[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]
Bob Houston.
I'm one of those who wrote it out, too.
I thought I might share with you some of the words that have
come to my mind about Steve.
After all, words are what we're all about in our business,
and no one was better at choosing them than he was.
When I think of Steve, which I've
done a great deal over these past couple of months,
I remember a tough time we were going through together
some years ago.
And Steve was asked to describe our relationship.
He thought a moment, and replied, a warm collegiality.
It was very much a Steve answer--
carefully chosen language, accurate, and honest.
But the word that has stayed with me the most
is warm, because that's the first one that comes
to mind when I remember him.
No matter what nonsense might have gone on in some committee
meeting or another the next time you
saw Steve he was warm as ever.
It was something that radiated from him, as naturally
as breath.
Whenever I saw him, I was happy to be in his company, perhaps
because he always made you feel that he
was happy to be in yours.
Another word is openness.
For nearly 40 years we wound up spending a good deal of time
together in airports and on airplanes,
over dinner and lunch tables, official and unofficial,
at parties and bars, and art openings--
most of those Gail's, of course--
in vans, in buses, and receptions,
and readings from Vermont to Tennessee, and Points West--
at Bread Loaf more than once, in each other's office
countless times, in each other's homes a few welcome times.
And then more creative writing program meetings
than either of us would have wanted to remember.
On all those occasions, except for creative writing program
meetings, of course, which are always solemn and formal,
Steve would talk with an incredible lack of reticence
about family, students, poetry, fiction, nonfiction,
growing up in our very different places, the things he loved,
and the things he didn't.
Sometimes, naturally, we would gossip.
I don't think folks who aren't in this business of writing
realized how we love to gossip about one another.
And Steve would never leave you in doubt
about what he felt about one writer or another's work.
But he never descended to personal invective
as others of his kin sometimes do.
There just wasn't any.
In other words, it's decency.
Steve was no saint, but I don't think either of us
believed much in saints anyway.
He and I often locked horns about some creative writing
policy or hiring decisions, most of which
don't amount to much in retrospect.
But that warm collegiality always
remained and operationally defined
decency, as well as I've ever known it.
Steve was a gentleman, first and foremost.
A Golden Gloves boxer who learned well
his lessons from that sport.
Then there's responsibility.
To my knowledge, Steve never let a student down.
I know that after his seven good years as Creative Writing
Program Director he never let me down
when I took over the job a few years later.
I knew that I could always ask him how things should be done,
and why, and I'd get a well-considered,
straightforward answer.
So many of the policies we still follow in the creative writing
program today originated with Steve.
And during his directorship the program
became known as one of the top half dozen in the country.
A great part of that recognition came
from Steve's consistent advocacy for the program
and its students, as well as his personal reputation.
Some of Steve's poems are being read today.
So talent is something that is self-evident.
But involved in both his work and his self is accessibility.
Knock on his office door, and you'd hear, "Come in," and know
that he really welcomed you.
Hear him read a poem, which was something he did beautifully,
and you'd hear the same message.
Come in.
Read his poems and you'd hear him invite you in even
more deeply, and more deeply.
Teacher is the last, perhaps finest, word,
I'd like to apply to Steve.
Year after year, graduate after graduate,
his mentorship and encouragement defined him.
The list of his successful students
is as long as any poet's in the country.
Witness those who came from so far to say goodbye to him.
How many other teachers anywhere on the planet
could claim such loyalty and love?
This is homage I'd like to have delivered at Steve's retirement
ceremony.
I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to, Steve-o.
I respected you as I did few people I have known.
Each of us lives in a mosaic of other lives
that makes up the picture of our own.
Your absence leaves a very large portion
of those mosaics missing for everyone here today--
a part that just can't be replaced, ever.
Thanks for being part of them.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]