Celebrating Harper: A Narrative Remembrance

We had come to each other's acquaintance through the agency of Michael Harper, and after a series of unlikely but fortunate circumstances, were both employed by the English Department of Bowdoin College.We were pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm shown for the possibilities by the Bowdoin administration, and subsequently, the English Department. There was, quite frankly, nothing but enthusiasm by the members of the college, including financially. We were essentially told, in the early spring of 1996, to think big, and particularly backed by the enthusiasm of then-President Robert H. Edwards, we set off to imagine an event that would suitably frame the life and work of Michael Harper: to borrow the vernacular, we went for it, and still, twenty years later, we're astounded that it came off, and just how well it worked.This wasn't a standard academic conference, and we titled it in order to signal that: "Celebrating Harper: A Conference and Festival in Honor of Michael S. Harper." It was to run from October 24-27, Thursday night through Sunday morning, and we sought to underscore the highly festive and celebratory nature of the event-which was central to its purposes. The celebration complemented and built on the range and power of the scholarly, critical and artistic work that would be presented over the course of the weekend, with power and value added by the huge community of students, fellow poets, scholars-whose lives he touched-whose lives he changed.We were celebrating Michael Harper at 58 years old-as he rode the crest of a wave that began in 1970 with the publication of Dear John, Dear Coltrane-and built extraordinary momentum through his career. He had just published Honorable Amendments, featuring such Harper masterpieces as "Angola (Louisiana)" and "The Ghost of Soulmaking."It was a warm fall in Maine: unseasonal. And the leaves took a long time falling off the trees that year-and the scattered foliage was still colorful-and crunching underfoot. And so it was a beautiful weekend-a surreal weekend with temperatures reaching 64 degrees on Thursday when the conference began-and it stayed warm through the events.And people came, perhaps 150 from out of town-and many more from the environs of the college. The conference began Thursday night, Oct. 24-filling the First Parish Church, just off the northwestern corner of the Bowdoin campus, and just south of the town green-for the opening address by Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate in Literature. It was an auspicious location for several reasons, including that it is the church where Harriet Beecher Stowe, the wife of a Bowdoin professor, had the vision which led to the writing of Uncle Tom 's Cabin.Heaney and Harper were close personal friends. They had known each other since the early 1970s, meeting by serendipitous coincidence as young poets at Beaver College in Pennsylvania. Heaney's keynote was personal and affectionate, a blend of his own poetry, poems by Harper, and other poems linked to them both.Heaney described the undeniably personal attachment between them, and how, 25 years later, he retained a sweet sense of being party to a bond. It was astonishing to hear a writer of Heaney's stature and caliber discuss the influence Harper had had on him personally and relate memorable things Harper had said.When they were talking about technique, for example, Harper said, "technique is vehicular"-meaning (said Heaney) that technique in and of itself is nothing. Unless it is a vehicle for something else-for spirit, for talent, love, truth, anger, satire, whatever. Heaney also praised Harper as having a "curative intelligence": curating and curing at the same time. He praised Harper for the "great poetical gift" of being able to touch conscience without raising issues, which enabled Harper in his work to restore a specific gravity to virtuous words like ancestry, keeping kin, holding, carrying, watching, and witnessing, intending by contending. …