A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop

New World Symphony

er's well-being and would make any effort to create an ambiance in which a writer could work at his or her maximum. Many writers, both from within the U.S. and from countries around the world, will testify to this. Paul's totally selfless offer of assistance to young writers came, no doubt, from his conviction that a better, borderless world can be achieved with totally open and unimpeded dialogues between and among writers from all nations. To provide for such a commonwealth of writers, Paul, later joined by Hualing, had gone to great lengths to create channels for writers to break through local restrictions , quite often political in nature, and to come to Iowa to participate in these unimpeded dialogues. Take the case of Y. C. Chen, who was unjustly put into prison for ideological dissent in Taipei. Paul went so far as to get an American attorney in Taiwan to defend him. Paul and Hualing continued to defend cases of ideological oppression of writers in the People's Republic of China as well as in East European countries. The magnanimity with which Paul did these things had its origin in the triple dimension of his love: (1) in the deep reaches of his heart, his measureless love for poetry and literary creations, (2) in his conviction that humanity, in its untarnished splendor, will shine and speak across national borders and ideological boundaries, and (3) in his commitment to achieve a world community of writers whose unimpeded dialogues will eventually lead to the emergence of a true-to-type United Nations. For myself, and for many writers who have come from other parts of the world, I would like to say, "Thank you, Paul." If, as the myth goes, Orpheus after his death was metamorphosed into various forms of nature singing his lyrics, we are then your trees, rivers, and mountains forever singing your songs, here and everywhere. 108 P A U LEN G L E, IMP RES A RIO MICHAEL DENNIS BROWNE "Next Year You Can See for Yourself" Paul Engle changed my life. I'd begun reading American poetry in the early sixties, first in Helsinki, at the U.S.I.S. Library, and then back in England after my year in Finland. In the poems of James Wright, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, William Stafford, W. S. Merwin, and James Dickey, I found language and images that suggested all kinds of new possibilities to my own restless imagination. In Helsinki, I'd met Chester Anderson, a Joyce expert and Fulbright Scholar at the University of Helsinki. We began a lifelong friendship in the fall of 1963 and it was Chet (best man, "best Chet," at my wedding many years later) who gave me a list of American creative writing programs, with the name "Iowa" at the top. (Funny-looking word, I thought. Is that where the Mormons are?) Back in England in the summer of 1964, I spent some time at the American Embassy in London, looking at information about creative writing programs, and made the decision to try to go to Iowa. I applied to enter the program and to support myself for two years with a teaching assistantship in French. Late in October of 1964, I received a blue airmail letter from Paul Engle in Iowa City. The information in the letter was definitely ofinterest-Paul assured me of acceptance into the program and of receiving the assistantship-but the large and very scarlet maple leaf Paul had enclosed in the letter especially thrilled mea living piece of the landscape I aspired to enter. What also thrilled me were Paul's words: "Next year you can see for yourself." And so I did, as he promised. And I have an American life, thanks to him. 109 Over many years, Paul Engle helped thousands of people, and it's possible he sent out thousands of Iowa leaves inside blue airmail letters, but I took the gesture entirely personally - it was magic to me and has always stayed with me. It was a poet's gesture, all right. I found in Paul's own poems, which I sought out, the kind of vigor I later encountered in the man. Having been raised on the sonnet, I responded to the music and firmness of form of American Child while finding in its images intimations of a country very different from the one I began...