Beautiful Brevities: Image, Memory, and Writing as Art

By Cindy Shearer, Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing, Consciousness and Creative Inquiry

Thirty years ago, my friend and mentor Elliott Coleman created this poem sitting in bed in a senior home in Chilton, England:

 Remembrances of Princeton

To Sister Miriam

  Beautiful brevities:  the small letters of
New Testament Greek and Dr. Einstein
eating an ice cream cone on Mercer Street

Once a week, either alone or with two writers, I travelled from London to visit him. Elliott no longer wrote poems on paper (he couldn’t easily hold a pencil or pen) but dictated to one of us when we arrived, and then worked and re-worked his writing in his mind. This poem started out long—a list of memories, which were really images, of a short time (a summer or a semester? I can’t remember) Elliott spent in Princeton.

Then Elliott began to whittle down the list. He discovered that “writing” each image in his mind required him to really see it. When he looked closely, he realized that some images coincided with his felt sense (“image”?) of his experience and others didn’t. Really seeing his experience through the images became a way of glimpsing the meaning of it. Finally, when the poem contained just these two images, I remember Elliott was more than satisfied. He was certain. He had his remembrances of Princeton. I am sure he chose the word “remembrances” for the poem’s title because he wanted to evoke, as one definition says, “something that serves to bring to mind or keep in mind some place, person, event, etc.; memento.” Memento, as I look more deeply, was originally used as a word meant for giving “warning”. Elliott’s images, while evoking the simplicity of his time in Princeton were also a warning of the complexity just ahead—for him, years of “hiding” as gay man in a “straight” city and for Einstein, the atomic bomb. 

I recently used this poem in my class, Writing as Art, to ask students to do two things—(1) look for beautiful brevities around them (to become aware of images they see) and (2) notice what these brevities could reveal to them. They spent five days intentionally collecting images—then both writing and drawing so they could really see their images—using drawing and writing as a way to focus their attention. I asked them to make sketches—with pencils and with words. One student said this process freed him from describing or associating about the image. It kept him, he said, from having to do anything but follow the “obvious” (what his mind saw).

Elliott’s construction of “Remembrances of Princeton” was the beginning of my understanding that if we are willing to look closely, we’ll not only see, but see into our images, and this seeing can lead us to what our images mean. Further, our images invite us into conversation with them. I think he dedicated this poem to Sister Miriam as a way of talking to her. Soon after this poem was completed, Elliott left England, returned to Baltimore, and had a massive stroke. With just a few days left to live, his ability to speak gone, his images spoke for him—and to us—as Sister Miriam and I sat vigil at his bedside.