Summer 2017 Edition
Alumni & Friends Magazine
How OHIO Saved Me from the Parapet
Jon Loommis gives an account of being taught by faculty Hollis Summers, an OHIO Distinguished Professor Emeritus.
Jon Loomis, AB 鈥81 | May 26, 2017
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Summers taught and authored poetry and fiction. He retired as an OHIO Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 1985 after teaching at the University for 26 years. Photo of Hollis Summers courtesy of the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections.
As a student at OU in the late 1970s, I did well in classes I liked and poorly in those I didn鈥檛. The classes I liked: literature and creative writing. The ones I didn鈥檛: everything else.
I especially benefited from Hollis Summers, a Southerner and gentleman of the old school. Named a Distinguished Professor in 1964, he regularly invited students鈥攅ven undergraduates like me鈥攖o his beautiful home at the top of Congress Street. He鈥檇 serve drinks and his wife, Laura, would lay out hors d鈥檕euvres, and we鈥檇 talk about poetry as though we were all adults. Once I brought a girlfriend I was particularly taken with, but who, not being a student, felt out of place. She stood quivering at the window that early evening, ignored by the student poets, although she was good-looking in a maybe trying-too-hard kind of way. Hollis introduced himself, as I鈥檇 forgotten to. He took her hand and said, 鈥淢y, aren鈥檛 you lovely in this light.鈥 She was charmed. That was Hollis鈥攕ly, insightful, empathetic.
Most of all, he did me the great favor of acting as though I might be onto something with my poems, even when I didn鈥檛 think I was, even when I had no idea what I was doing. What he did, too: not let me get away without trying. Sometimes I would meet with Hollis during his office hours, bringing my fledgling poems. People smoked then at OHIO, even in Ellis Hall, and Hollis used a cigarette holder, either ivory or tortoiseshell, I can鈥檛 recall which. What I do remember: the way he鈥檇 smile up at me, smoke drifting over the sheet of paper my poem was typed on, and, if he didn鈥檛 like it, say, 鈥淲ell, this one鈥檚 a little thin, isn鈥檛 it?鈥
Summer鈥檚 1959 poem, 鈥淭he Winter Walks in Athens, Ohio鈥 invokes both ordinary and dark images of life in Athens. Image courtesy of the 1975 Athena Yearbook
He taught me to be strict with myself, to work against inertia, my inherent diffidence. He taught me that mere creativity, something I鈥檇 always had, wasn鈥檛 enough, that making art was real, important work. I try to pass this lesson on to my students, when they鈥檙e ready to hear it.
A few years before he died, I came across Hollis and Laura on Columbia Avenue in Athens. They sat forlornly in their green MG two-seater, which had stalled near the steep drop-off above Columbus Road. I stopped, pulled off behind them, and jumped out of my car. I could smell gas鈥擨 guessed that the MG鈥檚 engine was flooded.
鈥淭hank God you鈥檙e here,鈥 Hollis said. 鈥淚 was about to leap from the parapet.鈥
We opened the hood, let the fumes clear. Then Hollis started the car and they drove away, waving and smiling.
It鈥檚 almost too easy, as metaphors go. What I did for Hollis that afternoon, he and other OHIO creative writing faculty (most notably Wayne Dodd, a 1993 Distinguished Professor who would publish some of my more mature work in The Ohio Review) did for my entire life. There I was, stalled in my own fumes鈥攆ailing botany, partying too much鈥攁nd along came Hollis Summers and creative writing to save me from the parapet.
But just because it鈥檚 easy doesn鈥檛 mean it isn鈥檛 true. This was the value of my time at OHIO鈥攖he value of a liberal arts education, with an emphasis, for me, on the arts. A sense of purpose鈥攖he radical notion that I might be good at a difficult thing, if I kept at it. The discovery, maybe, of a talented self I didn鈥檛 know I was, or could become, even if I had to retake Spanish 101 and earned a D in oceanography. You can鈥檛 ask more of a college education than that. 鈥Jon Loomis, AB 鈥81, is an associate professor of creative writing, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
