Bri Castagnozzi

 

When we met, I was a first-year student electing the opinions I’d hold for the rest of my life; Stoney held the set of principles off which I would copy for the next several months. On the first day of Intro to American Literature he gave a soft introduction, felt for the pipe in his breast pocket, and asked us all to record on a piece of paper something witty. I recall an electric feeling as he chided each of us for our lack of wit, the papers trading with the bottom of the pile in quick succession. Something in us had died far too soon–such dispassion was more characteristic of upperclassmen.

Each day an older student would carry Stoney’s record player to class. From it, the ghostly crackle of Pound and Eliot would breed lilacs into history. It was terrible, and it was wonderful. I would carry that record player out to the stone benches, talking with my professor about folk music. Sometimes in class, I would play my violin to the tune of his musical mnemonics, imposing the melody of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” over lyrics designed to teach us about the modernists. In his course, Poems, Ballads, and Songs, we wrote and performed original songs with the wisdom of dead poets. To attend his courses was to learn the old ways and make them new: to be challenged; inspired; aggrieved; impassioned; and instructed. Stoney taught us how to appreciate the woods filling up with snow, the falcon who cannot hear, the sun that also rises.

Thankfully, I do not hold the same opinions I had held at age eighteen–those, too, were made new. Now, I’m an adjunct professor with writing courses of my own. Stoney’s pedagogy informs my work; his teachings are alive in all of his students. I miss him deeply and remember him often.