I was sad to see that one of my former professors passed away this year. Jim Thomas was a Professor of English at Truman for over thirty years, and students knew him well as a kick-ass raconteur and poet. On December 3rd, there will be a poetry reading in honor of him in the 'ville, and Truman State University Press has published a selection of his poems from his lifetime collection called Brief Tracks.
Thomas had a wicked sense of humor, and he loved to read his poetry in class. I took him for three classes: creative writing, American Realism & Naturalism, and a special topics course where we read the novels by John Updike and Toni Morrison (an odd pairing). One of my favorite short quips of his was that one of Dreiser's lesser known but great novels was A Canadian Tragedy. He turned me on to Updike, which led me to write my Master's thesis on Updike's four novels about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.
If you're interested in checking out Brief Tracks, click HERE.
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