CECILIA LOPEZ ’20 MAJOR: WOMEN’S, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES MODIFIED WITH CREATIVE WRITING HOMETOWN: WINNIPEG, CANADA
& VIEVEE ELAURE FRANCIS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
CECILIA MET VIEVEE FRANCIS AS A FIRST YEAR STUDENT IN WRITING 5. SHE SIGNED UP FOR THE CLASS ON AN IMPULSE AND NOW CONSIDERS IT “THE MOST AMAZING WORK OF FATE.” SINCE THEN, VIEVEE HAS BECOME CECILIA’S MENTOR, HER PROFESSOR IN TWO OTHER POETRY CLASSES, AND HER INDEPENDENT STUDY ADVISOR.
Cecilia: No, but I’ve been wanting to do a project that combines my passions for music and poetry. While they’re powerful alone, there’s a whole other realm of possible experiences when put together. I decided to compose an album of music themed around faith, life, death, and love. I’m also writing a short collection of ekphrastic poems to engage with my music and lyrics. And, I’m writing a paper that discusses the divergence of poetry and music, from antiquity to the present. I’m so thrilled that Dartmouth allows me to take on such an ambitious project while majoring in something else. And I’m grateful to have you as an advisor, Vievee. It’s very important to me to have a mentor who believes in me as a writer, and I can’t say I’ve had one before now. You reassured me that this was something I’m actually good at. Vievee: You’ll make me cry! I didn’t know that. I feel we formed a connection early on. When you started talking about the music and songwriters you like, you reminded me of a much younger me. Vievee, Cecilia, let’s go back to those beginnings. How did you fall in love with poetry? Vievee: I usually tell people that, back in high school, I responded to Robert Browning’s canonical poem “Soliloquy at the Spanish Cloister” by running out of the classroom crying. But I don’t think that’s the full story. My father loved poetry. He had books of art and poetry, kept every textbook from college, and I had access to them. It was the poetry that I responded to, even before high school. The messages within these poems were very clear to me, whereas I noticed that they were not as clear to those around me. This led me to believe there might be some special conversation between me and those authors, who seemed so distant and unavailable to others. Cecilia: In elementary school, I used to write little rhyming poems for my classmates to gift to other kids. Then, in high school, I would compose little lines of poetry during class when we were supposed to be writing something else, or I’d cover my arm with lyrics.
32 | admissions.dartmouth.edu
What do you appreciate most about working together? Cecilia: I think the fact that this is my third class with you, Vievee, says a lot. I appreciate that every time we meet, I’m excited to listen to what you have to say. Every time I learn something new, both inside and outside the classroom. And beyond everything you’ve given me, I appreciate that I could also participate in your growth, like singing the libretto you wrote for an opera about Eric Garner. Vievee: The best part for me is watching her leaps of growth. Poetry isn’t a course where you want someone to spit out acquired information. It doesn’t work that way. There are no roads, so you look for the arc of development. I remember a particular poem Cecilia wrote for Intermediate Poetry class during her sophomore fall term, “The Parable of the Throat.” I brought it to Professor Olzmann and said, “Look at this. This is amazing!” And he just said, “I knew she had it in her.” Here was this beautiful lyric, very musical, physical, but also dynamically literary, a clear intellectual challenge, but also seemingly emotional. That’s a really difficult balance. What would you say is the purpose of art? Cecilia: Vievee told me during freshman year that the purpose of art, in general, is to communicate the lived experience. I have believed in that statement ever since. Out of all art forms, I think music is what comes closest to approximating that lived experience. The purpose of music is being able to relate to one another and to the world. Vievee: What does poetry mean to us? It means that we’re moving through the world as more than just animals who eat and breed. We think, and more than thinking, we feel and contemplate. Poetry is where we go in the most important moments of our lives: when there’s a birth or a death, when there’s a partnering, during tragic events. Why? Because in those moments we are searching for language beyond the informative, beyond the descriptive. Only metaphor can hold such feelings. When these moments pass, we almost forget about poetry. And then we need it again. Because there’s no such thing as falling in love without a poem. Not everybody needs to be like me, reading and writing 1,000 poems. For some people, one, two, five poems will be what they need for their entire life. But those five poems are treasures. They’re worth everything.
PHOTOGRAPH BY DON HAMERMAN
You are conducting an independent study that bridges poetry and music, but you’re not a music major, are you?