Things I've Found True: Professor Irwin

"I'm never going to retire. My mentor in college keeled over at the age of 86 in a classroom, and I intend to keel over in a classroom at the age of 96. My last sentence will be, `As I was saying yesterday --'"

"My wife told me I couldn't retire because I didn't have any interests, but I do have a few: well, mainly writing. I'm working on two books now, a verse play and a book on the poetry of Hart Crane. I've got four more planned. Two of them will be long poems, one will be a book on the fiction on Scott Fitzgerald, and one will be a short book on the poetry of Weldon Kees."

"I never learned to read until I started first grade. In those days, people didn't go to kindergarten, at least not where I was from. I knew I really loved reading literature in high school. I can remember that when I was a senior

ture in high school. I remember that when I was a senior in high school and should have been studying for midterm exams, I stayed up very late three nights in a row reading Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and from then on I knew that I was always going to be interested in literature. I've got several favorite books. I love both Tender is the Night and The Great Gatsby. I think Fitzgerald is my favorite 20th century American fiction writer."

"Whenever Casablanca, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon - almost anything with Humphrey Bogart in it - or The Third Man are on TV, I'll always sit down and watch them. My favorite movie star, other than Humphrey Bogart, would be Spencer Tracy. My favorite actress, who was also my father's favorite, is Irene Dunne."

"I boxed in high school, but not very well. It became clear to me very soon that that was not a

career that I could pursue with any success, or with any continuing health."

"I was a nerd in high school. I was still a nerd in college -- that didn't change."

"If I were a student at Hopkins, I think I'd probably major in the Writing Seminars. I would take all of the classes I teach c9 definitely Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and Eliot, Crane and Stevens."

"At one point, I wanted to be a major league second baseman -- that obviously never happened. At a certain point, I thought very seriously about making a career of the Navy. I was an officer in the Navy but I didn't want to commit myself to moving every two years, which you had to do. For most of that time, I'd always thought about teaching literature. I worked for NASA for a while. I was supervisor of the Public Affairs Library at the Manned Space Center in Houston for the year before I went to graduate school."

"The luckiest thing that ever happened to me, though I didn't think so at the time, was in 1963, when I was about to be drafted, and instead I volunteered for the Navy, and went to OCS. I spent three-and-a-half years in the Navy on active duty and another four years in the reserves. I grew up in those three-and-a-half years on active duty, and I learned more about myself and about dealing with other people in that environment than I think I would have ever learned, if I had never gone into the Navy."

"I think every person in one way or another should, at a certain time, serve their country -- I think that the best maturing experience that a person can have is to be in a job where you have really serious decisions to make that can affect other people's lives, that can be life or death decisions. It simply makes you grow up."

"Here's the advice that, at one time or another, I give to all my students -- and I think it's good advice. When you're the age of a college student, you have memories that go back maybe 15 or 16 years. A memory that is 15 or 16 years long isn't long enough to tell you how long 35 or 40 years can be."

"Take your time about picking what you want to do for your life's work, and make sure it's something you really love, because once you do decide on a career, you're likely to have that career for 35 or 40 years, and that's a very long time. It will only be satisfying if you really love what you're doing. Use your 20s to find out what it is you want to do."

"I've failed lots of times, but the thing you have to learn about any kind of personal failure is this -- it's advice from baseball: Every day is another game. The way that the Orioles said they used to win baseball games is that they didn't get too high when they won, and they didn't get too low when they lost, because the next day, there will be another game."

Professor John T. Irwin is the Decker Professor in the Humanities.

He began teaching at Hopkins in 1970, and now teaches both graduate and undergraduate poetry workshops in addition to literature courses. Writing under the pen name John Bricuth, Irwin is the author of three volumes of poetry and of four renowned works of literary criticism. His most recent work was published in Oct. 2006.

This semester, Irwin is teaching the class Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway.