Where Were You When...

There are only a handful of days that you can say I'll always remember the moment... I'll always remember where I was when....


52 years ago today I sat in a three-hour poetry seminar.  It was a warm early Spring day in Southern California and the UCLA campus fairly sparkled.  I was fortunate to have been selected as one of the participants by poet Jascha Kessler, the professor and a fine poet himself.  His anthology was the text for this seminar, and though it included poems by Alan Ginsburg and a number of other well-known and widely published poets, most of the work considered by the seminar was our own.  A month earlier, we had all dropped off three original poems in a large manilla envelope attached to Kessler's office door.  Two weeks later, the final list of names of those admitted was posted where the envelope had been.  While most were either happy or crushed upon finding or not finding their name of the list, I was surprised but deeply pleased. 
Each week three of the 15 selected young poets would share their work and endure critical analysis with grace and dignity. These young writers were talented, funny, and committed to their craft.  I believe I was the only member of the seminar who was not an English major.  I wondered through this experience if I belonged, but in time I came to accept myself and my work and listened intently and learned about the necessity and skill of giving and accepting feedback.

This long seminar met from 1-4 pm.  On that day, 52 years ago, the shadows were beginning to fall when, at last, I exited the seminar and made my way across the campus.  The view of the Westwood hills was as beautiful as ever as I made my way past Royce Hall and down the hill toward the Student Union.  I stopped at a snack bar near the bottom of the hill before making my way past the athletic fields, Pauley Pavillion, and up another hill to the parking lot near one of the huge hospital-like dorms.  I was a commuter student and parking was scarce, thus the long trek before driving home.
I noticed one car starting and stopping on the campus road that paralleled Sunset Blvd.  In herky-jerky style the car would stop near small groups of students, a window would roll down, words exchanged, and the car would scuttle away.
When I finally neared a person who had been the recipient of the erratic car's message, I got the nerve to ask.  I approached a young African-American woman with a well-shaped natural.
"What's with that car," I asked.
"Martin Luther King has been assassinated." came the reply.
That afternoon will remain vivid throughout my lifetime.  Not for the poetry, unfortunately.