Let me try this seriously.

Today, in my poetry workshop for seniors, one lady told me how
angry she got after reading a poem of mine attacking Christian
hypocrisy. She said "I'll show him, I'm going to see that friend in
the nursing home I haven't been with in a while" and then it
flashed on her--what I had said was true and my words had prompted
her to do a Christian deed.  We all talked about a guest poet the
students liked and all the connections she had evoked in the group.
Three of us talked about poems that had made us cry, our poems,
poems about us, personal wires exposed.  Without design, the class
had explored the power of literature.

That's liberal humanism.

I enjoy mental masturbation as much as any of us--I enjoy being a
portable encyclopedia.  The Point is the Power of the Words, the
Art, what they Arouse in the Reader.  All else is appropriatly
designated "secondary."

It seems to me Mark Twain was clearly deeply engaged in the
literary criticism of his time, and used it with wit, humor,
insight, and was sometimes savage and inconsistant.  But it was not
the main theme of his life--but one mirror of his complicated
career. I wonder what Mark Twain's resume would read like if it
only listed his criticism.

It seems to me liberal humanism--what an oddass term--might mean
emphacizing creating and reading Primary Sources, and count amongst
our tools thoughtful scholarly discourses.  But it's Mark Twain I'm
interested in, he is whom I want my students to respond to.

I rememberfinding it odd no creative writing need apply on a Vitae-
-only secondary research.  I wonder if accepting that is a step in
acedemic "degredation."

The less informed
Wes Britton