Goodnight Sweet Poets
Passages
One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in the terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
—James Baldwin
When Maxine Greene passed away on May 29, 2014, I felt that I’d lost more than a friend and a beloved teacher; I’d lost a significant part of myself as well. She was so vivid and powerful and animated one moment and then suddenly gone. The air left the room.
Many of us who loved her so much gathered to share stories and memories as we consoled one another—and we will do so again in a large public space in the Fall—and we laughed and we cried, always reminding ourselves that she had lived a long life—96 years!—largely of her own making and her own choosing, that she was purposeful and true to herself insisting until the end that “I am what I am not yet,” still pushing herself to pay attention and to be wide awake. She taught her last class just weeks before she passed away, and that’s pretty great as well.
Many have said hers was a complete life, and perhaps here I disagree. How is a life ever complete? When do the stories actually end? It’s more accurate I think to say that while death ends a life, it does not necessarily end a relationship. The screen goes dark, but the stories—stunning, alive, and on-going, our stories and your stories—are still unfolding, still in the making, still drawing from the deep well of her dazzling life.
Here are a few other giants who fell from us recently, each a relationship to nourish and continue, or to start up for the first time right now:
Vincent Harding, 82, who stood with Martin Luther King, Jr. and drafteGoodnight Sweet Poets | Bill Ayers:
One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in the terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.
—James Baldwin
When Maxine Greene passed away on May 29, 2014, I felt that I’d lost more than a friend and a beloved teacher; I’d lost a significant part of myself as well. She was so vivid and powerful and animated one moment and then suddenly gone. The air left the room.
Many of us who loved her so much gathered to share stories and memories as we consoled one another—and we will do so again in a large public space in the Fall—and we laughed and we cried, always reminding ourselves that she had lived a long life—96 years!—largely of her own making and her own choosing, that she was purposeful and true to herself insisting until the end that “I am what I am not yet,” still pushing herself to pay attention and to be wide awake. She taught her last class just weeks before she passed away, and that’s pretty great as well.
Many have said hers was a complete life, and perhaps here I disagree. How is a life ever complete? When do the stories actually end? It’s more accurate I think to say that while death ends a life, it does not necessarily end a relationship. The screen goes dark, but the stories—stunning, alive, and on-going, our stories and your stories—are still unfolding, still in the making, still drawing from the deep well of her dazzling life.
Here are a few other giants who fell from us recently, each a relationship to nourish and continue, or to start up for the first time right now:
Vincent Harding, 82, who stood with Martin Luther King, Jr. and drafteGoodnight Sweet Poets | Bill Ayers: