Word: tillinghast
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tillinghast's first experience at Harvard precipitated all that followed. Graduating from the University of the South in 1962, the young student came north to Cambridge where he studied under the renowned poet Robert Lowell. Although Tillinghast found his mentor exhilarating, four years with the poet proved almost too powerful. As the erstwhile student now recalls, "You have to get out from under the influence eventually--his view of life was so overwhelming and a bit gloomy, that just for psychological reasons I thought it was important for me to leave...
...leave he did. In 1968, after earning his Ph.D Tillinghast accepted a teaching position at the University of California at Berkeley and landed in the middle of a left leaning college community in turbulent times...
...Whenever you began a quarter, you could be sure that it wasn't going to end I mean, it wasn't going to end in a normal way," the poet recalls Riots and protesting interrupted the academic routine and once--when the university's faculty went on strike--Tillinghast held classes in his apartment...
...incidents which Tillinghast remembers most vividly occurred in the vacant lot since celebrated as "People's Park." When Berkeley announced plans to turn the land into a parking lot, local inhabitants mobilized in protest. Bearing flowers, trees and grass to plant, they converged, on the plot and many refused to leave on the day bulldozing and demolition began...
...police reacted to it with something like overkill," Tillinghast says. After dispersing the crowd, the police began tearing up the park...