ALAN DUGAN

The memorial for Alan Dugan was held on a beautiful early fall afternoon and the Stanley Kunitz Common Room was filled to capacity with his friends. Speakers touched on different aspects of his personality and paid tribute to his work, a few of his poems were read, which always clear the air and cut directly to the heart of things.

One reminiscence especially moving was from an old army buddy who recalled walking around the base in 1944 and seeing a soldier bent over reading a book, this sight being so rare he circled around again and saw that he was still there. He determined to find out who he was and what he was reading. It was Dugan reading a copy of an Oxford anthology. They became close friends, and it was he who suggested to Dugan that after the war that he go to Olivet College in Michigan. That was where Dugan met Judy.

Filing out of the Common Room were so many faces of friends, including former Fellows, some of whom came from great distances to be there. Their presence is a reminder that though Dugan did not teach regularly and generally avoided academia, he nonetheless influenced a whole generation of young writers through his involvement with the Work Center. Among those speaking at the memorial several mentioned his effect on them and how it differed from the kind of contact prevalent in university writing programs. The Work Center was the perfect alternative to the competitive and careerist atmosphere of those programs, and Dugan was the perfect antidote to many of the inclinations of the young. Some of these, the difficulty separating sentimentality from true feeling, and a self-absorption with the role of the artist, often fade with time. But other stubborn intellectual tendencies never seem to leave us, like the craving for certainty, a craving powerful enough to make us trade on what we know for what we wish. Dugan’s work by its rigor, its powerful self-examination, and its shunning of easy answers (the intellectual equivalent of happy endings) is a model of fidelity to truth, logic, and courage. Writing, in its solitude, its lack of reward, can be a hard life, and there is a temptation to seek solace in its music, and in unearned conclusions. Dugan was hard on himself and inspired others to be likewise ruthless in their investigations. Many of us will always hear in our heads his voice admonishing us to test our statements, avoid cheap effects, and to cut through the posturing.

Art is strange in that it sometimes seems to have no rules, yet nothing arbitrary survives. It seems anything goes, yet in the long run you can get away with nothing. Dugan’s work has never been fashionable, and can never go out of fashion. His work is so unique and distinctive as to turn away imitators, but profound enough to inspire and be of use to those willing to struggle without illusion. The Work Center in its infancy, and all those who have benefited from it since, could not have been more fortunate than to have found such a friend.

Keith Althaus