Correspondence
McNICOLL, RON & REEVES, DAVID K. & HART, BROTHER PATRICK & SR., DONALD F. CUDDIHEE & O'ROURKE, BRIDGET & DUFFY, CHARLES F. & CUMMINGS, MICHAEL J. & JR., EDWARD McGLYNN GAFFNEY & RIGA, PETER J.
CORRESPONDENCE To the Editors In brief Bob Lax writes poems like this. (they show the spirit the matter of fact of bliss.) RON MCNICOLL Berkeley, Calif. Caution: Poet passing Thank you for...
...There are elements in the state contributing large sums to finance this effort...
...Continued on page 27) I question these judgments...
...If my argument was veiled, let me remove the veil now...
...What hubris...
...Lax at last Kudos to James Uebbing for his excellent presentation on the much neglected poet Robert Lax...
...Lax was/is a piece of work, a wonderful, beautiful man with all the eccentricities a poet should have...
...peter j. riga Houston, Tex...
...they learn to write not by osmosis but through instruction and practice...
...Ed was totally focused, and Lax was Lax...
...Learning to write Re: "Desecrating Literature," by Frank McConnell[April5]: English professors have killed "civilized literary discourse...
...While Catholics who belong to some of the organizations listed by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln (for example, Call to Action) are hardly giving scandal, that is not true of membership in other groups he named: the Hemlock Society, Planned Parenthood, Catholics for a Free Choice, which actively promote abortion or euthanasia...
...As he points out, it is not present at Annapolis and West Point, which have integrated women into their programs of military training...
...Meanwhile, we can look forward to Uebbing' s collection, Love Has a Compass...
...I want to sit on a bench and think...
...Incidentally, Antonucci also designed the recently reissued Sheed and Ward paperback edition of A Catch of Anti-Letters, containing the zany correspondence between Lax and Merton which the latter edited shortly before his death...
...CHARLES F. DUFFY Providence, R.L Source of the troubles It is true, as Mary Pat Kelly writes in "Holding Out Hope: Clinton's Irish Policy" [April 5], that many Americans found Ireland's conflict confusing and the violence inexplicable, but that was the goal of British Information Services ["BIS"], which fed the U.S...
...For decades now they have cultivated and counted on American ignorance and indifference...
...Literature has been around much longer than literature professors and will certainly outlive the present generation of PMLA contributors...
...In pointing out the emperor's nudity, he voices the dismay of many in the profession which has led us to quit the Modern Language Association...
...Gaffney describes the crude abuses of VMFs "rat line" to support his argument and steer women away from VMI...
...This is evidence of service to "important governmental objectives" that are not respected in single-sex schooling...
...EDWARD MCGLYNN GAFFNEY, JR...
...It is, or can be, a means of clarifying and underlining what it means to be a Catholic Christian...
...academies...
...If a thousand single-sex academies cannot bloom in today's aggressive packaging and selling of higher education, why not at least let a few such experiments survive...
...First, single-sex academies like Wellesley and Saint Mary's College have not just been saying they are committed to equal educational opportunity...
...Excommunication does not judge the spiritual condition of anyone...
...MICHAEL J. CUMMINGS Albany, N.Y...
...If Americans resolve to stay involved in the peace process, no power on earth can stand in the way of a reunification of Ireland and the all-important healing of its people...
...BROTHER PATRICK HART, O.C.S.O...
...Separate isn't equal In his essay [April 19] previewing the Supreme Court's consideration of the case brought by the federal government against the males-only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), Edward McGlynn Gaffney, Jr., spins a loose web...
...By making use of it in this way, Bishop Bruskewitz has done more than all the pastoral letters of the past fifty years to make clear that those who promote these things do evil and to that extent are not part of the res catholica...
...media every misconception and half-truth imaginable...
...its court victory is critical to the perpetuation of mythical Deep South mythologies about the Citadel...
...Cuddihee thinks I presented "a veiled argument" that equal educational opportunity for women can "best be achieved by separate and equal facilities...
...Presumably Father Coriden would agree that public advocacy by Catholics of such practices is a serious departure from Catholic teaching...
...Perhaps the question should be whether women should desire military training in the "cage" of a women's finishing school's sanitized environment...
...At Jubilee he stood out as a contrast to Ed Rice...
...Authentic pluralism means that some schools will take one approach and that others should be allowed to take another approach...
...There is some truth to McConnell's claim that literature professors are not teaching students how to write...
...President Clinton's Saint Patrick's Day appeal to turn despair into determination is a frightening prospect for the British...
...In considering the case the Court will necessarily scrutinize the policies of the official U.S...
...Caution: Poet passing Thank you for running the article on Bob Lax ["The Poet Who Fell off the Map," April 19...
...The writer is a member of the national board of the Irish-American Unity Conference...
...A parallel case is awaiting the outcome of this case: The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina-which is like VMI both in its males-only policy and in its receipt of tax support-has set up a military program at a private women's school, Converse College in Spartanburg...
...It is simply resuming the serious study of literature as literature...
...that is what they have been doing for decades...
...But the intellectual enterprise of teaching writing is alive and well in English departments, though perhaps not in literature programs...
...In fact most Americans, Irish or otherwise, see the unilaterally imposed division of Ireland as the cause of the conflict and the violent response of the IRA as a symptom...
...If not, then the Court should pass up this opportunity to declare that all governmental classifications on gender lines are inherently violative of our commitment to equality between the sexes...
...Lax could go in a terrible hurry...
...As to these concerns, I am puzzled why Mr...
...But VMI is the trailblazer...
...perhaps it's the rat line, not women, that should leave VMI...
...DAVID K. REEVES Princeton, N.J...
...Trappist, Ky...
...Our goal, Gaffney says, must be equal educational opportunity, and he presents a veiled argument that it can best be achieved by separate-but-equal facilities...
...Second, I don't recall saying anything about what is best for women, who are quite capable of choosing between coeducational and single-sex schooling-provided that both choices are sustained rather than eliminated...
...Coming down University Place was Lax, moving at breakneck speed, dodging bewildered, innocent pedestrians...
...The MLA is no longer "the only and I mean only organization of literature professors in the U.S.," as McConnell claims...
...One day some thirty-five years ago I was making my way up University Place toward the subway at Union Square...
...Or do we really think that the Constitution requires total uniformity on this matter...
...A rapidly growing alternative organization, the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, is off to a good start...
...I have followed Lax's writing since his early work was published by Emil Antonucci...
...They have also restored the study of rhetoric in relation to other disciplines such as ethics and politics, recognizing that the choices writers make in their lives as citizens, teachers, and workers are as likely to be ethical and political as aesthetic...
...A teaching instrument Though I am not an advocate of excommunication, I believe that James A. Coriden ["Even in Lincoln, Doubtful Laws Don't Apply," April 19] neglects the educational and medicinal functions it can serve in church governance...
...The Court will also take into account that men and women military personnel on active duty work and live together in bases and in combat situations...
...One such misconception is that "most Northern Protestants assumed that Irish-Americans back the IRA," a BIS distortion that perpetuates the "vietim" image for the loyalists to deflect their anti-Catholic bigotry...
...That is why Congress expressly decided to let such colleges exist undisturbed by the federal mandate of gender equality in educational opportunity in the 1972 legislation known as Title IX...
...That is what Bishop Bruskewitz is saying-not only to those immediately affected but to the world at large- by his warning...
...Hey, Bob, where are you going in such a hurry...
...But there's good news...
...To its credit, the organization isn't content merely to grouse about the scandalous state of affairs in academia...
...It brought great joy to see Lax at long last recognized for the fine poet he is...
...DONALD F. CUDDIHEE, SR...
...military academies, which do value and honor coeducation...
...New boy on the block Frank McConnell's column on PMLA has a nice Swiftian combination of rage and accuracy...
...VMI contends that it has recognized the rights of women by instituting a military program at prestigious Mary Baldwin College...
...Writing scholars have revived the study of the art of rhetoric, remembering that the classical canons of rhetoric included not only style, but also invention, arrangement, memory, and delivery...
...that is God's alone to judge...
...Down to Washington Square...
...The group will hold its second convention late in August in Boston...
...More good news is that Arthur Biddle of the University of Vermont is editing the complete correspondence between these two old friends from Columbia...
...In any case, students don't learn to write by reading Shakespeare any more than they learn to paint by admiring Picasso...
...Greer, S. C. The writer replies: I agree with Mr...
...Its seriousness can serve also as an invitation to return to the fullness of faith...
...Maybe the Court will note that this cultural blight is nonexistent in the U.S...
...But the VMI case has implications far beyond military training...
...BRIDGET O'ROURKE West Lafayette, Ind...
...He takes issue with the federal brief's argument that "strict scrutiny" standards should be applied in cases involving classification by gender as well as to those involving race, and doubts that the Supreme Court will adopt that view...
...Cuddihee that "the crude abuses of VMFs rat line" constitute a "cultural blight...
...When its values enter private life they can poison institutions and businesses by fostering elitism and a bottom-line mentality...
Vol. 123 • May 1996 • No. 10
