Tony Abbott’s Long, Lyrical Quest To Recover Our Wonder
2001
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
Re-print courtesy of Davidson College

As he retires this year, former students will remember his sparkling personality and passion for the perfect word. But his gifts have done far more for Davidson than just engendering alumni loyalty. Through the personal development of a late-blooming career in poetry, and visionary leadership of his department, he has built for Davidson a college writing program second to none.

His sincere empathy for others creates instant community in his midst, and his poetic style touches the hearts of those he attracts. His crafts his classes as enduring experiences, rather than just time spent together. Former student Brooke Shaffner '00, currently enrolled in graduate English studies at Columbia University, wrote of the experience, "You can't help but realize that this man is a prophet in the unassuming guise of a professor, because you have seen him grasp a stone in his fingers at the start of class, and seen him unfold his hand at the conclusion to reveal that it has become bread held out for your taking."

The recent publication of his third book of poetry, The Search for Wonder In the Cradle of the World, (available through the college bookstore, email beangilly@davidson.edu) reconfirms his success in the field of creative writing.

Very few people now realize that he began his career in literary criticism. He was a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University in 1957, and won a Danforth Fellowship to support his graduate study of English and American literature at Harvard. He joined the Davidson faculty in 1964, and a year later published his first book, a revision of his Ph.D. dissertation called Shaw and Christianity.

That work, which proposed legitimacy for Shaw's criticism of religion, reflects an investigation of human spirituality that Abbott has pursued in a variety of forms throughout his career. In addition to teaching English, he joined the Humanities program in 1967, and designed together with Dan Rhodes a course in American literature and religion. He has taught and coordinated an adult Sunday School class at Davidson College Presbyterian Church for 30 years, and given lectures about religion and literature to church groups and literary organizations throughout the region.

His spiritual quest also permeates his poetry. He was attracted to write verse initially in the early 1970s then as a means of coming to grips with feelings of grief and loss. "It gives you a way not only of feeling things, but of helping you understand what you feel," he said. "Sometimes you don't know what you feel until you write it."

In the past 30 years he has become a prolific and celebrated poet, successful because he is able to help people understand feelings they have been unable to articulate on their own.

He published many individual poems in literary journals throughout the 1980s, but didn't publish his first book until 1989. That volume, The Girl In the Yellow Raincoat, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

He explained his attraction to poetry in part as an expedient, a means of self-expression that he could fit into a busy schedule of classes, civic duties, and family life. His poems begin as moments that trigger a feeling-reading a newspaper story about a student falling from a dormitory ledge, seeing graffiti on a restroom wall, or watching crippled children being wheeled into a cathedral.

Abbott describes his poetic style as "elegiac." His poem "Remembrance" in the 1993 volume A Small Thing Like A Breath tells of his painful but cathartic visit to the grave of his daughter, Lyn, who died suddenly in 1967 at age four. The book is dedicated to her memory. "Part of the process of living is learning to accept death as that which comes, and working to memorialize and celebrate the lives of people who die," he said. "The fact that I'm still writing about things that happened more than twenty-five years ago is not a way of dwelling on the sadness, but instead of keeping those people alive."

He feels called to write about people and occasions as a means of giving them life beyond death. "I think it's my response to the aging process, where you have a constant sense that things are slipping away from you. You write a poem to keep a precious moment alive, because when people read the poem it lives again. The most important thing is to give something life, because by giving it life you're honoring it."

Associate Professor Alan Parker, fellow poet and Abbott's replacement as director of the creative writing program, said Abbott's poetry is effective because, "For him writing is a way of being, so it rings true. He combines his considerable intellect with moral and personal imperative on the page in ways that are quite moving."

The title of his latest edition, The Search for Wonder In the Cradle of the World, refers to his soul-searching during a sabbatical journey through the Middle East. The first poem in it is called "Genesis," written as a marriage poem for their son, Steven. "It about being a modern Adam and Eve," Abbott said.

The last is "Come Lord Jesus." Abbott explained, "The book is full of poems that wrestle with religious questions. Our doubt leads to a loss of wonder and separation from God that we struggle to overcome throughout our lives. These poems respond to the things in the world that tend to shake our sense of faith."

The book is dedicated to his wife, Susan, who shared his sabbatical journey and forty years of marriage.

Abbott has gained renown not only as a writer of verse, but for his personal presentation of it. Professor Randy Nelson, current department chair, said, "Tony is one of the few poets who can read his own work well. Most college professors are terrible readers of their own stuff, but he knows how to make a poem an experience for a larger group of people."

Abbott revels in readings, and is invited to give dozens each year to book clubs, church groups, academic audiences, and professional gatherings. One thing that appeals to audiences is his lyric narrative style of writing. "I think people like hearing me read them because my poems often have a plot and move toward some sort of narrative climax. It's a form that's familiar, and therefore engaging," he concluded.

Involvement with professional organizations has been integral to his development as a writer, He has sought out communities of people with whom he could share concerns, ideas, and feelings that non-writers find difficult to understand. He also eagerly accepted leadership in the field, and has served as president of the N.C. Writers Network and the Charlotte Writers Club, as well as judge and speaker for the O. Henry Literary Festival. He commented, "Writers groups make you realize that you aren't crazy after all, that there is someone out there who understands what you're doing."

He has received numerous awards for poems published in literary magazines through the years, including winning the N.C. Poetry Society's Thomas H. McDill competition three times. His reputation was confirmed in 1996 when he won the state's Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award, which recognizes artistic excellence and a dedication to furthering the arts in North Carolina.

His transformation from literary criticism to modern drama to poetry has inspired colleagues, who appreciate the fact that an academician doesn't have to remain rooted in one subject for an entire career.

Abbott was trained at Harvard in Renaissance and modern drama, and was hired at Davidson to teach American literature. He became an instant favorite of students, and in 1969, after just five years on the faculty, became the youngest faculty member to ever receive the Thomas Jefferson Award for excellence in teaching. He didn't begin teaching creative writing until 1979.

As he developed as a poet, he continued to develop his interest in drama as well. He directed many plays for the Davidson Community Players, and in 1988 published The Vital Lie: Reality and Illusion in Modern Drama, a critical study of fifteen major playwrights from Ibsen to Pinter. The book explained how most give their characters lies to cling to, falsehoods essential to their existence.

He has always been an active member of the faculty through service on major committee, leadership of the second year Humanities Program, and as chair of the English department from 1989-1996.

During that time he undertook a series of remarkable initiatives that established the study and practice of writing as a hallmark of Davidson's curriculum.. He worked closely with fundraisers and donors to establish the McGee Visiting Professorship, which brings a gifted writer to campus each spring semester to teach courses and give readings. Then he and his former student, Patricia Cornwell '79, developed a major scholarship program to help attract talented student writers to enroll here. He brought more writing specialists into the faculty, and established the Writing Center. Students have responded to the developments enthusiastically, and the department now counts eighty majors.

Though his youthful looks belie his age, Abbott says he's ready for retirement. For one thing, he admits he doesn't know his students as well as in the past. "As I get older, I find that they have completely different cultural experience than me," he said. "In many ways I was at my best when my own children were in high school and college, because I was still experiencing their world. Teachers need to be close to the experiential world of students, and my life is no longer close to theirs."

With that in mind, he plans to continue writing and reading poetry, and may teach in forums such as Elderhostel. He's aware of retirement as a major transition in life, and intends to go about it deliberately and well. "You can't live in the past," he said, "but you can bring the past into the present and do something with it. Robert Frost used the image of a rock that you toss down the road ahead of you. Later you come up to it and can say, 'That's what it was all about!' 'That's what it meant.' Writers reinterpret experience, and use their imagination to reshape it and give it meaning."