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Publishers Weekly: Praise for Hill's new book-length poem
The Orchards of Syon, a new book-length poem by UNI Professor Geoffrey Hill, was praised in the April 8 Publishers Weekly. Hill, who the review says has been dubbed "a major poet of his generation, even the best English poet alive," taught in England for 30 years before coming to BU. His new book, according to reviewer Steve Burt, "takes in writers and creators from Beethoven to D. H. Lawrence to the medieval thinker Thomas Bradwardine, setting them like gems into his own musings and exploring a pastoral England Hill at once remembers and remakes." It uses unrhymed units modeled on the Italian canzone. Hill says his line there "tries to retain and develop some of the traditional fullness and resonance that is associated with the blank verse line. In each case the sound of the thing, the sound of the line, is an inextricable part of the general, so to speak, viewpoint of the work."
Boston magazine: BU scores hat trick with three features
The April issue of Boston magazine offers three stories
with strong BU connections. "Profs and Losses" focuses on the
debate over tenure in academia and the increasing interest in hiring adjunct
instructors and lecturers -- so-called untenured faculty. Jeffrey Miron,
a CAS professor of economics, says that for a cash-strapped college, a
$3,000-per-course untenured instructor is an immensely appealing prospect
compared with a tenured full professor, who costs at least $100,000, once
you throw in a computer system, research assistant, and benefits.
"Flash Back" features photographs taken by Jules Aarons (GRS'49),
a CAS research professor in astronomy. Beginning in the 1940s, Aarons
used a waist-level, twin-lens reflex camera to capture people's everyday
lives in the West End, the South End, South Boston, Chelsea, and the North
End. "The drama of living is more fully played out in the streets,"
he says. "Kids and adults interact. They chat, they admire the babies,
they play cards, they stroll, they sit and watch the drama."
Bostonia editor-at-large Jerrold Hickey is one of several octogenarians
profiled in "The Old and the Restless." The 80-year-old Hickey
is photographed with squash racket in hand, standing on a squash court
next to his friend Martin Slobodkin, 82. The two play squash three days
a week at the Harvard Club. "I've probably psyched myself into believing
I never had it so good," says Hickey, who credits Slobodkin with
inspiring his rosy attitude. "We're all moving on, and I hope we
[his friends] all die at the same time. You get the feeling that closure
is coming, but it just seems like a natural thing. This is the way the
chapter ends."
In the same article, Saul Bellow, a UNI professor and Nobel Prize-winning
writer who at 86 just published his 20th book, comments on how octogenarians
have, over their lifetimes, watched literature, particularly the novel,
take a back seat to movies, television, and the Internet. However, he
has confidence in the written word. "A good many readers survive
the pressure of modern times, which seems calculated to destroy our interest
in books," he says.
Boston Globe: SPH prof promotes hospital disaster planning
How can hospitals treat a sudden influx of hundreds or thousands of casualties from terrorism or a natural disaster when for the past 20 years financial constraints have scaled back or closed hospitals? "Overwhelming a hospital these days is a piece of cake," says David Ozonoff, an SPH professor and chairman of the department of environmental health, in the April 8 Boston Globe. "The reason New York made it," he says of September 11, "is because everybody was dead. They didn't need any hospital beds. If there had been 1,000 [life-threatening] burns, it would probably have overwhelmed the burn treatment capacity in this country." New York plans to use armories and convention centers as makeshift hospitals in case of emergency. Hotels and motels could be turned into instant hospitals, adds Ozonoff, which would be helpful in containing infectious diseases. "You don't want [victims] next to each other in a huge open area."
19
April 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations