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In Memory of Constance Hunting
Posted by Douglas, Nov 20, 2007. 480 views. ID = 330
This post was written in 30 minutes.
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 | When I was a student at the University Of Maine, I waited three semesters to get into a class that was exceedingly popular and difficult to schedule: Creative Writing, with Constance Hunting.
I found out this morning that she passed away last year. This poem is not much of a memorial - really, this site is probably a much better memorial to her than the poem, since she instilled in her students the belief that any of us can be creative. |  | This post has been awarded 12 stars by 3 readers. |
Kind and soft-spoken, with frank, encouraging words
that sparked imagination at the end of creativity
and made us believe in the power of inspiration -
a generous gift from the universe to each of us;
she inspired us to return that gift improved, ten-fold.
With a keen sense of wonder at the strangeness of life,
the wildness and beauty of the world around us,
and the peculiar blend of mismatched students
whose presence did not always grace her classroom;
she must have been amused - but she never let on.
Her words, swiftly scrawled on poems lost long ago,
her checkmarks, penned with delightful abandon -
blazing the passage of our innovation and her pleasure -
they linger still in memory, still encourage and inspire,
though we have moved on, and her pen is now still.
Copyright 2007 Douglas. All rights reserved. FifteenMinutesOfFiction.com has been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work. For permission to reprint this item, please contact the author.
| This post has been awarded 12 stars by 3 readers. |  | This is a revised version of a post. Click here to view the original version
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Comments
Douglas
Nov 20, 2007 | I still have one of the papers she graded. It was printed on fanfold computer paper with a dot-matrix printer, and at the end is a comment I remember word for word, even without looking at it: This is delightful. Have you been reading Swift?
With comments like that, how could you help but do your best?
~Posted by Douglas, Nov 20, 2007 | 
Josiah T.
Nov 20, 2007 | Wow. Sounds like my English professor. She's not an easy grader, (on essays, at least) but gives credit when you do a good job.
I have her for Business Communication this year, and we do oral presentations instead of essays. I got full points on my first one! :-)
~Posted by Josiah T., Nov 20, 2007 | 
Laura
Nov 20, 2007 | Very well-written :-) I definitely got the feel for the classroom in this one. It's so great that some teachers leave lasting impressions like that....
~Posted by Laura, Nov 20, 2007 |
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