VOLUME XLI
Guilford's First Literary Issue
A Stone in Memorial
There were stones, granite and marble,
Massive grey bulks,
And slim white spires,
Engraved with words and dates that meant little to most.
I walked among them;
Noting some for their beauty and their meaning,
And stood before one for long moments
While reveries flooded my mind . . .
And then moved on;
There they lay,
Those who had lived in their simple faith,
And died in that faith—
Returning to the Earth as their Maker had ordained,
With only an engraving to hold their memory.
Suddenly I came upon a slab of mud-brown stone
Which was inscribed only by the wind and rain of centuries,
A stone without distinction,
Save its size and shape—
Rising there as a nameless memorial;
And yet, as the others,
It was a memorial . . .
A stone in memorial? . . .
I thanked my God for the immortality of man.
—Bill Baldwin
The Poet's Art
Before, behind me curtains fall,
Beautiful curtain—that is all;
But now and then a burning hand
Pulls back the heavy curtains and
My startled eye sees wonderingly,
An instant into verity.
— P. W. Furnas
My Apologies to Ogden Nash
There are two things that I find I dislike the very most:
Having liver pudding for breakfast, and a person who
always finds time to boast.
Since the first is food for me
And is really good for me,
I suppose I can put up with the taste.
But a person who boasts puts time to such a waste.
For himself he always has a word of praise,
In fact, on that subject he could talk and talk and talk
for days.
After what seems like hours of such stuff, he says he has
to go,
But no,
For as you're showing him out the front door in great relief,
the front steps remind him of one of his greatest deeds.
He never heeds
The hour, whether it be early or late,
He merely is concerned in telling you of something he has
done that is "simply great."
With all of his talents he has the greatest ambitions,
And won't give up until he's reached the very highest
of positions.
He doesn't seem to realize, (and I wish he would), that
he'll never get anyplace
Standing here and talking in my face.
The most irritating thing about this kind of guy
Is that he is never interested in all the simply wonderful
things that I
Have done.
And that's no fun.
—Beth Eastwood
The Quilforiicm
GUILFORD COLLEGE, N. C., DECEMBER 7, 1956
M
INRI
Man breaks on his knees and prays
Birth like death is burned out on the stable floor.
The oxen and the ass crunch their corn
But on the inside man breaks on his knees and prays.
Flanked by the doom of kings
Worried for the bowels of the empire
Frightened of the coming death
Comes a powerful regrouping of the mind.
Stuffed puppets glued to their glossy thrones.
Bare power.
Which love now, forged in the frightened human soul,
It swells the wizened heart
The flame springs through
To the stature of faith.
Burning and flashing
In the litter on the somber floor.
Straw trodden and the earth where womb blind calf
Struggles to raise.
Animals in pain on this fertile earth.
While man breaks on his knees and prays.
—Aaron
The Tendrils of Her Eyes
The tendrils of her eyes
Searched me for secrets.
They lay upon me,
Fingered through my hair,
Curled in curious feel
Over me, and then,
Realizing that I was aware,
Shrank away, quickly, like
The horns of a tissue snail.
—James Nicholas Palmer
Forum Offered
Campus Writers,
Essayists, Poets
It is the hope of the Guilfordian
staff that this will be only the hrst
of a series of literary issues. That
hope depends, of course, on the
student body. If enough interest is
shown—concretely, hi manuscripts
—other literary numbers will lol
low this one.
This first issue is put together
from the work of a very few stu
dents. The literary editor simply
had to ask for manuscripts from
students whom he knew were do
ing some writing and from mem
bers of the newspaper staff. What
the staff hopes, is that the publica
tion of this work will show other
campus literary neophytes that
they are not alone, that it will en
courage them to offer their work.
The literary standards of this
(and subsequent) issues are set by
the material submitted. The aim is
to show what is actually being
written by Guilford students—not
by a few of them but by all of
them. Verse, fiction, criticism, es
says, will all be welcome. Natural
ly, we want to publish the best of
the offerings, but we want also to
publish a representative sample,
to include as many different
writers, as many different kinds of
writing and as many different
points of view as we can possibly
accommodate.
We can't do this unless you—
the hidden talent—come out of
your hiding place.
Publication should be the writ
er's goal—not as a vague possi
bility of the future, but as the im
mediate aim of every word he sets
on paper, from the very first tenta
tive attempts he makes. It is a
perfect discipline, the enemy of
carelessness and laxness; when the
writer asks himself: "Is this the
way I want it to be published?" he
is giving his work a true test.
In addition, the writer is not be
ing honest if he says, "This is only
for myself, for my own satisfac
tion." That statement is simply a
denial of the essential nature of
the writer's art: its effect upon
a human consciousness. You can
find out what effect you are achiev
ing only by seeing for yourself the
reaction your work produces.
If the idea of exposing your be
loved brain-child to readers who
may be insensitive or un-under
standing is painful, then remember
that there's another aspect to it:
along with the pain (and every
writer, even the most hardened
professional, feels it) comes the
great and very simple reward of
seeing that brain-child in print. It's
true. Just seeing your words in
print, in tangible black and white,
is joy it itself (and that proud joy,
too, comes to every writer, even
the most hardened professional).
There are more writers on cam
pus than the few who are repre
(Continued to page two)
NUMBER 7