In Memoriam: Deborah Digges
Celebration of Life
Please join us in celebrating the life of Deborah Digges on
Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 4:00 PM at Goddard Chapel.
Reception to follow at the Center for Humanities at Tufts.
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Share your memories
On Wednesday evening, April 15, scores of
people gathered in Ballou Hall to pay
tribute to Deborah Digges by sharing
remembrances and reading poetry in her
honor. For those of you who couldn’t be
there, or who have more you would like to
express, we have
posted tributes from the community. If
you have something that you would like to
share, please email
chantal.hardy@tufts.edu:
- Include in the subject line:
"Tribute to Deborah Digges"
- Your comment
- Your full name
- For current or former Tufts students,
please indicate year of graduation
- For faculty or staff, please indicate
department/position
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Message from the Chair about Deborah Digges
As many of you will have heard by now,
Professor Deborah Digges, one of America’s
premier poets and a beloved member of the
English Department faculty, has died. We are
all shocked and heart-broken by this tragic
news. Many of you who have studied with
Professor Digges will share our deep sense
of loss. While the university will be
arranging a formal memorial service later in
the year, we have arranged to hold an open
Tribute to Deborah Digges for all students,
staff, administrators, and faculty members
who would like to join us in commemorating
her enormous contributions to American arts
and letters and to the Tufts community. This
event will be held at 5:30 on Wednesday,
April 15 in the Coolidge Room (on the second
floor of Ballou Hall). We will gather to
share recollections of Professor Digges and
to read, in her honor, from her poetry or
the poetry of others. Please feel free to
bring something you would like to read. If
you were a student in her class and would
like to read one of the poems she helped you
to develop that would be a wonderful way of
celebrating her influence. If you would like
to read a poem by Professor Digges herself,
that would be appropriate too. If there is a
particularly apt poem by some other poet
that you would like to offer in her honor,
we would welcome that as well. The important
thing is that we come together and pay
homage to the remarkable passion and talent
that made Deborah Digges such an important
part of the Tufts community and of the
community of poets, past and present, as
well.
Lee Edelman
Fletcher Professor of English Literature
Chair, Department of English
Tufts University
Medford, MA 02155
617-627-2455
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The following poem first appeared in the
Spring 2007 edition of Tufts Magazine:
South
BY DEBORAH DIGGES
A certain time of day, later afternoon, the
sun moved over,
cooler now. I like to sit and watch the
shadows of my trees
on yellow lawn. Much better than the trees
themselves.
A tree will take you in, flush riot of
needles light burst, the white pine
grown through sycamore. My heart is
pounding. Leaves
exhausting. Bigger than my hand. I could lay
them over
my deads’ faces. And never understand why I
was left alive
to brood as such far north on a back porch.
How did I come here?
Summer’s short. The sun moves like a ghost
ship.
My god, they’ll all come down, how many
million, million.
Don’t think of it. Look at the shadows
brimming light
that undulate a dark, soft specificity, a
southern garden
early spring, mimosa, rhododendron. It’s
where my birds
come from and soon will be returning,
monarchs, seed spores,
western winds, my longing. I want to lie
here till I’m blank
where shadows were, my hair fanned out and
round here fallen.
Not that I want to die, only roll over,
thrust my hands
into the earth and touch your shadow,
Summer. Father.
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