Maria Jose that was moving and stunning, no less than what we expected, but everything
we could have hoped. So thank you for that remarkable speech.
So, I’ve been in this place for 7 weeks. For seven weeks. And I’ve been thinking
a lot about Pomona now. About who we are. But first, I have to say that Pomona, now,
is home.
It's a tall order for any of us to come into a full understanding of this beautiful place,
and call it home, even when, for many of us, it may still feel so very strange. Where does
each of us fit into it? What called us here together? What does it mean to convene here?
For 7 weeks now, I 've been thinking. And I want to share with you some of what I've
learned.
Pomona now is a place of discovery. About seven days ago, the sun almost disappeared.
Why not today? Many of us gathered in the courtyard of Millikan, daring to look up at
what, for the vast majority of human history, was a sight guaranteed to blind. But
with centuries of human discovery and human ingenuity, we can know the movements of the
heavens. And we looked up at a devastatingly beautiful sight, together. It was a moment
of discovery, of rediscovery wrapped in wonder and excitement that made Millikan hum.
And then, many of us looked down. And saw in each of the hundreds of spaces between
the arcs of shadow of the plane trees, an individual crescent wrought by sun and moon,
beneath our feet.
That is Pomona now. The joy of discovery. Of finding the world laid out before you.
And above you and around you.
Pomona now is creativity. It is the brilliance of transposing Bach's French Suites from the
richly sonorous warmth of the cello to the riotous chirp of the mandola. What did we
hear? The stirring lilt of a bird on the wing. Chasing the dawn. What music is this? It is
ours.
Pomona now is a place of sound and silence. It is the murmur of voices in Honnold Library,
the raucous laughter on Marston Quad, the soft sound of equations emerging from the
hands of a professor moving across the board. It could be the sob softly of your roommate
or a neighbor. It is the sound of an embrace that renews hope. It is the sound of Sage
Hens in the brush.
Pomona now is also confidence. Maybe it’s not. Maybe we are all nervous anew as we take
our places at our banquet of knowledge and of life. I've sweat bullets. And not just
because it’s hot outside. And it's okay, you know. Chin up. Each of us has earned this
place. But we have been lucky, too. There are so many more than those we now can gather here
who, too, could take wing and fly. So let us be mindful of our duties to others to take what we
learn and spread it wide. To help the world hear our many voices.
And I know Pomona, now, is also confusion. You know, there’s the minor things like which
way is Hahn? Did I do my assignment right? And then there are the major things like Who
will judge me by my face, by my words, by the way I move, by the accent of my speech?
Questions of whether or not speaking freely is harmful or empowering, does it make you
cower, or can we boldly rise together to meet a challenge? Can we make stronger arguments,
stretch our thinking, delve deeper into ideas and know that even in disagreement we can
still find peace? Now on the way to this gathering, we all saw the open space outside the doors
of Little Bridges. And a question is can our campus truly be a space of openness so all
have room to breathe, to speak and to thrive? As we acknowledge the historical barriers
erected upon such seemingly open fields, such hallowed places, barriers that served to enact
silence, and have promoted a kind of humble acquiescence to some natural order, we must
pause. Because Pomona cannot ever be a place of silent acquiescence for any one of us.
The question stands how can we raise our voices and be heard and not yet raise more barriers
and more walls to silence dissent? This is the hard work to which we all will be called
and as we do that so we will find things to learn and things to unlearn. And that too
is Pomona, now.
Pomona now must be a place where a swell of voices creates a sound that the world cannot
ignore. It is not the sound of everyone speaking to the same vision, or sharing the same views,
it must always be more than that. Because Pomona now is constantly changing. 450 new
voices arrived just since this spring. And as they come, they change us. We will change.
Let us do it wisely.
Because Pomona now is people. It is the young man who wrote lovingly of particle accelerators
in his letter to his new advisor. It is the student who has struck off across country
as a Posse fellow. It is an athlete, furiously focused on the field. It is a student with
an idea, with a dream, on a quest. It is a woman fiercely wheeling across the campus
as she follows her heart and mind. It is a poet with a line she just can't get right.
It's a botanist seeking knowledge in the folds of DNA. It is the grounds staff whose hands
plant trees that make each of our breaths smell sweeter. It is the dining staff who
pour care and knowledge into the food that sustains us. It’s the faculty who strike
out new paths, seeking challenge around the world, inside an atom, on a dance floor, on
a canvas, in a book. It is all of us.
Sometimes we get to a point though in all of this, powerful, complex, painful and inspiring
history that is Pomona now, where some of us want to say, just let it be. The Let
it be I’m talking about is a resigned and a “wise” Let it be. Live and Let live.
Let’s go on. But that’s always in tension with who we might want to be and who we are...Who
we may become. “Let be” or “Let it be” can also be in tension with who we seem to
be. But that can’t get in the way of our growing together. Learning from each other.
Knowing each other. So that’s my challenge to you. Put “Let be” in dialogue with
“what might be” and “what we might seem to be.” So that Pomona, now, becomes a
Pomona, better.
So let’s think for a moment about what we might seem to be. People around you, they seem to
be so very many things. But that "seem" is what you see in them. Not who they
are.
It’s a new year. None of us knows who the other really is. We know ourselves how we
might be. Who we might be. And who we might seem to be. But sooner or later, though, what
seems must meet what is, and what we make together.
I have this habit of going to poetry when
I want to think about something. Poetry comes from the Greek word “poiesis” which means
“making.” And when I’m talking about making something, poetry seems a great model
for that, so I’d planned to end with the ending of a favorite poem, called the Emperor
of Ice Cream. You should read it. It’s by a great American poet, and an insurance salesman—he
was a complicated person whom I don’t think I would actually have liked. And I don’t
think he would have actually liked me. If you read more of his work, you’ll understand
what I mean, but I know I love his words. He's Wallace Stevens. The poem is about a child
who is waiting for a funeral; and the kid can't quite understand what is happening,
all they want is what they know, what they’re used to. And then in a room nearby there’s
a man who is whipping ice cream in a cup, concupiscent curds is how he describes it,
while an old woman lies still, on a table ready for burial. And the last lines say:
Let be, be finale of seem. / The only emperor
is the Emperor of Ice Cream.
What he means is: Nothing rules us, unless we let it. And nothing blinds us except our
own sight. Have done with what seems to be and search for what actually is.
But as I wrote, I found another voice in my ears. Another poem in my hands. It was a gift
from my husband, who is here today, sitting next to my mom. Thank you both for coming
all the way across the country as well as here. And it was a program from a reading
that Elizabeth Bishop, who is my favorite poet in all the world, did at the Wallace
Stevens Society in Hartford, Connecticut on Tuesday, April 11, 1978 And she marked it
up in her own hand, which was really cool. She read a handful of poems, which she put
in dialogue with the works of Stevens. One was by a shy poet whom she identified as "wiry,
with red bushy hair"—who was no fan of Stevens. Another was by a woman, and about how hard
women's lives can be--provokingly and even comically entitled "the Trojan Fetus." Another
was about waiting in the midst of war for the sirens. And trying not to hear.
But the very first poem that she read was one of her own. And it will be the last I
read here today, for it speaks to me, deeply, of Pomona now, of the alarming, exhilarating,
magical move we all take, in one form or another, to make this place home.
It’s called Jeronimo's house.
My house, my fairy palace, is
Of perishable clapboards with
Three rooms in all, My gray wasps' nest
Of chewed-up paper Glued with spit.
.... [It ]is endowed
With a veranda Of wooden lace,
Adorned with ferns Planted in sponges
And the front room with red and green
Left over Christmas decorations
Looped from the corners To the middle
Above my little center table
Of woven wicker Painted blue,
And four blue chairs And an affair
For the smallest baby With a tray
With ten big beads. then on the walls
Two palm-leaf fans and a calendar
.... At night you'd think
my house abandoned Come closer. You
can see and hear The writing-paper
Lines of light And the voices
of my radio
Singing flamencos In between
The lottery numbers When I move
I take these things, Not much more, from
my shelter.
Let us together make Pomona now our shelter, our home, our field, our worlds. Let us make
our words count. Let us open wide our fields and minds so that Pomona now will be stronger,
better and wiser together. Thank you.