Professor and poet Larry Rubin bids adieu to Georgia Tech
By Shawn Jenkins
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| After 44 years as an English professor at Tech, Larry Rubin is stepping down, knowing that his students' "words are mine." |
"I'm a troglodyte," Rubin laughs. "I'm not on the Internet. No e-mail. Do you even see a computer?"
But in his 44 years as an English professor at Georgia Tech-a tenure which ended with the 1999 spring quarter-the award-winning poet and Fulbright Scholar has literally communicated volumes-despite his disdain for electronic sophistication.
In 1961, Rubin's poem "Instructions for Dying," inspired by a Tech football game at Grant Field, won him the coveted Reynolds Award as the best lyrical poem of the year. His first book of poetry, The World's Old Way, published in 1963, earned the Sidney Lanier Award from Oglethorpe College--now Oglethorpe University--and the Literary Achievement Award in Poetry from the Georgia Writer's Association. He has been named Georgia Poet of the Year by the Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists, and has lectured around Europe as a Fulbright Scholar and Smith-Mundt Award winner.
Quite a feat for a man who teaches iambic pentameter in a world of quadratic equations.
"It's always been a source of gratification to me that the fact that I write and publish poetry has been highly appreciated," Rubin says. "From the very start in the late '50s, when I first began publishing poetry, I'd go running to Ms. Chastain, Georgia Tech's public relations agent. She was very receptive to any of my reports of publications. One of my colleagues saw an item about a poem I published and he asked me, 'Who is your publicity agent?' I would answer, 'Ms. Chastain.'"
Four decades later, Rubin has four books of poetry to his credit: The World's Old Way; Lanced in Light; All My Mirrors Lie and Unanswered Calls. His published works number more than 800 and his unpublished ones, "more than the sands of the sea," he jokes.
"I guess I liked poetry because it didn't take as long as a novel. The first draft comes in a rush. I dash out my poems in a half hour and then I carry them around for six months and work on them," he says, gesturing to a shirt pocket bulging with nascent works. "I think you can say more in a poem in a more focused way than you can in a novel or a short story."
| The Rubin File |
| • Born: Feb. 14, 1930, in Bayonne, N.J. •Education: BA, journalism, Emory University, 1951; MA, journalism, Emory University, 1952; Ph.D. English, Emory University, 1956. •Achievements and Honors: "I'm really proudest of all to have taught here and for getting some of the students turned-on to literature," Rubin says. "That's a glorious achievement at Georgia Tech." •Leisure Interests: Traveling and meteorology - "particularly hurricane forecasting," says the Miami native. |
Rubin's literary journey began in the more structured field of journalism, which he studied at Emory University.
"When my journalism professors told me that you start out as a cub reporter and work from 8 a.m. to sunset with a lot of legwork, it didn't sound so appealing," he says. "I wanted to write editorials, but you don't write editorials right away. You have to be a venerable old person to do that. So, I started drifting toward English."
After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in journalism-with English minors-Rubin switched to English for his terminal degree at Emory.
"The more literature I read, the more I liked it," he says.
In the final year of his doctoral studies at Emory, he was approached by the head of the Georgia Tech English department and offered a full-time position. "We closed the deal on the steps of the library," Rubin says.
As a teacher of literature in a sea of engineers, Rubin sees his role at Tech as "unique," yet necessary. He believes literature does more than just balance out the two hemispheres of a student's brain.
"I think it does for the engineering student what it does for any member of the human community: It sensitizes you to possibilities for being a human being and reacting sensitively," he says.
"It also makes a moral difference. I think somebody who's really turned on to the meaning of literature would never take a rifle and shoot his classmates. They would find it very difficult to turn on the gas in the ovens of the Holocaust. It deepens your bond to your fellow human beings."
But Rubin would find satisfaction in the students' mere appreciation of the works themselves.
"I hope they'll just keep reading it," he says. "I sometimes doubt it. I hope they're not just reading it to make a grade. You often get the feeling that-not just at Tech, but at other universities too-they're only interested in the course insofar as it's a stepping stone to that little sheepskin money-maker you get after four years. But, some of the students I've dealt with are truly engaged in literature, and they'll go on reading it. They'll go to poetry readings. They'll buy books maybe ... or am I living in a dream world?"
Rubin sums up his dream for his students in a piece called The Bachelor, as Professor.
My sons are always young-
The liquid flowers of their eyes may change
But the light remains.
Their names are always on the chart
Spelled differently year by year
(In rollbooks of my mind
I can correct what seems
irregular).
I cannot age.
Waves of time dissolve that flare
of faces
Every spring, yet the waters bloom again
With eyes: I swim toward them, an athlete at last.
Though I reach for them invisibly, in voice,
Any bell is strong enough to break that bond-
But when they're safe at home and sipping soup
And telling body parents how they mean to thrive,
Their eyes are fixed upon unborn designs:
Their words are mine.
In his retirement, Rubin plans to keep writing, to travel and to learn Yiddish so he can read the columns and essays his grandfather once wrote for a Jewish newspaper in New York.
But first, taking a line from the Robert Frost classic, Rubin has 'promises to keep.'
"The first thing I have to do is go to Charlottesville, Va., and fulfill my function as a literary executor for a poet who died eight years ago," Rubin says. "His name was John Moffitt. He was a very fine poet who made me promise to be his literary executor. He's left a lot of stuff unpublished, and my job is to go through it and see what should be published and make a book out of it.
"I fully intend to carry this out. I made him promise not to haunt me if I waited until I retired, and he hasn't haunted me ... so I have to fulfill my part of the bargain." GT