Visiting Writers Series ends
with Grosholz poetry reading
APRIL 22.1994 — THE DECREE — PAGE 3
By CECILIA LYNN CASEY
North Carolina Wesleyan Col-
Jege ended the 1993/1994 Visit
ing Writers Series by welcoming
. ^mily Grosholz to the Pearsall
Library on April 6.
t Grosholz’s poems cover a
wide range of topics, from her
husband and children, her travel
Abroad, and her studies of phi
losophy. Her manner was soft,
goothing and gentle which worked
against the reading. Reading po-
"ems such as “Reflections in the
Transfmite” and “Nietzsche in the
Box of Straws,” her voice and
manner loses the attention,^}^}; in
terest of those who are less de
voted to her work. However; she
has a wonderfully quiet way of
' looking up and then glancing at
the ceiling to emphasize a line or
word, which made her a bit more
fively.
«
Most of her poetry is acces
sible to non-philosophers, and she
says herself that “15 years later I
hope my poems are not so ab
stract, so philosophical.” Her
poem “The Return” is a good mix-
ttire of thought and verse.
> Starting with a quote from
IQerkegaard’s Fear and Trem
bling, the first line begins “the
Review
gesture of resignation/ as the
knight of fedth/ turns his hand like
a calyx back/ from the bloom on
lassc’s check/ shows that no illu
sion blunts his pain:/ death lies
on the rock./ Yet somehow
Abraham regains/ the life he laid
aside: what floods/ the empty
circle of his arms?”
Then later in the same poem,
“So the poet to her inventions./
so the mother to her child:/ take,
creature, your own true future^
its shape no longer moans and
hides/ in me, but wakes in you.
And when that one/ pull on the
globed/ mantle of its own inten-
tionsy what does the sad creator
welcome theny what rushes into
the hollow of the heart?”
And the last stanza, “So the
bereft, abandoned, blindy cry to
their lost inheritorsy go, you are
not ly The creatures flee and
constitute the worldy the dance
begins againy the solid world, the
moving worldy It is the world
that enters in.”
“The Return” has subtle im
ages such as the moon pulling
back the coves of earth which are
the waves washing over the sand
at work to make the poem under
standable to everyone while pos
ing questicHis like what rushes into
the hollow of the heart, and “Blind
Galileo, father of the moon...,
what filled the dark horizons of
your sight?” which makes the
reader think about concepts like
what is there beyond our reach
and inside ourselves.
Grosholz is a good poet be
cause she is able to capture the
mystery of philosophy and all its '
“Whys?” and connect it to lines >
such as “What filled the dark ho
rizons of your sight?/ The dance
of fire and stone/ in order through i
the sky” which shows that there
is the possibilities of having an
answer to the “whys” through the ?
use of language. She lets her lan
guage suggest the answers, or
even just celebrate the questions.
Also her ability to talk about
her life with her husband and chil
dren in a way which makes her
life familiar and comforting
makes her stand out as a success
ful poet In “West Wind r she
takes what could e potentially bor
ing and if not careful an almost
lewd subject, laying next to ha-
POET VISITS — Poet EmOy Grosholz visited Wesleyan on AprO
6 in a reading of her works at PearsaU Library as flie final
ofTering of the year through the Visiting Writers Series.
husband, and turns it into a emo-
non and a state we all wish to
know and enjoy. “Who would
wake from such a real/ and rami
fying dream? I switch the tongue/
of our alarming clock from lark/
to nightingale, and wait with open
eyes.”
It is sad that with the high qual
ity of the poems that the reading
was on the slow side. She did not
have in mind what she wanted to
read and floated off the track more
than once. If someone wanted to
go to the Visiting Writers Series
for the first time, she might be a
bad place to start in terms of get
ting and holding interests.
Insurance industry wants liberal arts grads
Traditionally, the'multifeMfeti
dollar insurance industry has been
agood home for liberal arts gradu
ates who are frequently hired di
rectly out of college into manage
ment training programs in the ar
eas of customer service, market
ing, and administrative areas.
Among the insurance carries
who actively recruit on college
c^puses are such giant coipo-
-«te employers as Aetna (48,000
ejnployees nationwide). Metro
politan Life (54,000), Prudential
(100,000), State Farm (58,000)
and Travelers (32,000).
. Why do insurance companies
l^e to hire non-business majors?
According to Lorenzo Pace,
Aetna’s administrator of college
relations, the “flexibility” dem
onstrated by employees with lib-
e^ arts degrees makes them de
sirable. In fact, over the past few
years Aetna has increased its hir
ing of these employees and today
hkes about equal numbers of busi
ness grads and liberal arts grads.
At the Chubb Group, a diversi
fied group of insurance carriers
with 65 offices in North America
and 19 overseas, liberal arts grads
are valued for their superior writ
ing and analytical abilities.
Cheryl Kozak, ^Qrporate staff
recruiter for The Travelers Insur
ance Co., says the communica
tion skills that liberal arts gradu
ates bring to the company are a
key asset.
“They can see the bigger pic
ture. They’re creative and not so
specialized, and they bring new
ideas,” she says.
Liberal arts grads are hired by
Prudential because of their innate
“thinking skills,” said Joyce Gold
stein, vice president for adminis
tration, who believes “liberal arts
grads have a much better founda
tion than technical people.”
Ironically, many liberal arts
grads don’t even consider a ca
reer in the insurance industry.
“I think there are a lot of mis
conceptions about who we are and
what we do,” says Aetna’s Pace.
“Often times, the liberal arts ma
jor sees us as insurance salesmen,
meaning tliat’s the only type of
career area we offer.”
In a company as large as
Aetna, which manages assets of
more than $90 billion, there are
numerous employment (q)portu-
nities in such diverse fields as
human resources, law, public af
fairs, communications, marketing,
information systems, or training.
That’s in addition to conventional
insurance jobs in underwriting,
loss control, and claims.
Because it makes good busi
ness sense to keep their clients
healthy, insurance companies
tend to be enlightened about what
keeps their eniployees happy as
well. Insurance companies were
among the first to offer such in
novations as employee wellness
programs, on-site fimess centers
and childcare faqjlities, matemity
and pa^tal l^ves^, work-at-
home arrangements, flexible woric
schedules, sabbaticals, and ccm-
tinuing education and training
programs.
What does a beginning job in
the insurance industry pay? Lib
eral arts graduates can ejqxsct to
earn between the mid-$20,000s
and low $30,000s the first year,
plus generous benefits, which can
range in value between $5,000
and $10,000 annually.
There are also opportunities
for rapid advancement Fot ex
ample, Metropolitan Live offers
a ^t-track career path called the
Management Associate Program
(MAP). The two-year training
program offers new hires the
chance to try out different disci
plines through six-month hands-
on work assignments.
The vast majority of MAP
participants (depending on the
year, as much as 75 percent) are
liberal arts graduates from a wide
range of majors, including anthro
pology, religion, East Asian his
tory, psychology, urban studies,
French linguistics, political sci
ence, and 19th-century English
literature.
In a study of several hundred
corporate employes, two distinct
prototypes emerged: progressive
and non-progressive.
Progressive companies were
characterized by innovative pro
grams, such as quality control
circles and flexible work sched
ules; in general they strived to
improve wo± conditions on an
on-going basis. It was part of the
company’s “corporate culture.”
SeniOT management of these com
panies was dominated by liberal
arts graduates and not too sur
prisingly, these companies taid
to hire more liberal arts gradu
ates and promoted them faster
than non progressive companies.
The “perfect employer” does
not exist. All companies have
their positives and negatives. But
as a whole, insurance companies
tend to be progressive.