By VANESSA LANGDON
News Editor
The Master of Fine Arts in creative writing professors read their works, or the works of others, to a packed house in Standish A and B on campus Thursday night. The professors used metaphor and made-up places to offer a commentary on the interesting climate the program currently finds itself in. The program was one of the 28 that were announced last semester as those cut in the name of savings.
“We couldn’t figure out how to name this event. Are we still the MFA faculty, do we still have an MFA program?” asked Barbara Ungar, professor at the College. “We decided we are still the MFA faculty.”
The evening started with a lighthearted reading by professor Ronald Shavers. He read from “Silverfish,” a commentary about how business is taking over our lives.
“You’re not a person, you’re a brand,” Shavers said.
Profesor Hollis Seamon got the evening really going with a reading of her fable – which she explicitly warned was a work of fiction, though those in the room seemed to notice a resemblance to the Saint Rose campus today. The fable was titled “The Winter of Her Discomfort: A Fable for Our Times.”
The fable was full of allusions which she said those in attendance would have no trouble figuring out.
“It hadn’t been the best of times, it hadn’t been the worst of times yet,” read Seamon.
The fable centered on a queen who locked herself in her tower, with her soundproof walls. From her perch in the tower she could see groups of people trampling around below carrying signs, Seamon read.
“We are Saint Ro… the wind whisked away the words,” she read. Audience members roared at this remark – clearly alluding to the Save Our Saint Rose group and other protesters that have been active on campus since the announcement of the impending cuts in December.
“WE know so much more than she, we would gladly teach and learn,” Seamon read. “The queen lives in a world of her own ignorance.”
She went on to repeat throughout the fable that the queen would not understand the fable or the metaphors and allusions to other literary works because she “has not read the books.”
“Those who live by the sword, well, you know the rest. But she doesn’t,” read Seamon. “She has not read the book.”
She went on to allude to those who work in the administration alongside Stefanco in the fable – “the visor named for the great comet.”
The moral of the fictitious fable is, “read the books, heed the books, we need the books,” said Seamon.
Once she put down her papers she was met with thunderous applause from the room filled with her contemporaries and students. The next professor to read, Daniel Nester, commented on the fable.
“What was that about?” he asked with wide eyes.
He again lightened the mood reading from his recently published memoir, “Shader.” Of the 99 chapters in the book he read three: “Shader Record Store Nerds,” “Notes on my First Girlfriend,” and “Notes on the Ben Franklin Bridge.” The chapters spoke frankly of Nester’s life – his obsession with records, cheating on a girlfriend while in his young teens and an LSD trip while in college.
Ungar again took to the podium and chose her reading material with the intent of letting out some frustration.
“I don’t know why, I just feel the urge to swear a lot,” she said.
She read a poem she wrote with some of her students featuring some of the many unflattering names for women. She said she felt better after exclaiming the expletives.
Professor Kenneth Krauss read the words of his friend, Laszlo Szekrényi of Saratoga Springs. During his reading of Szekrényi’s words, Krauss likened the situation at a certain college – Saint Rose implicitly – to that of places of nonsense.
The words he read were met with laughs at many different times, including when he spoke of professors being asked to sell their body parts to pay off the debt that appreciated. An even larger response was garnered when he said that the administration could not partake in this, as they had no hearts and hadn’t for some time now.
He ended with a joke: “What’s the difference between an armed terrorist and a tenured faculty member?” quipped Krause. “They can negotiate with a terrorist.”
Students at the event said that it spoke to the resiliency of the faculty in the English Department.
“This showed the strength of being united under one art form, that being writing,” said Mackenzie Johnson, a junior English major at the College.
Others took it more as a sassy remark back to the administration.
“Here tonight we learned the importance of metaphor,” said Shanell Hanna, a senior English major. “And no matter how old you are, you will always be able to throw shade.”
The reading night had been in the works by the MFA faculty since the beginning of the year and shows their tenacity, according to Krauss.
“I think no matter what anybody says it’s obvious that the arts are still very much alive her,” she said. “The students still find them very important.”
