May 2018

T H E U N D E RG R A D UAT E M AG A Z I N E O F C O LU M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y, E S T. 1 8 9 0

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIV No. III

May 2018

Expressing What Cannot Be Explained A conversation with Erik Gray

The State of the Union Graduate students hit the picket line Also Insid

e:

Hustling New York's Underground Poker Scene

CAROLINE HURLEY, CC '19, Editor-in-Chief ESMÉ ABLAZA, BC '20, Managing Editor ISAIAH BENNETT, CC '20, Publisher VIRGINIA AMBELIOTIS, BC '19, Senior Editor JASMINE PARK, CC '20, Senior Editor RYAN MOHEN, CC '21, Senior Editor HUGH CECIL, CC '19, Senior Editor SOPHIE LEVY, BC '21, Senior Editor UFON UMANAH, CC '20, Investigations Editor AARON SU, CC '19, Layout Editor SHULIE WEINBERG, BC '20, Online Editor JENNIFER BI, CC '19, Senior Illustrator CAROLINE JOBSON, CC '20, Tech Deputy PAULINA FEIN, CC '20, Staff Photographer Staff Writers MARY DAWSON, BC '21 GABY EDWARDS, BC '21 ALLISEN LICHTENSTEIN, BC '19 CASEY DAVIS, BC '20 OTTILIE LIGHTE, BC '20 MIYA LEE, CC '18 MAX GUPTA, CC'21 Contributors ZOE DANSDILL, BC '21 ALEX SWANSON, CC '18 FRANK BARING, CC '21 SAIF MAQBOOL, CC '18

Staff Illustrators YOTAM DEREE, GS '19 SAHRA DENNER, CC '21 Artists KELLIE ZHAO, CC '19 RACHEL CHIN, CC '18 JEN ALLEN, CC '20

THE BLUE AND WHITE Vol. XXIV

FAMAM EXTENDIMUS FACTIS

No. III

Columns

4 Blue Book 6 Blue Notes 8 Campus Characters 12 Verily Veritas 13 M easure for Measure 27 Campus G ossip

Saif Maqbool & Alex Swanson Ryan Mohen

Mary Dawson

Zoe Dansdill

Caroline Hurley

Features 10 At Two Swords Length: Was It Worth It?

Our monthly prose and cons 14 Poker Face or Baby Face

From the Travel Desk: A freshman experiences New York’s underground poker scene 16 The State of the Union

Graduate students hit the picket line 18 Graduating Without Taking the Core Curriculum

Columbia continues age-old tradition of awarding fake degrees 20 E xpressing the Unexplained

A conversation with Erik Gray

theblueandwhite.org

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Cover by Jennifer Bi

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR I’ll admit it–when Professor Erik Gray brought up Lionel Trilling in this month’s Conversation interview (pg. 20), I had absolutely no idea who he was talking about. A couple of Google searches later and I find out he was one of the most prominent literary critics and professors that Columbia and New York City has ever seen. And I, an English major in Trilling’s former department, had zero clue who he was.

Am I embarrassed by this admission? Maybe a little, but on further reflection… not at all. It’s perfectly okay to admit that you don’t know about something that hot shots in your seminars assume or expect you to know. Nobody likes a pseudointellectual, so be honest and unapologetic about what you don’t know during your time here. But then be unrelenting in your pursuit to fill in those gaps.

I am anxiously realizing that the 2018 tents and bleachers are up on the lawns. The class that welcomed me to campus graduates in two weeks. Amidst the crush of exams, I can’t help but imagine what it will be like to walk across that stage myself next year. After reading Saif and Alex’s reflections on whether this was all worth it (pg. 10), I know I need at least another year here to justify the tuition. I have approximately 1,999,988 more Butler books to read, and I haven’t been to nearly enough 1020 trivia nights, or meals at Taqueria, or church with friends, or walks in Riverside. If I had to write a Bwog Senior Wisdom tomorrow, the most valuable thing I have learned in three years is that you will regret the nights you flaked on plans and stayed in your room alone. You probably didn’t get any work done anyways—I never did.

Thank goodness I still have a year of memories left to make.

— Caroline Hurley

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TRANSACTIONS ARRIVALS Front row seats for the picket line Tickets for the SGA hearings Bleachers on the lawns Your (final) finals

DEPARTURES All of your TAs M2M You on the lawns Seniors

Come Again?!

“I cannot stress how shocked I was that a shared space was being used for such activity and right on the place that we cook/eat our food. Please whatever the case maybe, DO NOT feel entitled enough in any sense to do this sort of thing in our lounge!”

— A disgruntled Sulz resident in the Barnard 2021 Facebook group

The Blue and White

BLUE BOOK

Contemporary Civilization Books and What They Teach You About Life After College The editors of The Blue and White will greatly miss the Class of 2018. In an attempt to give these graduating seniors a proper send off, the editors have created a helpful guide for all those seniors who did not read their CC curriculum (who we estimate to be about 67% of the graduating class). Presented here are the most important takeaways from Contemporary Civilizations, because a degree from Columbia is all about what knowledge you take with you when you leave here and nothing else.

Aristotle’s Politics: which of your peers to avoid working for, at all costs, after graduation Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: why the capitalist system fucking you and your hapless classmates is so great

that intellectual Tinder date Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France: why your New Year’s resolutions never make meaningful change

John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism: why, when the moment comes, you should flip that railway switch

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: why maybe, just maybe, you should treat women like human beings

Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince: how to really run a classroom while working for Teach for America after graduation

Sigmund Freud’s Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis: just enough to diagnose everything wrong with all of your former and future roommates

Plato’s Republic: a philosophical justification for having spent $73 thousand dollars a year on a degree in philosophy

Karl Marx’s Selections from the Marx-Engels Reader: what “the proletariat” means and why your family doesn’t qualify as members of it

Immanuel Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: enough buzzwords to get you through

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality: why you really should have signed up for COOP when you had the chance

POSTCARD FROM MORNINGSIDE

May 2018

Postcard by Julia Flasphaler

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BLUE NOTES

D

uring her inauguration this February, President Sian Beilock of Barnard noted, “In computer science, ... there are important areas like artificial intelligence, open data, ethics and privacy where we can be out front.” All Barnard needs is a Computer Science Department.

It’s not as if Barnard students don’t major in computer science at all. The number of Barnard students interested in Computer Science has grown exponentially since 2006. However, as Barnard does not have its own department, students studying Computer Science take all classes for their major across Broadway with their Columbia peers.

But worry not, future Naomi Sagers of Barnard, for the College is programming their own Computer Science Department, set to execute this fall. This past Spring, Barnard invited several candidates for Faculty Chair of the Department to deliver research talks for a panel of Barnard and Columbia faculty members, in addition to talks targeted at undergraduate students. Barnard even consulted a committee of current Barnard Computer Science students throughout the entire hiring and planning processes

for the future department.

One of those students, Surbhi Lohia, BC ‘19, wants to make sure that Barnard doesn’t “try to mimic Columbia’s CS department or out do them—that's just not possible granted how great Columbia CS is and how long they’ve been around, and the number of great professors that are there.” She believes that Barnard should “bring in supplemental courses that are interdisciplinary in their nature,” like Civic Tech and Computational Linguistics. “This way, the Barnard courses are not trying to compete with the [Columbia University] ones and causing competition in the early courses in [Computer Science] and creating a greater divide in the community, but rather Barnard [Computer Science] will bring in lots of interesting new electives that are not offered at [Columbia University Computer Science] and will be overlapping.”

The push and pull within what Beilock described as a “rich and dynamic” relationship between Barnard and Columbia may help define the future of a Barnard Computer Science Department.

However, as of press time, Barnard’s own list of Notable Alumnae doesn’t include anyone noted in the technology field. Hopefully a dedicated department will be the first step towards changing that.

— Esmé Ablaza

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professor’s off-hand comment about socialist Barnard students becoming KGB spies is easy to pass off as a joke, yet a little pressing reveals that comedy often comes with some truth. Buried in the Barnard alumni archives is the story of Juliet Stuart Poyntz, class of 1907 valedictorian. Her time at Barnard was fairly typical: she served on

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Illustration by Rachel Chin

The Blue and White

BLUE NOTES student council, joined the Christian Club and the Philosophy Association, and participated in the Greek Games. While at Barnard she was vocal in her role as a socialist and feminist, but it was after graduation she became actively involved in the Communist Party. It was during a visit to Russia in 1934 that she was recruited and became an agent for the Soviet secret police. In 1936 she withdrew from the secret police due to disagreements with the way it was run, and vanished a year later.

The really interesting part? Poyntz is not the only member of the “Barnard alumni who have gone on to become spies” club. Judith Coplon, a member of the class of 1943, began her activism on campus through the Young Communist League.

After graduating and getting a job with the Justice Department, she was reportedly recruited by Soviet Intelligence, where she was said to have been a spy until her arrest in 1949. Another student, Virginia Hall, studied languages and foreign affairs at Barnard as a member of the class of 1927. She later went into foreign service, working first at embassies and then with war relief efforts. It was during World War II she began her spy career, spying for the U.S. and U.K., becoming known to the Nazis as the infamous “limping lady.”

As to whether these women became spies because of Barnard, or their shared time here was just a coincidence, Barnard History professor Herbert Sloan says, “There was definitely a culture at that time, and there was a culture in New York.

Having these political views and going a little further with them was not that unusual, though most Barnard students stopped at voting socialist in elections.

— Claire Wooton

T

he weekly laundry slog is a college tradition which for many students is both familiar and unpleasant. A typical laundry session demands a trek to and from the building basement, an awkward period of waiting for an open machine, 36 minutes to wash, an hour to dry, and then another half-hour to fold your pantone 292 themed wardrobe. Acknowledging the (admittedly minor) inconvenience that is college laundry, Peter Shalek, CC '07, founded Lion Laundry in 2004 to tap into an unhappy market.

Run out of Shalek’s dorm room, Lion Laundry offered a full wash, dry, and folding service to Columbia students willing to fork over the cash.

May 2018

Minimizing cost by employing other Columbia students to do the laundry in pre-existing dorm laundry rooms, Shalek saw his business as an affordable option for students that remedied many concerns of college life: the nagging need for more time during the day, the need to make money, and the fact that young-adults are generally not fans of completing menial but necessary tasks.

Shalek sold Lion Laundry Ltd. in his senior year and the the business is now run by a larger corporation with an office in Greenwich Village. Lion Laundry still offers the same “door to drawer service for Columbia students” as it had done under Shalek, but is now affiliated with a professional laundromat in Brooklyn and seeks to turn itself into a franchise, though it still hires undergraduates to help with campus operations. At a minimum cost of $16.95 a week, Lion Laundry will pick up your stinking clothes from outside your dorm room in the early hours of Tuesday, returning it clean and folded Wednesday night. The 36-hour process is efficient but opaque.

Impossible to reach for any form of comment, calls to the service are met with a “Congratulations!

You’ve reached Lion Laundry, I’m sorry we could not get to the phone right now.” While students oft comment that the process works smoothly, complaints of lost and mixed up laundry are far from uncommon.

But when you see students pushing blue bins around College Walk in the early hours of the morning, be kind to them. It’s possible they work for Lion Laundry, carting the clothes your peers are too lazy to wash.

— Ottilie Lighte

Illustration by Jennifer Bi

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Campus Characters You might not know the following figures—but you should. In Campus Characters, The Blue & White introduces you to a handful of Columbians who are up to interesting and extraordinary things and whose stories beg to be shared. This issue, we bring you two people with interests in their Columbia class pages. If you’d like to suggest a Campus Character, send us an email at bweditors@columbia.edu..

Toni Airaksinen

T

he first thing you find when you search Google for Toni Airaksinen’s name is an extremely active Twitter account with countless tweets linking to news articles; a whole host of different publications fill her bio. Airaksinen, BC '18, is an extraordinarily prolific writer who focuses on hot-button campus issues at Columbia and around the country. When I asked about who she writes for and how frequently, Airaksinen told me, “Right now I write about eight or nine articles a week, mostly for Campus Reform and PJ Media.” Airaksinen also wrote several articles for the Columbia Daily Spectator, most prominently an op-ed column called “The Ivory Tower: Deconstructed.”

Airaksinen is an Urban Studies major with an Environmental Science concentration, but she’s quick to acknowledge that “my major has nothing in accordance with what I write about. It’s completely separate.” Airaksinen considers herself a diehard fan of the liberal arts, fully absorbing the amount she’s learned at Barnard, not only in her declared fields of study but also every other subject, from English to Women’s and Gender Studies.

Though these academic forays don’t necessarily relate to her editorial work, they reflect a deep set of interests that go back to her earlier high school years. She told me, “I started taking college classes full time when I was fifteen at Cleveland State, through a state sub-

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sidized program; I started really young and my first classes there were Urban Studies.” Her academic pride is apparent, but she qualifies her achievements with the opportunities that have supplemented her hard work, “I’m the first person in my family to get past 10th grade, I’m very lucky and very blessed.”

Airaksinen finds her penchant for writing tad ironic in retrospect. “I didn’t learn how to read until I was in third grade, which isn’t actually that uncommon. Both of my parents are basically functionally illiterate… their education was so bad that they never learned how to write. In third grade they said, ‘If you don’t learn how to read now, you might never learn.’”

But as Airaksinen got on with school, she fell in love writing, and has developed the passion throughout her college years.

While Airaksinen initially imagined doing non-profit work after college, she quickly found that she does “a lot better with the creative aspect of writing,” and has since only ramped up her efforts.

Recently, Airaksinen made the decision to increase her writing volume even further, continuing in all her current positions through graduation and tacking on a couple more. While many of the opportunities relate to education, near her current focus, Airaksinen also hopes to branch out and pursue more advanced writing work. She described her current growth in detail, “It’s the typical freelancers grind.

You start your career writing shorter articles and as you get better and better you transition into writing longer more thoughtful pieces.” The excitement in Airaksinen’s voice is plain, she already works 40 hours a week on top of her classes to write as much as she does and seems positively thrilled to graduate in order to spend even more time on it.

To call Airaksinen’s writing ‘right of center’ on the Columbia/Barnard spectrum could not be more of an understatement. She divulges that her experience on campus changed almost overnight

Illustration by Jennifer Bi

The Blue and White

with the publication of her provocative Spectator column: “I got a lot of pushback. And I have to say I went from being able to wave to people around campus, to where no one would wave to me ever again.”

However, she remains steadfast. Even if everyone on campus disagrees with everything she writes and what she represents, she maintains that she enjoys writing every single piece, and hopes she will continue to reach conservative audiences elsewhere.

“I’m in finals season right now. It’s so much more gratifying to spend a bunch of time writing an article and have people read it than to spend a few days writing a paper and have only your professor read it. And then to have it just sit in your Google Drive for the rest of your life.”

— Ryan Mohen

Iqraz Nanji

“I

was trying to think of some talking points for this, but usually the things I say are so vulgar I would never want them in print!” Iqraz Nanji, CC '18, jokes shortly after we meet at the Hungarian Pastry Shop one almost-warm afternoon. Between bites of bright yellow lemon cake, Nanji explains that his most outlandish comments are usually reserved for the “safe space” of The Federalist, a non-partisan, satirical newspaper on campus for which Nanji was managing editor his sophomore and junior years.

Although Nanji insists that he was “a very serious, studious kid, only involved with the books” and “was not at all funny in high school,” he is certainly funny and fun to talk to now. We had just met, yet Nanji spoke with an ease, eloquence, and refreshing openness that made me want to know more about him.

As a Muslim growing up in a “very conservative, very white environment” in Kansas City, Missouri, Nanji came to Columbia with social activism in mind.

However, when better acquainted with the social activist communities and clubs on campus, Nanji attests to being a bit disillusioned. “I’m very theoretically supportive of things like social activism and what-not.

I support a lot of movements. But I don’t feel like the communities on campus are effective, as in having actual efficacy in changing people’s lives, or creating a dialogue rather than just people speaking past each other.”

While Nanji chose to forgo joining established social activist groups on campus, he has found other means to channel his beliefs. Satire, for Nanji, has proven to be an unconventional yet productive way to think and speak critically about social issues. The

May 2018

Federalist provides “space for me and others to examine what is happening around us,” Nanji says. “While we do have a taste in humor, expressed in what we select, we’ve never put restrictions on ourselves, like ‘we won’t talk about this topic or that.’”

Nanji has, for example, pitched many pieces concerning suicide—a subject that is undoubtedly pertinent at Columbia given the staggeringly high number of suicides in last two years, but that is widely left undiscussed. “That’s how you open spaces to talk about these things,” Nanji explains. “Like you’ve identified a problem, you’ve identified a topic that you think is worth commenting on, and the next step after that is to determine how to engage that problem.”

In addition to coaching his high school debate team during their annual national tournaments, Nanji remotely teaches his sect of Islam, Shia Ismaili Islam, to eleventh graders across the country who generally do not have access to religious schools or centers.

“Like me, a lot the kids I teach are from places where they feel like outsiders,” he says. “So, we’re able to have discussions about Muslim identity in this country, and how to engage with Trump’s presidency and what-not. Like, how can we talk about Islam in a community that mostly voted for Trump?”

While Nanji has fulfilled the requirements to be pre-med, he’s majoring in Anthropology, a discipline he stumbled upon, then fell in love with after taking a class with Professor Marilyn Ivy, who focuses on Japan, technology, and Postmodernism. After graduation this May, Nanji is unsure what he will do, but he doubts that he will jump into medical school just yet. “I want to do research that is related to these interests that I have in psychiatry, and health, and social justice, or in the social—whatever the hell that is!” Nanji laughs.

“Maybe a PhD in Medical Anthropology at some point later on, but right now I’m just going to graduate!”

— Miya Lee

Illustration by Julia Flasphaler

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AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

Was it S

tumbling bleary-eyed out of Butler as the sun one experiences it, however one copes, horizons are begins to peer bashfully over the horizon, one broadened, often violently, by the crowbar of sensory often struggles to free oneself from a clenching of the overload. There are the endlessly tempting invitamind, perhaps manifest on such an occasion as infra- tions to pretension that allow one to learn so much red flashes of panic or as languorous treacle clouds about themselves, the crazy mix of people that can of despondence rolling across the field of conscious- be encountered, the element of randomness that is ness. It’s easy for these moments to figure most prom- woven into the fabric of this city. inently in an erratic lattice of memory that is intricate How often do we see Columbia? The majorand consequential enough to prompt judgements of ity of us arrived equipped with vivid preconcep‘worth’; the most intense moments are also the most tions, expectations, hopes and worries that almost vivid and therefore the most memorable. Society certainly did not include vignettes of Lee Bollinger is structured in such a or Rae Sremmurd. way that we enter the Maybe it could even next phase of our lives be suggested that with this set of experieveryone believes so ences in hand, legible strongly in an idea to others and compared of Columbia that to their own, the fuzzy we never really see backdrop against which it. Even at school, the individual drama of narratives layered adulthood will be perprofusely with buzzformed. It is difficult, words like ‘stress practically impossible, culture’ reduce an to assess any kind of issue as broad and value in the absence of nuanced as mental the points of reference health to a monotothat are sure to litter nous folk tale whose the coming years—but maybe, just constant recurrence begins to conffirmative maybe, even now, it was all worth it. strain one’s vision. This place is not Even amidst the (purported) perfect by any account, and student

By Saif Maqbool sterility of contemporary academia engagement is critical to improveand the mysterious momentum that ment, but it could also be that the compels most of the student body towards courses whole thing has been overdone just a little bit. The that can probably already be taught by computers, Campus is beautiful really, (people get desensitized there is real inspiration to be found. There are so to it very quickly) especially on a clear night or when many professors whose enthusiasm for their fields the sun is out or generally when people seem to be is infectious and inspirational, who are, for certain happy or excited about something. individuals, in possession of the spark bright enough Oscar Wilde says somewhere that suffering to furnish years of illumination and purpose. We are can be a revelation, and maybe all of the stuff we surrounded by some of the most brilliant people in experienced here and now will be transfigured, in the world and they are available to us. some other place and some other time, into someNew York is a baptism of fire, that has so thing that might even be described as knowledge or much, too much to offer, and in hindsight, however wisdom. But that one is kind of a long shot.w

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Illustration by Jennifer Bi

The Blue and White

AT T W O S W O R D S ’ L E N G T H

worth it?

I

recall this feeling. I’ve experienced it before. Ah, ‘But what about Global Cores?’ What a naïve yes, now I remember… defense. What did I learn in my Global Cores?

Just like those six—or is it now seven?—Fast Nothing. And don’t say it’s because I didn’t go to and Furious movies I walked out of, 1020 every class. My intellectual scope is too all-encompassing Friday, that one Physics for Poets lecture I attended to focus on the trivialities of Mongol dice-games or out of guilt, I now stand to exit this University with Vietnamese foreplay. And I’m not devoting my two the dominating yet depressing feeling of disappoint- hours of free time per week to that drivel. ment that has characterized many of my activities ‘There must be friends at least,’ you might through the last four years. think? Here’s a fun game. Have you ever played ‘Was it worth it?’ you ask. Was colonialism Apples to Apples? I shall assume you have as I hate worth it? Was Seamlessing Nuss instead of walk- explaining things to you people. Imagine A2A—yet ing there worth it? Are salmon shorts ever worth it? instead of matching adjective to noun, you match The short answer: No. I have spent my four years generic name to social disorder! That’s what defines here draining slowly like an abused keg at St. A’s. friendship in these walls. Oh, great, the person next I have felt myself wasting away like a CC professor to me just started throwing up! Another wonderful in Spring teaching an all-athletes Columbia™ moment. class. I have sunk further into the Where was I? Ah, yes, Butler mire than sweat in the KDR friendship. I think I’ve said basement. enough. Let’s move onto connecThe history of my attentions. The great Ivy League dream dance at Columbia is bleaker than is dead. Before, any ol’ guy with the history of Tibet. My intellectuenough privilege to attend this fine al resources have been ravaged by school was promised wealth and a a succession of useless, antiquated khaki’d mentor to teach them the conversation classes disguised as ways of finànce and chauvinism. the Core Curriculum. I so look This is no longer the case. Even the forward to embracing Nietzsche’s last bastions of connection-proliftheory of morals when I lose my first eration—frats and sports teams—are job and contemplate vengeance, or crumbling like a Blue Java bran egative taking ironic joy in Goya’s mastermuffin or America’s defunct social

By Alex Swanson pieces when I show all my future hierarchy. The world is just not as Bumble dates around the Met to bridled with opportunity as it once try and score something out of my squandered intel- was. My arm weighs heavy from the manila-enclosed lectualism. resume I ferry to and from doomed interviews. Oh, At least I’ll have my science requirement! Oh, I’m sorry. Did I ruin your little secret? Guess what: wait—I forgot. Frosci is more useless than a Pre- I’m old and senile, and don’t give a fuck anymore.

Raphaelite (you ArtHum vets know what I’m sayAs I return uptown on the cesspit we call a ing; literally only you could possibly know what subway system, I stare down at two rats fighting in I’m saying). And let’s not talk about the voluntary a puddle. ‘Drip, drip,’ drips the leaking pipe as the science requirements. I can’t wait to contemplate ripples it causes collide into splashes lashed by the Oceanography when I stare into the abyss, or cringe two rats’ tails. What a poignant metaphor for my time whenever someone mentions a dinosaur, since that here. Oh, you don’t get it? You should really take class was actually fucking impossible.

Literary Texts and Critical Methods.w

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Illustration by Jennifer Bi

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V E R I LY V E R I TA S

TOLD BETWEEN PUFFS

‘T

In which our hero solidifies summer plans

here is something distasteful in the informality of email,’ thought Verily as he opened up his Gmail inbox for the day. Lesser men might have trays full of unread emails, but Verily kept a great deal of pride in his uncluttered inbox. But, lo! Today he had a new message from the Sales and Trading department at Morgan Stanley, the email for which he had been waiting!

Verily had been a successful trader in the early '70’s, but had turned his nose up at the industry after witnessing its rapid moral decay in the following years. And, although he was quite the opiate fan when the occasion called for substances, he could never quite forgive the industry’s systemic fixation on non-ethically sourced cocaine. Times had changed, however, and regulation had been passed, then ignored, and Verily thought his skills would once again be needed if the banking world was to reclaim its former glory.

That’s why he had interned at the Sales and Trading salon at Morgan Stanley last summer. This email was doubtless his return offer.

“We regret to inform you,” Verily read aloud, “that this year had a record number of applicants and, while your resume is impressive—if unintelligible—the Sales and Trading unit was not able to offer you an offer at this time. Thank you.” As a ruddy-maned boar in the gladed foothills of the Pyrenees is stirred suddenly to wild and monstrous movement by the strike of thunder in the sky, and terribly he swings his ivory tusks smashing into bark and earth, so did Verily’s eyes widen and his grip tighten as he read through this online letter. He threw back his xitan horseshoe chair and struck his Dell Inspiron straight on the tab key—bankers never use tab, by the way—shattering it with a single blow of his fist. He let out an Achillean cry and sank to his knees chanting those famous words: Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani!

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What more had the world to give him?

The next few weeks passed slowly for our hero.

The trees outside bloomed, the droves of park-strollers thickened, the cries of children on the swings across the road carried high up into Verily’s studio.

Yet our hero did not stir. He sat hibernating, rejecting the flirtatious advances of spring. What should he do now that his recent purpose had been stifled?

He hated tech, he wasn’t allowed to practice law after the '63 debacle, he was too sophisticated for marketing, consulting was for vanilla wasps, clinging to the same preppy yet nebulous lifestyle they had somehow found charming in their youth.

He could think of nothing.

It was late one afternoon when Verily sat hunched over a bowl of tepid lo mein unsheathing his hongmu chopsticks from their perfumed case.

Lo mein Thursdays were a staple of Verily’s weekly routine of self-care, but today’s ritual wasn’t packing its usual punch. A long sigh emanated from Verily’s parched mouth, reverberating around the room with sonorous vibrations. The atmosphere was musty, pressed pungent with the inertial depressment of our hero’s summer occupation. Like one of his failed forays into literary fiction, Verily’s life lacked meaningful content, it didn’t make sense, and it was frankly depressing to look at. He glanced up from his rapidly ageing takeout, peering at the room around him. He sat in a Ching period chair holding ornate and entirely authentic chopsticks.

Buddhist and Taoist sculptures populated the room, the hanging calligraphic scrolls of Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi adorned his walls. As Verily took account of his surroundings a realization struck him with the suddenness and severity of one of his father’s depressive episodes. It all became so obvious! Verily didn’t need to work over summer; he needed to travel! The Orient beckoned: Verily cheered aloud: our hero was going to Japan!w

The Blue and White

M easure

for

M easure

Through the scratched glass of the sky painted window, In the center of the kitchen that we all wished was a couple feet wider, There is a family and a table, a square table.

Dancing blonde hair tickles eyeballs and their pupils While ketchuped lasagna is scooped into smiles and maybe even giggles.

Stories are told and responded to with stories.

Trying to plan Christmas, our Christmas.

Trying to repay our parents With a painting of their children enjoying the world In a way they have forgotten how to do but not how to feel.

This moment here now.

Look closer.

Foggy pupils dissolve in red-veined eye sockets.

We keep talking with fear of death at stopping, We keep commenting on how the lasagna is so much better this week With fear of looking at eachother as human flesh.

Bare, naked and maimed in the wilderness, Running from shadows.

This is the waiting room for a sorrowful journey Away from anything as pleasant as the people we think we might be. Maybe.

Look closer, We shuffle into varnished pews, We look forward at the hanging prince of peace, We try to work out if the priest is reusing jokes about John’s Gospel.

We look up. We feel we are alone.

The house will be silent for an hour on return.

While we all feel the way eternity stretches beyond us and behind us.

Sitting in our grey rooms, with feathers poking sharp out of the pillows.

We shiver at the thought of it Or is it just me?

Look closer, Blackened mirrors bounce fragments of conversations into every corner.

This, overtime, occupies space that really ought to be left alone, Especially when we have to dig out the nice teapot for our. Guests.

Sip, “So then we realized we were in completely the wrong place” Sip “So we all bundled back into the car with our clubber” Sip “And would you believe it, the dog had run off!”

Sip “But not to worry we made it in the end. My word this is good cake!

Do I taste almonds?”

Perhaps, it won’t be like this until I die.

Perhaps, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord.

And he comes with far more than lost dogs and... and almonds.

Look closer, stop messing around, pay attention.

The neighbours say father Mathews died slow.

They say they heard the wailing every day around six, They say some nights it was too much, They say they began to hate him.

The trains are down from here to London, We are encouraged to consider “Alternative routes over the Christmas period.”

No chance of that, No, I think the First Great Western pamphlet was used to get the fire started Before the front door was locked shut.

Whilst tears land on wrapping paper upstairs.

—Frank Baring

May 2018

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R O YA L LY F L U S H E D

Poker Face or Baby Face From the Travel Desk: A freshman experiences New York’s underground poker scene

By Ryan Mohen

O

n a particularly boring Wednesday afternoon I received a text from a contactless number: “Use the door halfway down the alley, take the elevator down to the basement, and tell them that Kevin sent you.” A few hours later I step up to a nondescript gray metal door and a large man dressed in all black stepped out as if he knew I was coming. With eyes mostly focused on his phone and a casually skeptical tone, he rifled through my backpack while I shuffled awkwardly in his shadow. Quick glances at my uncomfortable stance just confirmed how obviously out of place I was. As much as I tried to feign confidence, he could sniff me out like any good bouncer should. Thankfully, my awkwardness communicated innocence and ignorance more than anything else, so after the bag search and a full pat down, I was in, to a New York underground poker game.

The standoffish attitude immediately gives way to a much more welcoming environment as I step inside. I quickly receive professional but friendly greetings by the particularly buff staff, followed by a supportive, “Is this your first time?” It is, and it’s magnificently nerve-wracking.

At the front desk I handed over $150, what I imagined to be respectably more than the $100 minimum, to receive tiny stack of red $5 chips and a seat placement. They pointed to the open chair at the opposite end of the small wood panelled room.

I’m surrounded on both sides by two wall-mounted flat screens that showed a dozen different streams of security camera footage. I can see everything from

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the street level to the front door, and so can everyone else. I guess they really did know I was coming.

I’m dealt in before I can even glance at the crowd of characters sitting around the expensive felt table. I’m up against a few middle aged business men in suits, a couple of younger regulars in casual clothes, an antisocial wanna-be pro donning sunglasses and noise canceling headphones, and a woman wearing a particularly ordinary outfit accented by a not-soordinary Rolex and a noticeably large stack of chips.

Most had been playing for hours, as this particular cardroom runs through the afternoon and into the night every weekday. Those who organize the underground game collect a sizeable rake, a percentage of the money wagered at the end of every hand that goes to the house. This brings in hundreds of dollars every hour, and that’s not including the drinks sold and the money made by players employed by the house. One sits just to the right of the dealer with several hundred in chips, flitting between chummy conversations with other employees and deadly serious play. The skill is immediately apparent and the intensity of both the demeanor and bank roll of the other players throws me into a shocked fascination.

I fumbled with my chips and cards, stuttered through verbal actions, and completely misunderstood the slew of home rules and special bets with which every other player was already familiar. I sat in awe, wasting away at my meager holdings with a timid playstyle adopted in fear of going bust within

Illustration by Sahra Denner

The Blue and White

R O YA L LY F L U S H E D a few minutes by naively clashing with the bigger players. In poker, as in life, those with a lot of money have a significant statistical advantage against the little guys. As much as I thought I was talented, or at least good enough to justify this adventure, I was quickly proven wrong. I learned to play through games with friends, a decent amount of online poker, and an embarrassing number of Youtube videos, but nothing compared to the intensity of live poker for serious money. Everything I knew melted away when I watched two players showdown for a pot that ballooned to about fifteen hundred dollars, and watched a talented player call it quits after swallowing a $800 loss in 5 minutes. It’s far too many jumbo slices and MTA swipes for me to comprehend in the moment.

In trying to look the age that I claimed to be to get inside, which happens to be 2 years older than I am and about 5 years older than I look, I assume a self-consciously timid posture. The common practice of staring down your opponent is employed here, and I wither under the panel of eyes boring into my soul; my body language is leaking every bit of the nervous internal dialogue buzzing around my head. I know the rest of the table is probably making more sense of these scattered thoughts and careless strategies than I am. Their collective conscious behaves like a friend that knows you better than you know yourself. But instead of a comforting friendly understanding, this knowledge is a means of taking

May 2018

my money with scary efficiency. While these inquisitive looks were able to rip apart every live tell I could have, all I can muster are quick glances that break my anxious shoe gazing.

I get up and stumble through a back door onto a fire escape that serves as a smoking area to take a deep breath and compose myself, and the feeling of not being watched for just a moment is a welcome escape. But, as if my newbie persona wasn’t embarrassing enough, the universe decides that my dayto-day awkwardness ought not to escape me when I need to avoid it the most. Futile jiggles of the door handle indicate that I’ve locked myself out. In a stubborn refusal to sheepishly knock on the blacked out windows and ask for help, I wait until another player steps out and slither inside as though my fake smoke break just ended.

At the end of the day, from being up a hundred dollars to down two hundred and then back to just seventy short of break even, those three hours in that surprisingly fancy backroom were some of the most stressful hours of the entire semester. A stress so refreshingly different from the day to day academic strain of Columbia that I could never be upset with what it cost. It also reinforced the humbling notion that this school teaches all it’s students, that you’re not nearly as talented or clever as you might have hoped.

The heat of the moment drowned out the constant jokes and respectful gamesmanship, but in retrospect it really was a thrilling and high stakes versions of the home games I’d play with close friends.

Nearby players would strike up conversations despite my best efforts to go unnoticed, offer whispered comments when I had no clue what to do, compliment my few good hands, and I even spotted someone across the table player wearing a Columbia sweatshirt. The excitedly anxious daze contained sparks of familiar comfort.

The game’s seedy set-up is ultimately a product of strict New York State gambling laws, the lack of casinos around New York City, and a Giuliani administration crackdown in 2000 on famous poker clubs of the 80’s and 90’s. These underground games allow people to compete in a game of skill which they carefully study and thoroughly enjoy, and they allow the most skilled to make a living or even train to play professionally. Most of all, New York’s underground poker scene captures the decades old spirit of a thrillingly secret and cut-throat illegal competition.w

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“ W H AT ’ S D I S G U S T I N G ? U N I O N B U S T I N G ! ”

The State of the Union Graduate students hit the picket line, demand that Prezbo bargain

By Mary Dawson

W

hen the Graduate Workers of Columbia (GWC) gave a deadline for Columbia to start bargaining or else, they already created the hashtag CUonStrike. Months have passed since the union’s certification by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), punctuated by increasingly drastic actions taken by the union in the attempt to gain recognition by the University. Now, hundreds of recitations and Core classes have been cancelled as the GWC forms a picket line, still demanding that President Bollinger come out of his office and come to the bargaining table.

While the office of President Bollinger has remained silent throughout most of the unionization process, Provost Coatsworth took to LionMail over the past several months to criticize the union and the NLRB, even though, according to GWC bargaining committee member Rosalie Ray, “The question of whether or not RAs and TAs are workers has been settled.” Defending the argument that graduate workers are not equatable to employees, Coatsworth compared faculty members aiding workers in securing jobs after graduation to “training personnel and then placing the emerging talent with a competing business.”.

Coatsworth ended his March 1st letter by warning that a strike “would cause incalculable damage to the world class teaching, scholarship, and research that has attracted thousands of students and faculty to Columbia.” With 1968 graduate and undergraduate students voting on whether to strike, one might understand why Columbia would be sensitive to incalculable damage. In arguing that the administration’s refusal to bargain is the true cause of this “incalculable damage,” the GWC also interprets the concluding statement as an inadvertent acknowledgement of the role of graduate workers in giving Columbia its world-class reputation.

Even with a resounding 93% vote in favor of

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striking, however, questions abound as to whether the union can hold the line. According to graduate worker Davio Cianci, most opposers of the strike work in the sciences. He explained that some see graduate work with poor conditions and fewer benefits as a rite of passage, after which job opportunities and success in their fields await them. Far more often, he noted, science workers see more harm than benefit in striking. With stipends as much as $10,000 more than those given to humanities workers, many science workers believe that “humanities workers have far more to gain” from going on strike, struggling to find reason to involve themselves. While Cianci finds both these excuses “fair,” to him they are “rather cynical and not very empathetic.”

The current strike has a limited timeframe, arraigned to end before Reading Period at press time.

The strike is not meant to hurt or punish undergraduate students. “We don’t want to be forced to strike,” Ray said. “It is far more the result of Columbia’s decision to break the law.” The strategy minimizes the risk of undergraduate backlash if grades are significantly delayed. The low commitment might also be a buy-in strategy to attract recalcitrant research assistants to the picket line. But most importantly, advocates of the strike hope this and future, longer, strikes will further expose the exploitation of the graduate workers as a labor source—if they stop working, perhaps they can prove how integral they are to the University’s operations. Furthermore, if the union’s strategy ultimately ends in negotiation, the GWC will have opened the door to unionization at other Ivies and private universities, where policy regarding unionization is similar to that upheld by Columbia. Ray remains optimistic about the possibility of negotiations, remarking, “I would hope that the administration would see that the union is not its adversary but rather a potential partner in making the university better.”w

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PAY I N G T H E B I L L S

Book Culture 536 West 112th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Monday-Friday 9am-10pm Saturday 10am-8pm Sunday 11am-7pm 212-865-1588 Book Culture 2915 Broadway at West 114th Street Monday-Friday 9am-11pm Saturday 10am-11pm Sunday 10am-10pm 646-403-3000 bookculture.com

May 2018

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S O RTA C U M L A U D E

Graduating Without Taking Columbia continues age-old tradition of awarding fake degrees 1. A lexander H amilton The first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury still stands in front of his namesake Hamilton Hall as one of Columbia’s most famous alumni. After entering what was then King’s College in 1774, Alexander Hamilton later worked to revive King’s College as Columbia College, and was awarded an Honorary Degree of Master of Arts in 1788, and served as a trustee of the College until his death in 1804.

2. A braham Lincoln In the months preceding the start of the Civil War, the new President of the United States was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by President King of Columbia. Preoccupied with a fractious country and stirring conflict, Abraham Lincoln was unable to attend the Commencement service in New York to receive his award, but a Columbia professor was sent to Washington to hand-deliver it.

3. Queen Juliana of the Netherlands Queen Juliana of the Netherlands was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws in the Commencement service of 1952. During her 32-year reign, Queen Juliana oversaw the independence of Indonesia and Suriname. She also endeared herself to the public for doing plebeian things like going to the supermarket and sending her kids to public school.

4. Queen Elizabeth II of the United K ingdom You may know Queen Elizabeth II as the Queen of England and the British Commonwealth, but a lesserknown fact is that she was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from Columbia University in 1954. As of 2015, her Majesty is the longest reigning British monarch in history.

5. Toni Morrison Besides being a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Toni Morrison was awarded a Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 1984, five years after being awarded the Barnard Medal of Distinction. In 2015, Morrison was added to the LitHum syllabus, the first black author to be included.

6. 14th Dalai Lama- Tenzin Gyatso The 14th Dalai Lama, self-described “simple Buddhist monk,” was also a recipient of an Honorary

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The Blue and White

S O RTA C U M L A U D E

the Core Curriculum

By Zoe Dansdill

Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 1994. The Dalai Lama began his monastic education at age six, and took on full temporal duties at 15.

7. M aya A ngelou Maya Angelou’s seven autobiographies, poetry, and Civil Rights work were recognized by Columbia in 2003 with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters. Angelou moved to Harlem and joined the Harlem Writers Guild in the 1950s. She was a contemporary of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and remained vocal about racism and identity throughout her life.

8. K atharine H epburn Katharine Hepburn was a vision on the silver screen for close to 60 years. Hepburn won four Academy Awards for Best Actress out of a total of 12 nominations, a number only surpassed by Meryl Streep.

She was awarded a Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in 1992. Ms. Hepburn frequented Mondel Chocolates on 114th and Broadway for years, calling them, “The best chocolates in the world.”

9. Enrico Fermi While Enrico Fermi does not have a degree in Nuclear Physics from Columbia University, the “Architect of the Nuclear Age and Atomic Bomb” does have an Honorary Doctor of Science from the University. Fermi received the award in 1946, nearly a year after the dropping of the Atomic Bomb.

10. Georgia O’K eeffe The “Mother of American Modernism”, Georgia O'Keeffe will be familiar to almost every Art History major. O’Keeffe was best known for her paintings of Western landscapes, as well as enlarged flowers with subtle hints of female form. In 1971, O’Keeffe was given an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.

11. Gabriel García M árquez Gabriel García Márquez is known as one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, and one of the founding voices of magical realism. Hailing from the other Colombia, Márquez was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters in 1971.

May 2018

Illustrations by Jennifer Bi, Sahra Denner, Amanda Ba

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N

Expressing the Unexplained A conversation with Erik Gray

By Caroline Hurley Editor-in-Chief Caroline Hurley sat down with Professor of English Erik Gray for this month’s Conversation, where they discussed everything from rap music to love to mid-20s emotional indifference. Professor Gray, known for his expressive lectures on poetry, holds an esteemed gold nugget rating on CULPA and his Romantic Poetry course is a must-take before graduating. Gray’s most recent book, The Art of Love Poetry, was recently released in March 2018.

The Blue and White: I have a couple questions here, but you are welcome to talk about whatever you want.

Erik Gray: I have nothing to say. No particular axe to grind.

BW: I always think it is interesting how professors came to end up at Columbia. Do you want to speak to that a little bit?

EG: My first job out of graduate school was at Harvard, where I had actually spent my freshman year of college, and I was miserable there. I think a lot of people are miserable­—a lot of people are miserable anywhere. But I think if I stayed I probably would’ve come to like it more, but I left and went to Cambridge instead. But then many years later when I finished my PhD I got a job and was a professor of English at Harvard, and then I loved it, I have to say. I had always loved the classes, but my classmates when I was a freshman seemed to be not very interested in academics. Since that’s what I was really interested in, that was really off-putting. But as a teacher, I found the students absolutely wonderful I would say.

I spent some time there and then applied for the job at Columbia, and I have been here ever since 2004.

BW: That’s interesting because when I was a freshman here I absolutely hated it ... It’s funny, I took your Romantic Poetry class when I was a sophomore, but it was back when I was afraid to go to office hours and engage with professors. I loved the class, though. Recently I read your article, “The Races of Poetry,” and I am also on a sports team that spends a lot of time racing. In the article, you point out how poetry often equates ‘racing’ with ‘living’. You bring up the contradiction of this, that races are supposed to be completed as quickly as possible, but living, maybe not so much. In my time here, I have felt that contradiction of wanting to race through college and get on with the next step in my life, but then I also want to freeze moments in time here. You bring up how this phenomenon relates to reading. Because poetry speaks to this contradiction so often, what do you think students can take away from the study of poetry?

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Illustration by Jennifer Bi

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N EG: Can I ask you a question first?

BW: Of course!

EG: How did you come across the article?

BW: Just on Clio, doing research and trying to show up prepared for this interview.

EG: Oh of course, that makes sense. I only ask because there is this great resource at Columbia which is the Columbia Archive, I can’t remember what it is called, but it’s the online archive. Anybody can put anything that you have written—senior thesis, whatever, there, and it is searchable. The Academic Commons, the Columbia Commons. So faculty are encouraged to put their published material on there, so that it is accessible to the world that does not have a research library. I get this update every month of how many people have read my work. And far more people than I would have ever expected look at these various articles. And that one, because it has ... I like the name of that particular article, but I am thinking of changing the name online to something like, ‘Chasing Identity in Homer, Vergil, Ovid and Dante.’

Because nobody reads it because it just says, ‘The Races of Poetry’ and that doesn’t tell you anything.

BW: I thought it was so interesting once I started reading it.

EG: The reason that I am particularly glad that you read that is because that article came directly out of my experience teaching LitHum. Every junior faculty member in the humanities, I think that is right, but certainly in the English Department, you have a three-year commitment to the Core when you come here. Most people in English teach LitHum. So I spent three years teaching LitHum. And that’s a hard course—it’s a hard course to take and a hard course to teach. Nobody is an expert in all of these things, so it is very hard. At the end of it you do get a year leave.

And the whole time I was teaching it, I thought, ‘Oh, I see these connections,’ even though Ovid was not on the syllabus at the time, but I saw all these connections somewhere in my mind. It was in the year of my leave afterwards, somebody asked me to give a talk, and I thought, ‘I know! I’ll talk about this thing that I’ve been thinking about for a while.’ And then

May 2018

I just sat down, I reread a little bit of things, I went and did a little bit of research, but it wasn’t the way I usually write. I just sat down and started writing out my thoughts for this talk, and maybe because I was writing as a talk and not an article at the time, but I wrote faster and more easily than I have ever written anything in my life. I think I wrote something like 12,000 words, or 40 pages or something like that.

I’d never done anything like that before! And then I had to fix it up and it took me years before I decided to send it out as an article, but the point is – that is a pure Columbia article right there … what was the question?

BW: [Laughs] I definitely felt that impulse when I read it—I absolutely feel the contradiction between racing through and slowing down. You connected it to poetry, and so I was wondering what can students take away from the study of poetry? Maybe that question is unrelated.

EG: No, no I totally see your question. [Long pause].

I feel a bit of conflict because I never like to claim exceptional status for anything. I don’t mind being a proselytizer for poetry, and to talk about its unique characteristics. I don’t want to say that there is something that you can only get from poetry, that everybody has to study it, or that everybody should like it, or something like that. But I guess that wasn’t your question—your question was, ‘What can you get from poetry?’ It does slow things down. You know, I am not very good, it turns out, at reading just for the gist of things. I’m not good at skimming, which has been a detriment. As you get further advanced in your career, the things that you are asked to read get bigger and bigger: ‘Read all the works that this person has produced,’ or, ‘Read a whole bunch of books and decide which of these people we should hire.’ I’m very bad at that. Either it’s because of my training reading poetry, or it’s because I read slowly that I like poetry.

But it’s true—when we are multitasking and trying to get things done and trying to accomplish a great deal, to be confronted with a type of text that demands slow reading, and very much repays it, has a real value.

BW: That’s interesting that you talk about poetry teaching you to slow down. Another question I had was about the impulse in education these days to study STEM. I’m an English major with a Computer Science minor, because you ‘need’ technical classes

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N nowadays. But the value in poetry, and in other humanities classes, History, Philosophy, Literature … I do think poetry seems to occupy a different niche in humanities education than a class like CC. I guess that’s more of a comment than a question. But poetry has been around longer than most other forms of literature. That fascinates me.

EG: It’s strange that … there is a fairly recent phenomenon that most people today can’t name living poets, in English. Even if you could name them, you haven’t read them. I don’t read much contemporary poetry in English, even though I read poetry from all sorts of earlier periods in English. And yet for a long time the poet was the representative of culture. There is also a sense in which the poet stands outside of culture, is counter-cultural, that sort of thing. But also, the poet is the bar, the spokesman of the nation, of the city, of the culture, and was celebrated more than any of the heroes of culture. So how to explain this moment where that seems to … and this was certainly true in the Victorian period. It’s not just that there were one or two figure heads. A major poetic book, everybody knew about them, for better or for worse. If you published something scandalous, but as a poem, it made big waves. I think that it is actually a misapprehension to see poetry as having disappeared from our culture, simply in the sense that it has just gone back to being associated with music again. Originally, poets, the bards who performed in Homer, were accompanying themselves on the lyre, and the idea of lyric poetry is that it had a lyre next to it, though that’s debatable if it was always or ever true. Nevertheless, the idea of the poet as a singer is an ancient one. Then it became merely a metaphor. The fact that Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize for literature shouldn’t be surprising.

BW: I was still surprised though!

EG: It is surprising in some ways, but when you think about it a little bit more … if I say, 150 years ago there were lots of lines of poetry by contemporary living poets that people knew and could quote. Well isn’t that true now? Well of course that’s true now. If you think about it, popular song has always existed and people could quote popular songs for a long time. But especially when the singer-songwriter became a real figure and it wasn’t just Sinatra doing the classics, but Bob Dylan writing his own lyrics. Not that he was the first, but it is a different model. It makes sense,

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since it is much easier to diffuse recorded music, even easier over the radio than to diffuse written poems, that that should be where popular poetry exists. The line sort of breaks down when the popular poetry events that exist now are poetry slams and spoken word events. The difference between that and rap, though rap has given way to hip-hop which is quite different, but there is still a continuum there which suggests that of course it makes sense that we should think of popular musicians as our poets. That is not to say that there aren’t poets working in the more traditional forms who are also important, but it is true that their readership tends to be more restricted than it would have been even 50 or 60 years ago.

BW: I guess I’ve never really thought about the connection between rap music and poetry. That is a form of poetics then, right?

EG: Absolutely! Oh, absolutely! In fact, just today …

I am teaching two different courses this term, both, as it turns out, on Victorian poetry. In both classes, we are studying Gerard Manley Hopkins this week.

Frankly, Hopkins’ rhythms and his internal rhymes … he is actually a rap musician. Really! There is very little difference in terms of technique between Hopkins and early rap, like the sort of origins of it and the 1980s.

BW: I remember taking your Romantic Poetry class and we did Coleridge’s ‘Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.’ The metaphor of the albatross from that poem, you hear it in songs, and I never noticed it or knew what it meant before. It was exciting! What would you say is the most exciting thing about poetry? In your class you get excited about it all the time.

EG: Oh, I do get excited about poetry. I think the moments in poetry that I get excited about are moments when a poem manages to express something, and to do something, that really just can’t be explained … it brings things together. A poem has multiple elements, which is true of all speech and discourse, but a poem really has multiple elements going on at once. It has a sound, it has a rhythm, and it has paraphrase-able meanings, the simple denotation signified by the words, but then they bring with them, as all words do, but they are more at play in poetry and more present to our consciousness, all of these connotations and associations. And when a poem—it

The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N doesn’t have to be clever and it doesn’t have to be a trick—but just manages to bring these elements together so that they combine to express something that I recognize as true, and that I could have not otherwise expressed but it all works together. And then I can diagram it and draw it out in lecture and say, you know. But then I get excited about it all over again!

It is exciting to me that language is able to do that.

So often when I am trying to answer your question or when I am speaking, what I am conscious of is the frustration and the limitation of language. It is nice to have it as a tool, a very effective tool; I use it every day, so I feel like I am pretty comfortable. I am using it to work with, and sometimes when it does things for me, or when I notice it in somebody else’s words doing something that I would not otherwise have been able to conceive or crystallize in that way—that’s exciting.

necessarily to challenge, or even to surprise. And this wasn’t the only concept of poetry, but this was one of the main ones. When King Saul brought in the young David to play his harp and sing to him, it was not so that he could be delighted by the paradoxes, and the Psalms do not work by metaphor. So that’s a version of poetry. And then New Criticism, which sprang up in America, and England but that particular school called New Criticism, capital N, which sprang up in America in the 1930s, valued wit, paradox, ambiguity, and multiplicity of meaning. It looked to poets like John Donne, and metaphysical poets of the 17th century as the model of what poetry is and can be. And it was clever, or at least if this was all the intention of the poet, then you get some sort of riddle. The poet might be aiming at an actual truth, Donne aimed at some divine truth, but it allows the critic to say clever things. I don’t think that BW: You mentioned poetry that is the only essence of being clever. One of the “When we are multitasking and poetry. It is one of the ones I things that I love is that poet- trying to get things done and try- focus on in the book because ry seems so smart. Shifting the ability to be in two states gears here, though, your new ing to accomplish a great deal, to at once, or the fact of feelbook is out, The Art of Love be confronted with a type of text ing multiple things at once Poetry. I was at the event without being able to resolve that demands slow reading, and them, without having a logic at the Heyman Center to launch the book, and Kathy very much repays it, has a real to them, is true of erotic Eden (Professor of Classics experience as well. That’s value. ” at Columbia) brought up the connection that I draw Catullus 85. ‘Odi et Amo, I in The Art of Love Poetry, hate and I love.’ So much of between the dualisms, the poetry seems to sort of conclude or end in paradox, paradox inherent to poetry that we find in love as dichotomies, contradiction. All of these things are well. I don’t find it frustrating in poetry because it is very central to poetry, which you point out in the not the only aspect of poetry. The problem, or one of Introduction to your book. Is this constant back and the major problems with the New Critical approach forth of poetry frustrating to you, or do you appreci- that was introduced in the 30s and 40s and then perate it? colated down through college instruction by the time that I was in middle school and high school, this was EG: So, it’s a very good question. The various ele- the way we were taught to close read poetry. It meant ments that you’ve just mentioned, both with the ques- that there were plenty of poets who just don’t fit, who tion, and then what you were saying a moment before were not particularly interesting to look at in this way, about the cleverness of poetry, both of those ideas, I but who are great poets. When I was in high school I have to say, are products of a very particular school of couldn’t understand why you would want to read Walt criticism, which is, however, the one in which I was Whitman, because there is nothing clever there! But trained. Let me explain what I mean: poetry was, for it turns out that Whitman is one of the great poets, a long time, images or metaphors, but it wasn’t even and an erotic poet too, and worth thinking of as a metaphorical because it was thought of being literal, love poet. But not one who fits any simple paradigm as I said, before song. The power of it lies in its ability of paradox always appearing in poetry. to soothe, to waft away, to take you elsewhere—not

May 2018

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N BW: Another thing with your new book is that in the description it says, ‘Love begets poetry; poetry begets love.’ Maybe I am nitpicking the language too much, but I think the use of the word ‘begets’ is interesting because the idea of ‘begetting’ seems more intrinsic than ‘producing’ or ‘creating.’ It is used that way in the Nicene Creed. I know that seems to be sort of the point of the book, that there is this intrinsic connection between love and poetry. All of the copies have been checked out of Butler since it came out, so without spoiling the ending, do you want to expand on this connection that you saw?

to say, looking at love poetry to seem what forms does it take and what are the tropes or the devices or the images that keep coming back, and how do they express themselves in Western love poetry.

BW: Well your other book is The Poetry of Indifference, which seems to be the complete opposite. That seems a broad swing in the other direction.

What prompted that?

EG: It is a good question. When I was dedicating The Art of Love Poetry to my wife, I was thinking that maybe I should make something of this switch in the EG: So that’s the blurb on the back of the book, which dedication or the acknowledgments or something I wrote as well, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t thinking like that. Because you write about what you’re interabout it, but you’re right. The idea that it is a ques- ested in, and everything you write is to some extent tion of being, ‘begotten, not made.’ I hadn’t thought autobiographical. There is no way for that not to be of that. I was thinking of it more in terms of just the true, and it probably wouldn’t be very interesting if it genealogical tables at the beginning of Genesis. But weren’t true. You could give a sort of basic biographical reading, which is that I it’s true. It implies a conwas interested in aloofness nection without necessarily “Frankly, Hopkins’ rhythms and this whole concept, and priority, a deeper and more intrinsic connection, which and his internal rhymes … he is then later in my life I became more interested in love. And as you say, is the point of the book. I should say, by the actually a rap musician. Really!” that’s possible. I don’t think that that’s not true. I do way, the book grew directly think that it is not particuout of the love poetry classes I have taught at Columbia, which I have taught four larly interesting as an explanation unless you happen times. Some of my favorite classes that I have ever to be me or my wife. There is also another explanataught, because who doesn’t want to read about love? tion which might also not be particularly interesting It teaches itself. We have brilliant students here, and or revealing about the nature of those two things, so I wrote a lot of the book directly out of the notes I which is just that at the beginning of your career, had prepared for class because it was such a stimu- when you’re writing a dissertation (which is what The lating environment. My question that I began with Poetry of Indifference was, before it became my first before I even started teaching the class is: Why is book), you need to be making a critical intervention. that? Why could you read a poem about a snowflake That’s the point, to show that you can assert someto somebody and they would think that it’s romantic? thing new. If you’re working in a literary field, preferJust the fact of you reading the poem. And people who ably about familiar works, to give them a new readhave never written poems before want to when they ing. As with any paper that you write for an English fall in love. Why? Why is that? Is it simply because we course, the slight counterintuitive thesis is going to are trained that there is connection? Even that, there be more interesting. So, The Poetry of Indifference, must be an origin for this cultural cliché. Poetry is how was romantic poetry about its opposite, that’s not alone in this; music is the food of love as well, says what that book is about. Whereas there is a different Shakespeare. I do feel that there is this close connec- type of book which is not necessarily more advanced, tion between poetry and love. And so the aim of the but I guess would be more dangerous to write as your book, not to explain it, but just to tell you what it is, is first book, which is to take something that everybody to go through some of the theories of love and poetry. already knows and to explore it. Everybody knows How have people defined it over the centuries? I want about love poetry, here is my book on love poetry. I to examine what the intrinsic qualities of each seem am not surprising anybody by saying that love poetry to be, and then places where they intersect, that is is very important in Western literature, or that love

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The Blue and White

T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N and poetry are connected, but that’s not the point of the book. The point is to give an explanation of why this is so. Two different genres. In a way, that doesn’t explain anything, because they didn’t have to be indifference and love. I think I have just always been interested in both. They took that order just because they took that order. I’m not not interested in indifference anymore. It still seems like a crucial element and one that is harder to admit socially. It seems like something that needs to be balanced in our lives, lack of feeling, hardening of heart; it’s just what we do, and yet it’s the last thing you can say, ‘I don’t care.’

You can care about everything, but it’s not physically possible to care about everything. That’s the tension at the center of that book. And that does still interest me. There might be reasons why, in my mid-20s, that that seemed particularly interesting to me, but I can’t remember what they were.

BW: Were you always interested in literature and poetry?

“I think the moments in poetry that I get excited about are moments when a poem manages to express something, and to do something, that really just can’t be explained.”

EG: Yes. I loved poetry. I don’t remember when I started reading it all the time, but I loved poetry starting in middle school.

We did Latin in my middle school and high school, and the literature that I studied in Latin was poetry, and it just occurred to me that I was studying a foreign language specifically so that I could read the poetry. The rest I could read in translation and not feel that I was missing as much. That got me interested in the academic study of poetry, and then I was a Classics major that freshman year at Harvard. But then when I went to Cambridge and I had to study only one thing, because you can’t take courses outside of your field. You go there to study one thing from the moment you arrive. I became an English major, to put it in American terms, and most of what I studied was poetry. To me that was the essence of the literature that I really wanted to study.

At some point during my undergraduate time there, I realized that I’d like to continue after I graduated.

BW: Was it difficult going from Harvard to Cambridge?

May 2018

EG: It would have been, but there is a bit of a backstory to that, which is that I spent my senior year of high school at an English boarding school, simply because I wanted to do something different. I had this idea, and I spent a year in England, which is what gave me the idea when I was miserable my freshman year, the way you said you were, the way most people are, of going for a transfer to a completely different system.

That certainly eased the transition. There were very few American undergraduates at Cambridge. Half of the graduate students were Americans, but I think there is 10,000 undergraduates and people who were there full-time getting a degree rather than just study abroad, I might have come across one or two other Americans. It’s relatively rare, which means that you have to be able to adapt. There is an international population, but it’s smaller than it is here, of undergraduates, so you wouldn’t be alone, but you don’t get much support.

BW: I’m not familiar with the system over there. Were there things that they did at Cambridge that would seem, not better, but different than at Harvard or Columbia?

What was special about it?

EG: The main difference is the one I just mentioned, which is that everyone chooses what they are going to study before they come. For a lot of 18-year-olds, or 19-year-olds because a lot of them had taken a gap year (which makes a big difference), they had already applied and figured out what they’re going to study.

It just meant that they were coming in with a better sense of who they were for spending that year working or traveling. Nevertheless, for a lot of 18 or 19-yearolds, deciding then what you are going to major in, rather than after two years of higher education is problematic. On the other hand, if you do have a clear sense of what you want to study as I did, the liberal arts system really is not compatible with that. That’s not to say you can’t get as good of an education, but it takes longer until you get into senior seminars and things like that. For me it was ideal to be in a system where you were studying with people doing the same thing from the beginning. The difference at Oxford or Cambridge from even the other British universities

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T H E C O N V E R S AT I O N is that they work on a tutorial system, so there are no classes for which you take exams. There are general exams at the end of it all, and there are lectures that you can go to or not, but then the bulk of your work happens in very small groups or, at Cambridge, oneon-one tutorials. That’s a very expensive system. It works because these are highly-endowed colleges.

It doesn’t work for everybody, but it really means that you are working with a teacher very closely and you can go at your own pace and pursue your own interests and nobody is setting the syllabus. It’s not a system that could possibly be replicated, but it has wonderful advantages.

BW: That system seems intimidating, but I could see how it would be very effective.

EG: That’s something going to a boarding school prepared me for. They don’t try to make it less intimidating either; that’s not the British way. It’s not to nod, and comfort you and encourage you; that’s not the way they teach. They do it by looking skeptical and disdainful most of the time, and then grunting in approval as the highest form of compliment.

BW: You mentioned earlier how you’ve taught seminars on love poetry. What would you say is your favorite course that you’ve taught here?

EG: Wow, I don’t know. I love teaching love poetry. I taught a seminar last term called ‘Romantic Margins,’ which I had never taught before, and the idea was to look at marginalized figures, and the margins of texts; it was basically an idea I had for teaching stuff that isn’t in my Romantic Poetry course. I had no idea how that was going to work, it was my first time doing it. It was my first time teaching an undergraduate seminar in quite a while. And it was just so much fun.

Everybody was so brilliant. That one is certainly fresh in my mind. But I have not taught an undergraduate seminar that did not thrill me, I can actually say that.

Teaching LitHum the first time was hard; I had just moved to New York and just moved to Columbia, and your first year at Columbia, even if you are a faculty member rather than a freshman can be very difficult.

That’s true anywhere. That was really hard, but the seminars that I have taught have all been a pleasure.

BW: Shifting gears again here, you are definitely a very popular professor on campus. A common theme

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in all of your reviews from students and interviews, is how much you obviously care about your students and about undergraduates. I think as an undergraduate, sometimes it can be hard to find professors who are devoting as much time and care. Columbia often is criticized for caring more about its graduate students and its status as a research institution, but there are a lot of problems in the undergraduate community.

What would you say is the role of professors in all of this?

EG: I think Columbia has a deep history of undergraduate teaching. I can’t quite remember the history of this, or maybe I never understood it correctly, but I feel like there used to be a graduate faculty, and then an undergraduate faculty within let’s say the English department for a long time. If that wasn’t an official designation that was a sort of de facto designation, and the prestige lay with undergraduate teaching.

Lionel Trilling, who was the great public intellectual of the 1950s, he was teaching LitHum. That was his calling, that’s where he belonged. We have a lot of senior faculty who choose to teach in the Core. I think there is a great deal of dedication. There is also encouragement, pressure before tenure, to publish and to have an active research agenda. That’s how you get tenured, and it’s something that you want to do if you are here. That can take away time and make it harder to make office hours and things like that. But I don’t think that there is … I can only speak for the English Department. I don’t think that I am distinctive, actually. I say that with good evidence, because I was Director of Undergraduate Studies for a couple of years, so I met with basically every graduating senior. I had a lot of people in my office.

I think it is fair to say that for every single one of my colleagues, at least one person that I was talking to in the course of conversation, one student would say, ‘His or hers was my favorite class that I took at Columbia.’ These are undergraduate courses and it comes across that we have extremely good and extremely dedicated teachers. I can’t talk about other fields. In fields where the introductory courses are taught by graduate students or lecturers, who are also dedicated, but there is a desire to get to a point where you are studying with more senior faculty. There, the relationship is probably going to be somewhat different. I don’t know about that. But yes, it’s one of the things I love about Columbia, actually. That we have this deep dedication to undergraduate teaching.w

The Blue and White

CAMPUS GOSSIP Think Columbia elections are boring? Varun Devatha, Cornell '19, recently survived being disqualified over a supporter’s meme containing the Cornell logo to win the presidency by 48 votes after a last minute turnover of the student government’s ruling. Now you can thank the Columbia Elections Commission for such a boring election. e A widely denounced post cost USenator Toqa Badran a couple of votes in the last election. Only, she liked the post before the original author edited in the content people would call out. Of all the things Facebook notifies you about, it doesn’t tell you, “Hey, political scandal, 5 o’clock.” e Teaching and research assistants at Harvard have voted to unionize, 1931 in favor versus 1523 against.

We imagine representatives from Harvard will be watching the Columbia strike closely from the Harvard Maintenance truck that sometimes hangs around College Walk. e The member of SGB accused of sexual assault was not present at the SGB Town Hall. As the guard of SGB changes at Town Hall, we assume he resigned somewhere between then and Bwog’s report. e A Dartmouth freshman, Matthew Magann '21, from The Dartmouth found himself the subject of a Letter to the Editor from Townhall columnist Bruce Bialosky after Magann reportedly misrepresented his argument. We’re too scared to ask what submissions Spec had to reject from their opinion pages. e Rumor has it, Mark Lilla will be the guest of honor at the Fall 2018 Veritas Forum.

May 2018

e The University Senate forced the Columbia Elections Commission to switch to a preferential voting system midway through the election season in violation of CEC’s Constitution. Since the University Senate definitely outranks the CEC, blame either the antidemocratic Senate or the unestablished Commission. e The confidential Student Well-Being Survey launched by Columbia University Life has a special feature; report enough “levels of psychological distress” and your friendly neighborhood LionMail will tell you multiple times that help is available and just a internet platform away. If Columbia’s definition of confidential has increased your “levels of psychological distress,” please call 212-555-2878 e Apparently following the lead of last year’s Student Government Association, the Events Committee of the Yale College Council stands accused of spending about $1777 of student activities fees to buy custommade Patagonias. So that’s where the money goes. e Your taxes, we mean, your Student Activities Fee, will likely go up by 3% this fall. First Years will still be expected to pay for clubs that they don’t politically agree with and clubs that won’t accept them if they tried, but now they’ll have more of it and Columbia can light one more tree for Tree Lighting. e A number of Toni Airaksinen’s columns from Spring 2016 are missing their first paragraph, over one year after the column expired, with no update notification, which is standard in other publications, and no notice from the author. #specsucks.w

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E AT I N ’ G O O D I N T H E N E I G H B O R H O O D

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