Slouched back in her chair, only with her fluffy white hair in view from the back, author Grace Paley listened to Professor of English Blanche Gelfant introduce her to the audience in Cook Auditorium on Saturday.
As an ode to the student who sits down to a blank sheet of paper with the task of writing an essay, John Corley, the conductor of the MIT Concert Band opened Friday evening's concert with "Essay for Band," by William Maloof.
For the first time in sixteen years as a Dartmouth Professr of Russian Language and Literature, the renowned Russian poet, Lev Vladimirovich Loseff, read his poetry to an audience of nearly sixty students, professors, and community members last night in the Wren Room of Sanborn library. Highly respected by all of the students in the Russian Department, Loseff intrigued and perplexed, moved and inspired those who gathered to hear his poetry. Reading in Russian, the poet shed the skin of the man who quietly attends to business around the department, and powerfully emerged with a heightened expression of his experiences. His own vigor was well matched by that of his student, Eric Waters '95, who dovetailed the poet's Russian rendering with literal English translations. Loseff describes the time before his emigration to the United States as his "former life," a time during which he wrote many of his poems.
The charmingly mannered Jeanne LaForgia '92, accompanied on the piano by her former voice teacher, Louis Burkot, gave an enthusiastic performance of selections from her master's thesis yesterday afternoon in Faulkner Recital Hall.