Chad Chisholm, CIFC Director

In October 2002, I was a graduate student when I was asked to interview nationally-renowned poet Vivian Shipley for The South Carolina Review. She was a high-profiled guest at Clemson University, and I felt that this was going to be a commanding task.

Reviewing my notes from 15 years ago, the most memorable part of the interview was when Shipley described her beginnings as a poet. Shipley was married and pregnant with her first son, and according to her she had never before composed a poem.

A month before her son was due, Shipley was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had to undergo surgery. A month later Shipley awoke from a coma to discover the tumor gone, her son born by cesarean, and poetry “flushing” from within her. According to Shipley, that’s how she became a poet, and she has published several books and received countless awards.

Shipley’s need to write after such a personal trial is not unheard of. John Milton wrote his great epic, Paradise Lost, after he had lost everything, which included the use of his eyes. Milton had already lost his powerful position in the Protectorate government of Oliver Cromwell after the Restoration of Charles II when the English people rejected Cromwell’s (and thus Milton’s) political vision for their nation. Powerless and now blind, Milton’s world had completely altered.

So was it Milton’s blindness or Shipley’s tumor that compelled them to write? Somehow, I doubt this.

I believe some human necessity compelled both Milton and Shipley to make moves (both conscious and unconscious), and this turned them towards writing. When our world changes, we have to adapt so that we can both take-in and also understand our altered state of existence. Sometimes this means turning to language and other art forms: it is one way to simultaneously comprehend and adapt to the changed state of the world around us.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying what cannot be simplified easily. I can put it in another way: we write to express the inexpressible. A great example of this is the poem “Bright Star” by John Keats where it seems that words themselves become a form of euhemerism. All of our most profound voices—from the writers of the Old Testament to Maya Angelou—have used language and writing as an indelible device to bring to light such potent thoughts that before could have only existed in the most labyrinthine and enigmatic parts of our human consciousness.

The power of writing is a concept far more preternatural than the mere mechanical process we discuss in schools and college classrooms. As an English professor, I always hope to have such a student who can use words in such a way to harness the power of writing.