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Staff Writer
WATERVILLE -- Thomas College freshmen on Sunday got a taste of Robert Frost poetry and words of wisdom from Maine's second poet laureate, Baron Wormser.
The auditorium at the business college was still, as Wormser talked of Frost and read his poems, such as "Two Tramps in Mud Time."
"Frost was a famous poet who succeeded at a vocation and an avocation -- his sheer love of poetry," Wormser told the 256 freshmen, the largest in the college's history.
" ' ...Only where love and need are one,' " Wormser read from Frost. "That's very profound. If you don't love, it can't be ... I'm lucky, I love my work. "
Wormser's work -- and how it connected to their own -- was to be the students' first assignment and introduction to college life, according to Thomas S. Edwards, vice president for academic affairs.
The students were sent a copy of Wormser's "The Road Washes Out in Spring," his memoir of living off the grid in Maine before school started and were assigned to write essays of their own, Edwards said.
"They were to ask themselves about very conscious decisions they had made in made in their life and how that choice had changed their life" Edwards said.
Wormser also read from his own work: "The Woods: A Meditation," telling the tale of Caleb, the carpenter who built his family's off-the grid home in Mercer.
" ' Like many old-timers we were to meet, Caleb had little use for authority. That's where, despite our very different backgrounds and despite our ages, we clicked,' " Wormser read.
Through his reading, he told the students of Caleb, an independent man who "never talked of money," and who had not been educated past the eighth grade, but who had earned his respect.
" ' From the outset, he understood us,' " read Wormser.
Edwards said the students turned in their essays and worked with Wormser in small group sessions prior to Sunday's reading.
Wormser grew up in Baltimore, attended Johns Hopkins University and did graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Maine.
He moved to Maine with his wife, Janet, in 1970 and for 25 years worked as a librarian for School Administrative District 59 in Madison. He also taught poetry writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.
From 1975 to 1998, he lived with his family in Mercer in an off-the-grid house on 48 acres.
Wormser was Maine's second Poet Laureate, a three-year term he began in 2000. He lived in Hallowell for a time and now resides in Cabot , Vt.
He has received the Frederick Bock prize for Poetry and the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, along with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Darla L. Pickett -- 474-9534, Ext. 341
dpickett@centralmaine.com
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