\n
2<\/p>\n
Number of readings held each semester<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
\u201cIt says something sometimes about their personality,\u201d Associate Dean Michael Thomas says as he examines the style of each author\u2019s signature. \u201cThe best thing is when people do little drawings, like the poet Brooks Haxton with his baseball player there, and Jane Hirshfield tried to draw a baseball glove\u2014I think she did well. She was actually more critical of it than I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas, who has run Monmouth\u2019s Visiting Writers Series since its inception in fall 2005, has in his once 16 baseballs signed by the various writers who have come to campus as part of the series. The baseballs sit on a shelf that is also home to the novels and books of poetry written by the authors themselves.<\/p>\n
Thomas says the idea to have visiting writers sign baseballs came to him somewhat randomly after the series began. Both he and Stan Green, dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences when the series began, have a deep love for the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started working for him, and his love of baseball\u2014I started to feed o of that,\u201d says Thomas. \u201cThen I said, \u2018Why don\u2019t we have the writers sign baseballs for us?\u2019 And he loved the idea, how it would be a record of them being here and how it would bring baseball and poet- ry together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas missed getting the autographs of some of the early visiting writers, such as poet, essayist, and memoirist Mary Karr, as well as a handful of other writers who he, in his planning and execution of the popular event, forgot to ask the day of\u2014like the famed author and playwright Joyce Carol Oates (though he\u2019s toyed with the idea of driving out to Princeton to get her John Hancock).<\/p>\n
But the 16 he does have signed by about some dozen-and-a- half writers and one filmmaker\u2014some balls include multiple signatures\u2014reflects the diversity and breadth of talented artists who have passed through campus and provided touching and impactful readings over the past 13 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get to bring poetry and literature to audiences and introduce them to these writers that then have this impact that is immeasurable for people, this emotional, intellectual impact,\u201d says Thomas. \u201cIt\u2019s spiritual\u2014I\u2019m not a churchgoer but I\u2019m a devout poet\u2014and it\u2019s the shared experience of the literature that awakens and heals people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s an unusual tradition surrounding the university’s Visiting Writers Series. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":3294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents","category-tides"],"thumbnail":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2018\/06\/TESTING-300x162.jpg\")
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