 |
 |
In a recent post Peter Riley said: "I think it should be made absolsutely clear that there is no situation in Cambridge poetry nor ever has been remotely like the crowd of sycophants, as it seems, who fluttered round Olson and saw to his needs and tolerated his brutishness and promoted his image into a sectarian awe very close to the religious. Jeremy Prynne is one of those who made sure it would not be like that." Didn't Olson become the "rector" of Black Mountain College in its latter days? rec·tor (rekÆtÃr), n. 1. a member of the clergy in charge of a parish in the Protestant Episcopal Church. 2. Rom. Cath. Ch. an ecclesiastic in charge of a college, religious house, or congregation. 3. Anglican Ch. a member of the clergy who has the charge of a parish with full possession of all its rights, tithes, etc. 4. the head of certain universities, colleges, and schools. [1350–1400; ME rectour < L rector helmsman, ruler, leader, equiv. to reg(ere) to rule + -tor -TOR]" Helmsman? Does that recall Chairman Mao, the Great Helmsman? And from Libbie Rifkin, in a recent Jacket: Libbie Rifkin on Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer and the Gender of an Avant-Garde Institution -- "Freed from the regulatory processes that would render larger-scale institutions at least marginally accountable to some measure of diversity, institutions in this mold could be more capricious and vehement in their exclusions than their mainstream counterparts. Of the last years of Black Mountain College, for instance, Martin Duberman has noted that 'the hierarchy could be as rigidly exclusive, as impassible to the uninitiated - and more male chauvinist - than anything found on a traditional university campus'. " John Tranter %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%