Maryland State Poet's Jewish Angle

Karen Buckelew AUGUST 13, 2004

For Michael S. Glaser, poetry has become a way of life. Dr. Glaser, a
professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland and the
recently named poet laureate of the state of Maryland said his poetry
is a means of asking, and sometimes answering, the questions life has to
offer, those of family, of the world at large, of his Judaism.

"Out of the Jewish tradition as I experienced it, of asking questions
and being curious about things, poetry kind of became my way of
exploring who I am ? what this world is that I live in, what my
relationship to that world is," said Dr. Glaser, 60.

He has spent the past 34 years at St. Mary's, working to bring to others
the art form that has proved so profound in his own life. Now, as his
new position of poet laureate is one without constraints, Dr. Glaser is
free to create a job description of his own.

Past poets, including Dr. Glaser's colleague at St. Mary's, nationally
renowned poet Lucille Clifton, have taken the position as a chance to
travel the state, reading their poems and reaching out to Marylanders.

Dr. Glaser said he'll take the opportunity to enlighten even more people
to the beauty of poetry, as well as its accessibility and simplicity.

"I think I've gotten to a place where I have some valuable
understandings about what poetry is, how we can share it with friends
and family, with students," he said. "I'm grateful for the chance to be
able to share that with a wider audience than I have in the past."

Growing up near Chicago in Winnetka, Ill., Dr. Glaser and his two
sisters were raised in the Reform tradition, attending North Shore
Congregation Israel with their parents, Rona and Milton Glaser. Though
poetry was not an integral part of his upbringing, "words were always
important in our family," he said. It was not until college at Denison
College and, later, Kent State University in Ohio for graduate studies,
that he truly connected to the art form.

"I became aware of how poetry was not some mysterious thing I couldn't
understand," he said. "It's just people writing about lives that were
not so dissimilar from my life. I grew to feel more connected to the
world than I thought I was."

His degrees in English literature prepared him to teach, a profession
for which Dr. Glaser said he always felt destined.

"I think for a long time, I knew I wanted to be a teacher at a small,
liberal arts college," he said. "I've always loved the liberal arts
tradition--'What is the life worth living?'--the Socratic question,
which to me is a very Jewish question. How does one live a meaningful,
productive, valuable life? The liberal arts environment is a place where
one is encouraged to ask and think about those questions."

In his long tenure at St. Mary's, Dr. Glaser--with his soft, patient
voice, each word carefully chosen--has made a career of asking those
questions of his students, and teaching students to ask questions for
themselves. Though he was hired simply as a professor of English, his
predilection for poetry developed and grew at the school, tucked away
along the St. Mary's River in St. Mary's County, surrounding the ruins
of St. Mary's City, the state's first capital.

"I really had space here to develop my own voice and explore what kind
of poetry I wanted to write," he said, speaking by telephone from his
office, set amidst the trees that block the scenic view of the
waterfront just a short walk away. "There's something about Southern
Maryland and the river that is wonderfully unpretentious. [St. Mary's]
is an environment that nurtured and supported creativity. You don't have
to apologize for being a poet--that's nice."

St. Mary's President Jane Margaret O'Brien said Dr. Glaser's honor is
long overdue.

"He's a person of enormous compassion," she said. "He writes from the
heart, very emotional poetry, very understandable for any lay reader. To
have this legacy at this point gives him so much more credibility. When
you're honored as an individual, it allows you to do more for others
because of that honor. He is such a giving person, he will use [the
position] to help others."

Friendships with colleagues, including Dr. Clifton, the recipient of a
National Book Award, a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and an Emmy Award
winner, also have nurtured Dr. Glaser's poetic nature, he said. He has
published four books to date--two books of his own poetry, including
"Being a Father," released last month, and two anthologies.

Dr. Glaser also began the school's annual Literary Festival in 1979. The
festival includes a two-week intensive writing workshop on poetry or
fiction accompanied on the weekends by shorter workshops and readings by
noted visiting poets, who also teach the seminars. St. Mary's VOICES
reading series, which he also founded, features nationally renowned poets.

Through all his work, Dr. Glaser said, he simply wants people to better
understand the world and their own lives--to learn to ask questions.

"I think of Mary Oliver's poem, 'A Summer's Day,' that last line: 'Tell
me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life,'" he said.
"It's a tremendous question. I'm so grateful to that poem for that. I
would be thrilled if people would read my poetry, or any kind of
literature that asks us that question of the examined life, and look at
their own experience, their own life. 'Here's something you haven't
thought about before.'"

Dr. Glaser, a father of five children ranging in age from 19 to 34,
lives in St. Mary's with his wife, Kathleen Glaser. His family, like
everything else in his life, has become a frequent subject of his work.
His latest book focuses "on the joys and struggles of being parents," he
said.

His Jewishness, though he has not connected with Southern Maryland's
Jewish community, also has been a source of inspiration. A favorite
book, "The Book of Blessings: A New Prayer Book for the Weekdays, the
Sabbath, and the New Moon Festival," by Marcia Falk, has inspired him to
work on his own book of blessings--not translations from the Hebrew,
like Ms. Falk's, but original blessings.

"In the Jewish tradition, there's a blessing for everything," he said.
"Waking up, washing your hands, going to the bathroom. I started to
think about how lovely that is, to make yourself attentive to the gift
that life is. I've been working on a full series of blessings."

Dr. Glaser said he's formulating a more concrete plan of action now that
he's been recognized as the state's official poet. Most likely, it will
include working with educators to include poetry in curriculums for all
ages.

"I'm looking forward," he said, "to sharing more broadly something that
I truly love."


The following are a pair of unpublished poems with Jewish themes by Dr.
Michael S. Glaser provided to the Baltimore Jewish Times by the author.

Americana, 1940: Exhibit at the Museum

In the museum, the exhibits
of others' lives make me wonder
what they thought, these people,
sitting nights in gingham circles
of lamplight, their teacups on doilies
as they read the news of the war.

What does it matter, I ask myself,
if these grandparents had doilies,
and mine dark crusts of bread?
Or if, on winter nights, they lit
their lamps and listened to Guy Lombardo,
blind to the cattle cars, the transports . . . .

And what difference does it make,
how these rooms speak -- except, perhaps,
for the mask I put on again
to pretend the nostalgia they ask,

and the knowledge that at the sites
of the camps in Germany and Poland,
the exhibits there, too, are white-washed
and carefully arranged so that visitors,
after paying a fee, can remember
without discomfort,

without the mistrust I have put on again,
this cynicism my grandparents warned me
over and over was the only thing
that could save us from them?

-- Michael S. Glaser

Stones: Thoughts after Visiting Térézin

What does it mean to be reminded again
how circumstance and dumb luck
had my grandfather William in the United States
while the William Glaser who was moved from Térézin
to Auschwitz in 1940, disappeared there in 1942?

And this "Michel Glaser" born October 30, 1943,
7 months and 10 days after me,
sent to Térézin before he was two
and perished
about the same time
that I moved from the south side of Chicago
to Winnetka?

Questions reach into deep mystery
where remembrance takes the shape
of small stones to mark the graves of the unknown,

promising "never again,"
promising, "we will not forget."

But against such darkness, what light?
How does one ever understand
such incomprehensible night?

-- Michael S. Glaser

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