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"In a welcoming talk to new arrivals in the fall of 1943. Wunsch, who could be self-conscious and timid and timid, found words on this occasion as any ever spoken at Black Mountain...
I want to say now, at the beginning, that while we declare we are beginning the eleventh year of Black Mountain College, we are really beginning a new college. I think we must say this to ourselves each year, lest we begin to let the past become the dominant force in our lives, and already there are too many institutions throttled by the dead and the departed. Many of the people who helped make last year what it was have gone; most of the people who started the College have left. On the other hand there are here this year many new people. An institution, to serve the most people in the best way, should take something of the shape of the people who make it up - have a form somewhat organic with their needs, their desires, their beliefs. I do not mean to belittle the people who have gone before us, nor to infer that we should throw them into the discard. What the did and what they said are woven somehow into the texture of the campus, into the texture of the lives of us who are still here. We who knew the, and believe what they believed will be their spokesmen in this new planning. But there should be new planning; and everyone should be in on the planning. In this planning you will find that the most conservative people here, generally, are the ones who have been here the longest. That's just as true among the students as among the teachers. They would like to keep things as they were. Now I am not pleading for eternal change, nothing today as it was yesterday, but I am earnestly challenging myself and all of you to look at things anew, to examine critically..... Black Mountain is first a community, then a College.... the definition of a 'good' member of the community is one who works out a good relationships with all the people in it." (168)
"All genuine learning... is self learning" (John Wallen) "by which he did not mean isolation and self absorption: "since interpersonal activity is an inevitable component of human affairs, learning can only occur (in the deepest sense of personality reorganization and growth) in an interpersonal relation." The teacher's job, in his view, was to free the student from feelings of inferiority, lack of self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, fear of authority, lack of trust in himself, anxiety, guilt, etc to help him formulate the problems that are of current importance in his own life.... to help him reach his own conclusion..."
"A successful teacher in Warren's view set in process a cycle of readjustment and reevaluation that was lifelong."
"The prime function of knowledge and education, then, is to make living meaningful - both in terms of personal values and of interpersonal relations"
"In 1945 Black Mountain had lost its Rice, but also some of the assertive questioning and innovative emphasis associated with its presence. The question was how the community, now a dozen years old, and more than an institution than an outpost, would react to someone quoting its own sacred scriptures - and in fundamentalist tones no less..... Black Mountain had become used to critics (both within and without the community) mocking its ideals. It had not yet had to deal with someone who took those ideals, quite literally at face value...."
"There were no formal code of rules, the entire community agreeding at the beginning of each year what its guiding princeiples were to be.... constant contact between students and faculty, no degrees, no grades, no requirements - the studnet is the curriculum and the teacher free to teach what he wants in anyway he wants. The emphasis was on the person"
"a free, informal, exploratory setting"
"Understand your workers, help them plan, sing with them when necessary to get them into the rhythm of the work"
(Molly Gregory)
"for a time 'community' and 'art' appear antagonistic forces..."
"An institution is like a person. And just as a person in his formative years deveops a particular life style and a particular way of looking at the world which will filter his experiences from then on, so the same thing happens in an institution. ... year after year, you could see the same kind of things happening. It's as if the cultural pattern is independent of the carriers of it almost." (John Wallen)
"Wallen added that any institution liek Black Mountain born in revolt and rebellion could ever develop a positive goal that will unify the people within it ... the whole life style at Black Mountain was essentially a rebellious life style. When he would ask what kind of education Black Mountain stood for he was usually told it didn't stand for anything..."
"Wallen lamented the lack of understanding, affectionate relationships with other faculty members, that was due less to everyone being busy, he felt, than to the semiconscious fear that constant proximity to one another made relationships more difficult to control and therefore more threatening. Paradoxically, intimate living conditions can militate against closeness... but Wallen believe it is possible to have a group who live closely together and would develop a relationship that would be a virtuous circle instead of a vicious circle."
"In late 1953 the college came very close to closing,; enrollment was down to a feeble two-dozen students, and the faculty hadn't been paid any cash salary in months... the college went on a quarter system, student fees were reduced by almost half, and the lower campus from the dining hall to the Studies Building was first closed and then leased - putting an end to the twenty year tradition of communal dining, but also cutting the estimated operating budget to $25,000 a year. The essential purposes of the college weren't tampered with -- ownership remained with faculty, the educational emphasis remained on the individual and on close student-faculty association, and the arts remained at the center of the curriculum. Miraculously, the college not only hung on, but also.... made a decisive shift into the literary arts and into a lustrous final few years. A handful of remarkable students and teachers some at times neither or both created for Black Mountain in a few short years (roughly 1953-1956) a reputation for innovation and accomplishment to match any period in its history - a reputation that grows in magnitude down to the present day."
(about Charles Olson) "the way he explained things, the way he was able to talk to students, there was something about it which I've never experienced..."
(about Charles Olson) "(He's ruthlessly honest and great about detecting any kind of fraud or dishonesty in another person... And he also has this kind of magic ability to draw - if he loves you, if he cares a great deal about you - he has the ability to draw out of you the very best that's in you; what you should be doing..."
(about Charles Olson) "he plays greatly by ear and intuitively And that leaves a great deal of room for error..."
"writing is something we're given to do, rather than choose to do" (Robert Creeley)
"we're all concerned with finding our own voice- that is, literally, in the sound texture of the poem.....the poem should read on the page as I myself read it to you aloud. It should have my breath in it..." (Joel Oppenheimer)
(author on the completion of the book) "I 've looked forward for so long to having the weight removed, to getting on to other things. Yet I'll miss the weight itself; it filled such a space." (439)
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