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"That looking glass to see through, to write of, and live by..." Dear [FirstName],
In sixth grade, I wrote about a boy saving his friends from mayonnaise space monsters. I wanted to tell stories about a lot of things: magic and dragons and space. Like many sixth grade writers, I grew up or grew out of stories—lost them, really.
As an undergrad, I needed an elective and took Intro to Creative Writing. I never found those stories I had written. Or that magic. At least not quite like I knew it. Instead, I read Williams & Whitman. I saw the line and the slant. That was a magic I would never let go.
When it came time to graduate with an English degree and not much else other than a handful of poems and poem pieces written in worn black book, I applied to a handful of MFA programs. I didn't find a place. There were a lot of reasons. I chalk it up to providence. I was playing basketball on the patio in my parents' backyard when I got the email: OSU-Cascades had a low residency program that I might be interested in.
My first day I wouldn't have said that the OSU-Cascades MFA was the program for me. It took me maybe a day or two more. A night or two spent in the Sisters Mountains, between two lakes. Now, though, I know there was no other place for me. My writing needed that tamarack and high desert. I needed that wild place and those wild people.
My poetry before the program may have had a few beautiful lines, but they were frail and said little. I knew how to write a poem because I knew how to type. Through the OSU-Cascades low residency MFA, I learned not about writing poems but about seeing them. In my life. In the pines. In that purple belly cloud or those lake reeds. In the tread of my daughter beneath a dead rose pergola. And I found quickly what I saw in the world had something to say and poetry was a way I could let it be said.
I've always written. I've always told stories, some with monsters, some just about my day. That poem, though, the one in the wind now at dusk or the one tracing star lines to Andromeda, that is the magic I'm looking for now, one I find in people (a group of girls building sandcastles in red sand) or in places (sagebrush fields patterned pine, fire aspen, and pine).
I write often, but it's every day that I see a poem somewhere and the OSU-Cascades MFA gave me that looking glass to see through, to write of, and live by.
Sincerely,
Austin Anderson
MFA Alumnus
We'd love for you to get in touch or schedule an appointment. Learn more about where a degree from Oregon State can take you.
Thank you,
Gillian C. Harper, M.Ed. (she, her, hers)
Graduate Student Recruitment Coordinator
Oregon State University – Cascades
541-706-2063 |
OSU-Cascades is a campus of Oregon State University that provides students personalized instruction and OSU's excellence in both academics and innovative research, as well as the advantages of a premier research university. OSU-Cascades is the first and only branch campus in Oregon, and the only baccalaureate and graduate degree granting institution based in Central Oregon.
Oregon State University - Cascades is committed to affirmative action and equal opportunity and complies with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This publication will be made available in accessible format upon request. Call 541-737-4411.
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