{"id":166501,"date":"2018-05-14T09:40:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T13:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=166501"},"modified":"2024-11-22T16:28:24","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T21:28:24","slug":"retirement-citation-robert-farnsworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/05\/14\/retirement-citation-robert-farnsworth\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Farnsworth: ‘faith in poetry and people’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Senior Lecturer Emeritus Robert L. Farnsworth passed away on Nov. 11, 2024, at age 70<\/a><\/em>. Six years ago, this tribute was written and read at the May 2018 faculty meeting by his colleague Lillian Nayder, Dana Professor of English<\/em>, to mark his retirement from the faculty.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rob Farnsworth received a B.A. from Brown University and an M.F.A. from Columbia University. After teaching at SUNY Binghamton, the University of California Irvine, Ithaca College, and Colby College, he was appointed to the Bates faculty in 1990.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To have an accomplished, practicing poet teaching poetry \u2014 as a craft and a subject of literary study \u2014 transformed what we taught, and how. Rob established the creative writing concentration in English, now an essential part of the major and founded the annual reading series known today as Language Arts Live. In his more than 25 years at Bates, he has inspired and mentored generations of creative writers, some now well-published poets and novelists in their own right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob published widely; his poetry has appeared in many magazines in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.: The Hudson Review<\/em>, The Southern Review<\/em>, and Ploughshares<\/em>, to name just a few. He is the author of two collections from Wesleyan University Press: Three or Four Hills and a Cloud<\/em> (1982) and Honest Water <\/em>(1989). His most recent collection of poems, Rumored Islands<\/em>, was published in 2010 by Harbor Mountain Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Rob
“To have an accomplished, practicing poet teaching poetry \u2014 as a craft and a subject of literary study \u2014 transformed what we taught, and how,” said Professor of English Lillian Nayder about her colleague Rob Farnsworth in 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For seven years, Rob also edited poetry for The American Scholar<\/em>. His work has won him a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship as well as a P.E.N. Discovery Citation. Rob was the poet-in-residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, N.H., during the summer of 2006. Rob leads literature discussion groups in the medical humanities for the Maine Humanities Council \u2014 meeting at hospitals, libraries, and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob\u2019s insight and generosity are the stuff of legend. I myself have taken advantage of Rob\u2019s goodness on many occasions \u2014 sometimes when faced with poems I\u2019ve found inscrutable. In a near panic not long ago over Percy Shelley\u2019s \u201cMont Blanc,\u201d which I had included on a syllabus in a moment of folly, I turned to Rob. He calmly explained why, for Shelley, \u201cthe everlasting universe of things \/ flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves\u201d \u2014 and helped me understand what really happens in \u201cthe still cave of the witch Poesy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Acclaimed
Dana Professor of English Lillian Nayder (left) and Rob Farnsworth laugh together during a special Literary Arts Live event in Muskie Archives in 2018 dedicated to Farnsworth ‘s retirement from the faculty. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

First and foremost, Rob\u2019s strengths have supported his students, who are lavish in their praise of this, their favorite teacher. Rob has twice won the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, and with good reason. Students describe him as \u201ca titan of the abstract and the concrete\u201d and as a \u201cwise sage.\u201d \u201cHow stupid of me not to take more of his classes!\u201d one exclaims. They speak of his brilliance and humility \u2014 his \u201cfaith in poetry and people\u201d \u2014 his generosity as a reader of their work. \u201cProfessor Farnsworth…opened a door of joyful sound and allowed us all to walk freely through it,\u201d as one remembers it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even at the distance of 20 or more years, they have vivid, thrilling memories of what it was like to study Frost or Keats or Bishop with Rob. Some former students signed off their emails with \u201ccheers,\u201d because that\u2019s what Rob says. Many sent poems. Students remember Rob\u2019s humor, his \u201cwild enthusiasm\u201d and his ethics (claiming him as their \u201crole model\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"His
With a laptop computer open on his lap, Rob Farnsworth sits at his desk in Hathorn Hall in September 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many talk about how he\u2019s helped them find their voices. Rob\u2019s teaching has convinced some students to like poetry who thought they didn\u2019t; it\u2019s convinced others to become English majors who thought they wouldn\u2019t. And many lessons are life long. \u201cRob held me accountable as a writer and a student,\u201d a 1994 graduate writes, and \u201cI am [now] a better educator and parent because of Rob.\u201d That\u2019s a big claim! \u2014 but it\u2019s one often repeated by students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Students not only remember Rob, they remember the poems he taught. That is what Rob does; he lights up poems in your mind and there they remain.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Like anyone who\u2019s heard him read, students remember Rob reading poems. \u201cI can still hear him reading \u2018This is Just to Say\u2019 by William Carlos Williams,\u201d a 2005 graduate recalls. Another writes: \u201cProbably my most nostalgic memory at Bates is sitting in a classroom in Pettigrew on a freezing February afternoon, snow falling outside, with Professor Farnsworth reading Robert Frost to us. I\u2019ll honestly never forget that \u2014 no single memory makes me miss Bates more.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Reading: Toward Hallowe’en<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, Rob Farnsworth read his poem \u201cToward Hallowe\u2019en,” which recounts a moment of awe and inexplicable joy at the sight of a maple tree suddenly letting go its red leaves:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t<\/lite-vimeo>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Students not only remember Rob, they remember the poems he taught. That is what Rob does; he lights up poems in your mind and there they remain. \u201cAt this moment I am suddenly reminded of an Elizabeth Bishop poem we studied in that seminar so long ago,\u201d one graduate recalls. \u201cIn particular I\u2019m reminded of the last lines, which gave me goose bumps in class and which still float to the surface of my mind every so often, \u2018everything \/ was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! \/ And I let the fish go.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob\u2019s Irish poetry course is fabled. Inspired by it, students have taken their semesters abroad in Ireland and written theses on Irish poets. \u201cRob\u2019s course made me want to spend my junior year in Belfast,\u201d one student reflects, continuing, \u201cIt\u2019s easy to share his enthusiasm and keep digging.\u201d This last phrase refers to a poem by Seamus Heaney, \u201cDigging,\u201d one of Rob\u2019s favorites \u2014 and a favorite with his students too. A second writes, \u201cHere are a few lines from Seamus Heaney\u2019s \u2018Digging\u2019 that ha[ve] stayed with me from that class and into my career and family life today: \u2018Between my finger and my thumb \/ The squat pen rests. \/ I\u2019ll dig with it.\u2019\u201d \u201cAs Seamus Heaney instructs,\u201d yet another student assures us, \u201cI will continue with the digging.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Surprise
Rob Farnsworth reacts to the greetings of two students at his surprise retirement part in Pettengill Hall’s Keck Room in April 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Although Rob claims that \u201cpoems teach themselves\u201d \u2014 the title of one of his Kroepsch talks \u2014 it\u2019s clear to everyone who\u2019s seen him in action that it\u2019s Rob doing the teaching, and in a truly inspired way, whether in writing workshops or in literature classrooms. He does so with a focus on what he terms \u201cthe reciprocal process of reading and writing as an apprenticeship,\u201d \u201cprompting students to discuss poems in fine-grain detail: how they\u2019re working, what they\u2019re after.\u201d Rob wants to show his students that art is what Frost claimed it to be: \u201ca way of taking life by the throat\u201d \u2014 \u201curgent, relevant, capable of revealing and embodying our many-mindedness,\u201d as Rob says. He has succeeded brilliantly in all this. As a teacher, Rob knows his way around a classroom. As a poet, he \u201cknows his way around a stanza,\u201d as one reviewer puts it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What some of you may not know is that Rob also knows his way around a tennis court \u2014 and that his behavior on the court seems to be that of an alter ego. It\u2019s not the poet we know as kind, gentle, and soft-spoken who appears but an aggressive figure with \u201ca wicked back-hand slice,\u201d \u201ccrushing serves\u201d and \u201coverhead smashes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Professors
Rob Farnsworth (center) poses with longtime tennis partners and faculty colleagues Dennis Browne (left) and Chip Ross (right) at the Wallach Tennis Center in 2014. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yet there\u2019s also the Rob we know, there on the court \u2014 the writer who offers up a line of poetry after an especially good shot, asking \u201cwho said that\u201d \u2014 who delivers a healthy dose of humor to his fellow players and, when serving, has been known to provide the running score in Norwegian. I\u2019m told that if you guess either Frost or Tennyson as the mystery poet he\u2019s quoted, you have a 50-50 chance of being right. Keep that in mind if you ever play tennis with Rob. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, Rob, for your art, your teaching, and your generosity: for being such a good friend to us all! We refuse to give you up, and look forward to seeing you nearly as much as ever, next year and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senior Lecturer Emeritus Robert L. Farnsworth passed away on Nov. 11, 2024,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":166513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166501"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166660,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166501\/revisions\/166660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}