hopkins. Funny story about that. We were in the Modern Poetry Class reading Gerard Manley Hopkins. There was a young student in the class who considered himself enlightened. He offered a veiled criticism of Hopkins’s religious themes in his poetry one day by saying, “I love what he does with the language of his poetry. It’s sad that the focus of his writing was so narrow.” To which Wyman responded, “God, man, the universe, that’s pretty narrow.”

It wasn’t just by introducing me to literature that my life was changed. My life was changed by her very presence. She was there for me when a lot of other folks weren’t, or probably more accurately, she found a way in when I wouldn’t let a lot of other folks be there for me. She touched my life more deeply than I have words to express. She was one of those types of friends that we could go long periods without seeing each other, but when we would see each other, it was like we had never been apart. After one of our lunches together, I went home and wrote a poem that I dedicated to her. I hope you will indulge me if I read it to you. It’s called “Being: For LW.”

In the little restaurant
At the intersection of Smith and Grace
The clock on the far wall was broken.
We appreciated each other's company
By choosing to fall
Into a comfortable silence;
To stare out the window
Which allowed the breeze
To threaten our napkins;
To admire how wise the sky
For being blue,
The trees for being green,
The poets for using rhyme
(Or not).
When we did speak, we spoke nothing.
We worked our lunch about our plates,
But that was the extent of it.
The smell of fried chicken still takes me there,
Like incense reminding a monk of prayer.

I wrote that poem after that lunch that day and brought it to her. She said to me, "Wow, that turned into poetry fast." I said, "Wyman, it was poetry all along." She nodded her head and said, "Wasn't it though?"
The restaurant at which we ate that day really was on the corner of Smith Street and Grace Street. That’s one of those” coincidences” that seemed to follow Wyman everywhere she went.

I was asked if I would close with a prayer today. I will, but first I would like to read in a spirit of prayer the 5th segment of Little Gidding, which is Number 4 of T.S. Eliot’s 4 quartets:

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.”

Let us Pray: Eternal rest grant unto her, Oh Lord. And let perpetual shine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen.

Besides this, the only other prayer I can offer is one of thanksgiving that I was blessed to know her: Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to get to know this humble, beautiful woman. Thank you, God. Amen.