Hello Alumni, Parents, and Friends of CC,
Greetings from Mueller Hall where we are excitedly meeting the first-year cohort of Fall 2024 at FOCUS (summer orientation and registration).
Here on campus, summer is a season both quiet and full. Most students go home or off to internships or work. Faculty are fueling their scholarship in libraries, coffeeshops, and workshops while refueling their energy for the next school year. In May and June in the dean’s office we catch our breath, slow down a bit, and start to plan for the next crop of students and events. In Valparaiso early summer is abundant green: we finally have flowers and sunshine and it isn’t too humid yet.
Recently, I started reading a poem a day from the Poetry Foundation. While I am not trained in poetry, it challenges me to cultivate a new way of close reading, one that doesn’t rely on immediate understanding. In this age of quick snippets, memes, and tweets (do you tweet on X? I’m not sure), poetry helps me pause even when I don’t “get it.” You can sign up for a poem a day here if you are interested in joining me. My favorite this month is More than Enough by Marge Piercy.
More Than Enough
BY MARGE PIERCY
The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk
multiflora rose climbs trees cascading
white or pink blossoms, simple, intense
the scene drifting like colored mist.
The arrowhead is spreading its creamy
clumps of flower and the blackberries
are blooming in the thickets. Season of
joy for the bee. The green will never
again be so green, so purely and lushly
new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads
into the wind. Rich fresh wine
of June, we stagger into you smeared
with pollen, overcome as the turtle
laying her eggs in roadside sand.
