Friday Poetry Extra

Poetry
Art and Environment
by Edward Hessler

Each year the Park Bugle, a newspaper serving the neighborhoods of St. Anthony Park/Falcon Heights/Lauderdale/Como Park, St Paul publish a spring poetry issue.

This year is the seventh. The poems are chosen from submissions by residents. You can meet them here and read the winning entries.

One of them, F. Garvin Davenport, is a former Hamline University faculty member (English) and  administrator. He gave distinguished service to both. Davenport retired after forty years of service to this university. Dr. Davenport and I shared a love of redbuds.

Professor Davenport also introduced visiting scientists who participated in two marvelous HU lecture series, one in physics, the other in chemistry. He talked; we ate lunch. What a deal! These introductions were wonderfully honed comments by someone who cared about the speaker and us, the listeners. Fortunately a few of these were compiled into a small booklet before he left.  These comments put paid to the famous/infamous divide between C. P. Snow's two cultures, "science" and "the arts." In my view, certainly in a liberal arts college/university, both are liberal arts.

Hamline Magazine did a story on Dr. Davenport upon his retirement entitled "Life in the Liberal Arts." I send the magazine in its entirety. The story is found on pages 15 and following.