Robert Crist

Two of my my strongest experiences of the mythic moment were Grecian moments: first, when the lovely Greek girl I had heard about from my neighbors (in Charleston, West Virginia) miraculously turned up in the first row of my class in 1959, and I knew I would marry her; and second, when I stepped on Greek soil for the first time, in 1960, and was thrilled by the vision of entering a place that was actualized in memory as my ancient homeland.

We call mythic not gradiose images imposed on the world but those insights and stories which condense in startling clarity all the dazzling complexity and grandeur rising from the world which is our native and everyday habitat. As the years pass I am more and more convinced that our Ancient Greek forbears indeed were truly prescient in their polytheistic conceptions. Not that a polytheistic image is more valid than the conception of an ultimate unified transcendent, but, rather, it confirms the manifold ineffable powers of a cosmos bent on infinite creativity. What mind can grasp or fail to revere that cosmogonic blast-off fifteen billion years ago on whose creative thrust the universe rides and unfolds, blending design and chance in forms that are infinities or infinities, each part as wondrous, fragile, and dynamic as the whole.

So, we all live within the mythic, celestial children of meteors, coming down to earth and returning to space in our dreams.

To our friends and colleagues of Touch Stone and the Travrokathapsia Symposium, Despina and I send our greetings. Without the companionship, sharing, and support of fellow poets, teachers, and artists, the joy and wonder of being and creating could not come about. Thank you for letting me share these thoughts as well as a small related poem which I wrote recently.

The Inlet Once More

…eddies of meaning...

running

like a stream through the geography of my work.

A. R. Ammons

The inlet once more

what a gratitude to be,

released into nature and language

by the mysterious benefice

of divinity, not fathomed,

but understood,

a blessing of feeling and reason,

walking Corsons Inlet, the world

all a multiplying of forms

and the ineffable,

not to be known,

but absorbed

Robert Crist

For Maria and Stamatis

Silver Springs, Maryland

May 15, 1994

Current status (2013):

Robert Crist was born in Huntington, New York. He took his B.A. with honors at Haverford College, and his M.A. and Ph.D., with a doctoral fellowship, at the University of Chicago. Now a Professor Emeritus, he has taught American literature at the University of Athens, Department of English Studies, he has been engaged in teaching Critical Writing, and Translation from Greek into English. He has also taught at the American College of Greece, Pennsylvania State University, DePaul University, Newark State College, and the University of Colorado. He has published critical studies and translations.

Source:

http://en.aformes.enl.uoa.gr/speakers/from-aboard/robert-crist.html

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Robert Crist