Lucia Cordell Getsi, my adored teacher, Retires

This woman is a cosmos. &c.

Vessel Sails
Web Extra
Listen to Lucia Cordell Getsi read selections from "Intesnive Care," a collection of poetry written about her daughter's illness. Click the links below for MP3 downloads:

"Singing the Night Through"

"Body Lyric"

"In This Story You Are Walking"

"Nursing"

"Oradour-sur-Glane. Silence"

Lucia Cordell Getsi, in others’ eyes

"It's one of the ironies of being an artist that such personal miseries feed our muses in ways that are perplexing and humbling. There are times when we're tempted to be grateful for these calamities because of the way they have enriched our work, except that we remember all too well how much they hurt. ... Certainly, Lucia's most striking and celebrated book of poetry, 'Intensive Care,' is a heartfelt joining of the poet's genius with her misery."

Curtis White, professor, ISU English Department
"She doesn't hold anything back (and) she can make words do about anything. She's one of the brightest people I know. She's just plain smart."

James McGowan, English professor emeritus, Illinois Wesleyan University
"She believes in her students more than the students believe in themselves. Sometimes it's annoying. Sometimes I feel, No, I can't do those things, and she says you can. She has that belief, which also is a requirement, which also is a demand."

Ewa Chrusciel, student
"She's incredibly encouraging and brilliant. You feel brilliant when you're with her. You're in an intellectual environment that you came to graduate school to be in."

Sheila Morton, student
"She sees things in you and your work before you see it. She brings you in and brings it out."


ISU English Department losingbeacon after 33 years
By Steve Arneysarney@pantagraph.com NORMAL,IL --

At the podium, poet Lucia Cordell Getsi's 5-2 stature is slightly augmented by high heels.

She is gracious and nears tears after receiving flowers as a going-away gift from beloved Illinois State University graduate students and after hearing kind introductions.

And then she begins reciting. Her petite frame, which fits size 2s and even size 0s, becomes a vessel of power. From this frame blasts emotions, verse by verse, building a train of momentum -- every word carefully conceived, the feelings precisely calculated. The poet becomes a giant.

Or, rather, like a bottleship. The poem "Bottleships" is one of Getsi's favorites, and as she reads it, a ship-in-the-bottle maker states through her that "all ships are stronger inside bottles." She will note the next day in conversation that writing is a lot like that. "It's like getting a fire under control or getting a body of water into a hose pipe," she said.

Getsi is retiring after 33 years of teaching in the ISU English Department, and she is finishing three books. The demands of the teaching job, compounded with obligations caused by her father's failing health and her own health issues, precipitated the decision to leave teaching. She will move to South Carolina, where spouse David Staniford is a professor and college tennis coach for Newberry College. Her impending move prompted the gathering April 28 at University Galleries, the campus's visual arts center.

All 100 seats for the event are filled: with colleagues, students, former students, her husband and her daughter, Manon. Another 35 people stand.Getsi's audience is deprived of a long farewell address. The teacher said later she wasn't sure she could keep her composure through the emotion of the goodbyes, and she doesn't think anyone wants to watch a professor come unglued at a podium.

So she reads work touching four decades. It's not exactly an easy out.

Getsi turns phrases that elicit joy, but she also plunges into the dark corners -- say, observations about a domestic violence victim who kills her husband, dismembers his body and leaves parts inside garbage bags in various Dumpsters in Decatur. The poem's narrator observes, "The swirling skin, encircling your eyes like targets, is smooth now. The raw blush of your cheek bones store-bought. ... As long as he's dismembered, you are whole."

For an hour, the room is Getsi's, and the world doesn't exist beyond it, except in the images and emotions she expresses and conjures in the listeners.

It is not unlike a sculpture, she later observed. It is chiseled to its form, but its viewing by others completes a process. This is a private response done in public. Fueling the intimacy with the listener is the transparency of Getsi's feelings. Controlled as they are through the container of poems, they are vivid and they often are, in fact, her feelings.

One of her works, a poetry collection called "Intensive Care," chronicles time with Manon, in her daughter's teen years, as Manon neared death -- paralyzed by Guillain-Barre Syndrome. "At your door, I pause to swallow the eruption of sobs, my lungs a volcano of fear," the poet/mother says, reading from "Singing the Night Through." "Your doctor said hold on, just hold to her, maybe you can keep her from slipping away." Getsi sang to Manon through that night.The poem ends, "Nurses pass in and out. It must be nearly morning. The doctors come again, say she's with you, keep singing."

The readings end with material from a forthcoming book; this is an ISU job retirement, not a wake. She tells those assembled that she would have to spend three hours talking -- or not give a speech at all. No speech.

The world returns, though changed by this hour, and this bottleship again becomes the embracing teacher that her students describe. Silver hair, perfectly formed; periwinkle blue satin shirt, with a plunging neckline and French cuffs; a black party skirt she bought last New Year's to wear while dancing the night through with her spouse.

Manon walks to the podium and the mother chokes up as she introduces her. Manon says, "While living with her, I learned the power of the mind. When I moved to Arizona, I learned the power of thought." Manon calls for the assembled room to direct warm thoughts to the poet-teacher-mother and for her journeys.

Getsi always closes a poem profoundly, but she closes this night with the punch line. "And think some good thoughts too: I do have a house for sale."

Lucia Cordell Getsi
• Distinguished professor of English, Illinois State University
• Co-director, creative writing program
• Editor, Spoon River Poetry Review

What's ahead
• Three books in the works: A collection of new poems; a new translation of poems of Austrian poet Georg Trakl, revising her previous work; a novel.
• Continued work with existing ISU graduate students until they complete their degrees.
A move to South Carolina, where her husband lives and works and which is closer to Tennessee, where her father lives.

So far
• Worked for ISU English Department from 1973 until the end of the semester. Currently, co-director of the creative writing master's program.
• Published four collections of her poetry, plus a critical collection of Georg Trakl's poems.
• Published poems, critical essays, fiction and creative non-fiction works, plus literary translations, in more than 100 publications
• Awarded two Fulbright scholarships
• Awarded National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship
• Won five fellowships for creative writing from Illinois Arts Council
• 1994 Illinois Author of the Year (Illinois Association of Teachers of English)
• 1995 Governor's Award for the Arts
• Awarded the Capricorn Poetry Prize for the poetry collection "Intensive Care"
• One of five finalists for Illinois poet laureate