\nPaul Ilie,<\/strong> <\/span>a Great Books professor at Michigan called his students “Mr.” and “Ms.” For example, “Mr. Stratton.” Eighteen-year-old me — Mr. Stratton? Ilie taught The Iliad<\/em>, Thucydides, Plato, and Sophocles. Glad I read those books.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/paul-ilie.jpeg\")
Paul Ilie<\/p><\/div>\n
I begged my Inorganic Chem prof for a B. I needed the B for my pre-med transcript. I did C work throughout the semester but got an A on the final. Paul Rasmussen wouldn\u2019t deal; the numbers didn’t add up. Attention, Bert, adulthood ahead.<\/p>\n
I asked my Calculus professor, \u201cWhat is the meaning of all this?\u201d Wilfred Kaplan didn\u2019t blanch. He said he wasn’t sure.<\/p>\n
I got a D in Organic Chemistry and switched to English.<\/p>\n
Benjamin Franklin V taught Hawthorne, Melville and Twain. I visited Franklin’s house a couple times to listen to jazz records. He had a thing for Babs Gonzales, a hipster vocalese bopper. Franklin was an Ohio State grad from Gallipolis and was related to Ben Franklin. Franklin-the-prof was 11 years older than me and had caught some of the beatnik era.<\/p>\n
Another young<\/strong><\/span> prof was Bernard Q. Nietschmann. He taught a gut course — Human Geography. He gave me four credit hours for writing a novel. Nietschmann’s main focus was the Miskito Indians of Nicaragua. He once tore up a $20 bill in class to show his disdain for materialistic mainstream culture. The class went nuts, several students screaming at the prof to hand over the money. (Twenty dollars in 1970 equals $160 now.)<\/p>\n Donald Hall held a poetry-writing workshop at his house on South University Avenue. (Workshops weren’t common at Michigan. Lectures were, like 200 kids in a room.) At the workshop we critiqued each other’s work. Hall owned one LP record: Sgt. Pepper’s.<\/em> Never a music guy \u2013 Hall.<\/p>\n Ted Berrigan, an East Village poet, was at Michigan one semester as a visiting professor. Hall got Berrigan the job. Berrigan had interviewed Jack Kerouac for the Paris Review<\/em>. Berrigan had fans. I was a super-fan.<\/p>\n English 231, Fall 1969<\/p><\/div>\n Paul Ilie, a Great Books professor at Michigan called his students “Mr.” and “Ms.” For example, “Mr. Stratton.” Eighteen-year-old me — Mr. Stratton? Ilie taught The Iliad, Thucydides, Plato, and Sophocles. Glad I read those books. I begged my Inorganic Chem prof for a B. I needed the B for my pre-med transcript. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32051"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32111,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32051\/revisions\/32111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/ted-berrigan-fall-1969-list-231x300.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/hayden-robert-postage-stamp.jpeg\")
Robert Hayden, another English professor, wound up on a U.S. postage stamp. At his office, I showed him my latest poems but he didn’t cotton to jokey, light fare. He was polite, though. He dressed properly, just like my Great Books prof. Profs dressed either like profs or hippies. There was no in-between.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"