The Lasting Word of the Students
by: Matthew MacFarland ‘11
On Tuesday, April 20, the 2010 edition of the Hampden-Sydney literary magazine, the Garnet, was released by editor Robert Bodendorf ‘10. The journal seeks to record student literary and artistic work, spanning the genres of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography and artwork.
Begun in 1859 as a joint operation of the Union and Philanthropic societies, then the only student organizations on campus, and dubbed The Hampden-Sydney Magazine, the journal came to represent not only “the lasting word of the students” but also the important events and spirit of the times, serving as a kind of yearbook.
This issue of the Garnet is no different: featuring work from a dozen students, it presents a wide range of artistic tastes and styles that come together in the book as an artifact of literature and work that surpasses the quality of many undergraduate publications.
Associate Professor of English Neil Perry, the editor of the college’s professional journal, the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, praised the professional appearance of the book and the quality of work that made it in.
Bodendorf made it his priority to make sure that that quality was high.
“From taking creative writing classes I got to know people who were writing on campus,” said Bodendorf. Gathering submissions from personal friends and from students enrolled in creative writing classes, he began putting the body of work for the issue together early last semester. “I got a snowball going as it started piling up,” he said. Compiling the submissions was, he said, “one of the more enjoyable parts of getting it together. I was blown away by how good it all was.”
On April 20, a reception and reading was held in the Parents & Friends Lounge of Venable Hall, giving student contributors a chance to read their work to the crowd, which included most of the English department faculty and a number of fellow students. Bodendorf introduced the issue by reading his own addition to the issue, the poem “Letter to Alyson,” an epistolary poem—one written as a letter to someone—inspired by Tennessee poet George Scarborough, who passed away in 2008.
Following Bodendorf, junior Matthew MacFarland read three of his four poems appearing in the issue—“Trouble with Trees,” “With gratitude, after,” and “Leonids.” The three poems had been composed in the fall for Professor Perry’s Introduction to Poetry workshop class.
Sophomore Thomas Browne, who after this semester will have finished both poetry workshops offered at Hampden-Sydney, then read his poem “Hammock,” his only submission to the magazine.
A fiction selection from the short story “Fire People on Fridays” was then read by Tyler Heslop ’12.
Professor Perry then spoke briefly about the importance of undergraduate magazines and the sense of accomplishment a young writer feels when work is first published. Perry, who received his Masters of Fine Arts from Indiana University in 2008, has most recently completed a long collection of 52 poems, each taking its title from the name of a chapter in a small-scale agriculture manual written in the 1930s. Perry concluded the reception by reading several poems from this project, along with the first poem of his published in a journal.
Poems by Chris Griggs ’12, Evan Weinzierl ’10, and Austin Stallings ’11 were also featured in the magazine, along with fiction from Charles Eberly and faculty member Israel Domingo and photography by Alice Frye and Alex Burner ’10, whose use of slow exposure techniques captured both movement and clarity on the magazine’s cover.
The Garnet, like many Hampden-Sydney student publications, has had somewhat of a checkered history—in years past, issues were released the semester after its senior class contributors had graduated. For the first time in recent years, though, this Garnet was released well before semester’s end.
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