Robert Sward - biography, career, poetry
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Robert Sward |
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FOUR INCARNATIONS
Born on the Jewish North Side of Chicago,
bar mitzvahed, sailor, amnesiac, university
professor (Cornell, Iowa, Connecticut College,
University of Victoria), newspaper editor, food
reviewer, father of five children, husband to four
wives, my writing career has been described by critic
Virginia Lee as a "long and winding road."
1. Switchblade Poetry: Chicago Style
I began writing poetry in Chicago at age 15, when I
was named corresponding secretary for a gang of
young punks and hoodlums called the Semcoes. A
Social Athletic Club, we met at various locations
two Thursdays a month. My job was to write
postcards to inform my brother thugs--who carried
switchblade knives and stole cars for fun and
profit--as to when, where and why we were meeting.
Rhyming couplets seemed the appropriate form to
notify characters like lightfingered Foxman,
cross-eyed Harris, and Irving "Koko," of upcoming
meetings. An example of my switchblade juvenilia:
The Semcoes meet next Thursday night
at Speedway
Koko’s. Five bucks dues, Foxman, or fight.
Koko was a young boxer whose father owned Chicago’s
Speedway Wrecking Company and whose basement was
filled with punching bags and pinball machines.
Koko and the others joked about my affliction--the
writing of poetry--but were so astonished that they
criticized me mainly for my inability to spell.
2. Sailor Librarian: San Diego
At 17, I graduated from high school, gave up my job
as soda jerk and joined the Navy. The Korean War
was underway; my mother had died, and Chicago seemed
an oppressive place to be.
My thanks to the U.S. Navy. They taught me how
to type (60 words a minute), organize an office, and
serve as a librarian. In 1952 I served in Korea aboard a
300-foot long, flat-bottomed Landing Ship Tank (LST).
A Yeoman 3rd Class, I became overseer of 1200
paperback books, a sturdy upright typewriter, and a couple of filing cabinets.
The best thing about duty on an LST is the ship’s
speed: 8-10 knots. It takes approximately one month
for an LST to sail between San Diego and Pusan, Korea.
In that month I read Melville’s Moby Dick,
Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Thoreau’s Walden,
Isak Dinesen’s Winter’s Tales, the King James Version
of the Bible, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear, and a
biography of Abraham Lincoln.
While at sea, I began writing poetry as if poems,
to paraphrase Thoreau, were secret letters from
some distant land.
I sent one poem to a girl named Lorelei with whom I was in love.
Lorelei had a job at the Dairy Queen.
Shortly before enlisting in the Navy, I spent $15 of
my soda jerk money taking her up in a single engine,
sight-seeing airplane so we could kiss and--at the
same time--get a good look at Chicago from the air.
Beautiful Loreli never responded to my poem. Years
later, at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop,
I learned that much of what I had been writing (love
poems inspired by a combination of lust and
loneliness) belonged, loosely speaking, to a
tradition--the venerable tradition of unrequited love.
3. Mr. Amnesia: Cambridge
In 1962, after ten years of writing poetry, my book,
Uncle Dog & Other Poems, was published by Putnam
in England. That was followed by two books from
Cornell University Press, Kissing the Dancer and
Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee. Then in 1966, I was
invited to do 14 poetry readings in a two-week
stretch at places like Dartmouth, Amherst, and the
University of Connecticut.
The day before I was scheduled to embark on the
reading series, I was hit by a speeding MG in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I lost my memory for a period of about 24 hours.
Just as I saw the world fresh while cruising to a
war zone, so I now caught a glimpse of what a city
like Cambridge can look like when one’s inner slate,
so to speak, is wiped clean.
4. Santa Claus: Santa Cruz
In December, 1985, recently returned to the U.S.,
Canadian citizen, a free lance writer
in search of a story, I sought and found
employment as a Rent-a-Santa Claus. Imagine walking
into the local Community Center and suddenly, at the
sight of 400 children, feeling transformed from
one’s skinny, sad-eyed self, into an elf--having to
chant the prescribed syllables, "Ho, Ho, Ho."
What is poetry? For me, it’s the restrained music
of a switchblade knife. It’s an amphibious warship
magically transformed into a basketball court, and
then transformed again into a movie theater showing
a film about the life of Joan of Arc. It is the
vision of an amnesiac, bleeding from a head injury,
witnessing the play of sunlight on a redbrick wall.
Poetry comes to a bearded Jewish wanderer, pulling
on a pair of high rubber boots with white fur, and a
set of musical sleigh bells, over blue, fleece-lined
sweat pants. It comes to the father of five
children bearing gifts for 400 and, choked up,
unable to speak, alternately laughing and sobbing
the three traditional syllables--Ho, Ho, Ho--hearing
at the same time, in his heart, the more plaintive,
tragic--Oi vay, Oi vay, Oi vay.
CURRICULUM VITAE
CITIZENSHIP Canadian Citizen
EMPLOYMENT
1989 - Present English Instructor teaching English language and
literature courses—and Creative Writing (fiction &
poetry) for UCSC; UCSC Extension and at Cabrillo College.
Author: Four Incarnations, New & Selected Poems;
Much-Married Man, A Novel;
Contributor to Uncivilizing, A Collection of Poems;
1987 - 1988 The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. Responsibility for editing
software user manuals and training guides for stylistic
consistency, typographical errors and grammar. Edited
SCO Publications Policies and Procedures Handbook and other publications.
1986 - 1988 English and Journalism Instructor at Monterey Peninsula
College, UCSC Extension, and the Writer-in-the-Schools
Program, Santa Cruz County Cultural Council.
Managing Editor, Santa Cruz Online Magazine.
1985 - 1986 English and Journalism Instructor, Mt. Madonna School.
1979 - 1985 Teacher, Writer-in-the-Schools Program, Ontario Arts
Council. Free lance journalist for The Toronto Star, Globe & Mail,and for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
Radio broadcaster.
1970 - 1979 Editor and Publisher, Soft Press, Canada. 21 books
published (fiction, poetry and visual arts).
1969 - 1973 University of Victoria, English Department: Writer-in-
Residence and Assistant Professor of English.
1962 - 1969 Cornell University, English Department and Editorial
Board, Epoch Magazine; Writer-in-Residence, University
of Iowa; Aspen Writers’ Workshop; Guggenheim and
other Fellowships.
PUBLICATIONS See Published Works
EDUCATION M.A., University of Iowa, English Department;
B.A. (Honors, Phi Beta Kappa), University of
Illinois. Postgraduate work: University of Iowa
English Department; Middlebury College, Vermont;
Fulbright Scholar, University of Bristol, England.
HONORS Guggenheim Fellowship; D. H. Lawrence Fellowship;
Canada Council Grants; Villa Montalvo Literary Arts
Award; Creative Writing with Senior Citizens Award,
Victoria, B.C.
About the author:
http://www.library.utoronto.ca
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