James Tillotson Whitehead, 1936-2003

Call for participants: AWP conference memorial for Jim

Posted on behalf of Michael Downs

I'd like to let visitors to this site know a bit more about the panel planned for the upcoming AWP conference that's noted here on this site. Last summer, after Jim died and after his memorial service, Susan Perabo and I talked about the need to make sure AWP acknowledged Jim's death at its upcoming conference. Jim was one of the founders of AWP, and we thought the organization needed to remember him. AWP's conference organizers agreed, and though we had missed the deadline for panel proposals by more than a month, they welcomed the addition of this panel honoring Jim.

To help draw people to the panel, I sent out the following paragraphs as an e-mail to as many writers as I could. If you'd like, please forward them to anyone you know who may attend AWP and be interested in attending the panel.

Jim Whitehead was a poet and novelist and former offensive lineman at Vanderbilt. He also was one of the founders of the creative writing program at Arkansas and of AWP. He taught fiction (to Barry Hannah and Ellen Gilchrist) and poetry (to Leon Stokesbury, R.S. Gwynn, C.D. Wright and others). He loved the sonnet, and Yeats, and Elizabeth Bishop and Philip Larkin. He was a giant, with voracious intellectual tastes that ranged from Biblical scholarship to Amazonian culture and SEC football. He once went on tour with Tom T. Hall.

His novel, JOINER, was a New York Times notable book of the year, and his volumes of poetry were published by the University of Missouri Press and the University of Illinois Press.

Which is all a kind of bloodless way of saying that I loved him, as did so many of his students. His death was sudden and hurt us deeply. This panel is an effort to pay him tribute.

The panel is titled "A Local Man Exits: A tribute to James Whitehead." If you go to the AWP site (http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/) and see "A Local Man Exists," well, that's an unfortunate typo they've yet to fix.

I hope I see some of you there (and if any of you guys are looking for a room at the Palmer House, I've got one with two beds and two bathrooms I'm willing to share -- $60 a night).

Best,

Michael Downs

P.S. Here's one of Jim's poems that's a particular favorite of mine.

A LOCAL MAN ESTIMATES WHAT HE DID FOR HIS BROTHER WHO BECAME A POET AND WHAT HIS BROTHER DID FOR HIM

I shot the chicken in the tree above
Where Herbert stood howling after I'd shot.
Bitterly he cried so loud of feather Love
Itself became involved. Lord, lord, the fit
He threw was terrible. He said his head -
His sacred head - was daubed for poetry -
He said my cruelty would make him mad -
He said it was a ritual catastrophe.

Herbert was splattered with old chicken blood
And pink feathers from eyes to knees. He said
Later, twelve years later, that he was sad
He'd frightened me. Within a month he died.
On his deathbed he reached out for my hand
And he said we come from where we get the wound.

AWP 2004 Conference Schedule

March 24 - 27, 2004
Chicago, Illinois

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2004
2:30-4:00PM
Parlor A

A Local Man Exits: An appreciation of James Whitehead

An appreciation of James Whitehead. Michael Downs, Beth Ann Fennelly, R.S. Gwynn, Leon Stokesbury, William Harrison, Margaret McMullan, Steve Yarbrough. He was a lineman at Vanderbilt, and a poet whose sonnets sometimes growl with a Mississippi voice. His novel "Joiner" won acclaim as a New York Times Noteworthy Book of the Year. He was a co-founder of the Graduate Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas, and he served as president of AWP and as one of its founding lights. James Whitehead died last summer at age 67. Students, colleagues, and friends will gather to read and discuss his work, and talk about his legacy.

State of Arkansas House Memorial Resolution

1 84th General Assembly
2 Second Extraordinary Session, 2003 HMR 1001
3
4 By: Representative Edwards
5
6
7 HOUSE MEMORIAL RESOLUTION
8 MOURNING THE DEATH OF JAMES T. WHITEHEAD AND
9 HONORING HIM AS A CHAMPION OF EDUCATION.
10
11 Subtitle
12 MOURNING THE DEATH OF JAMES T. WHITEHEAD
13 AND HONORING HIM AS A CHAMPION OF
14 EDUCATION.
15
16

17 WHEREAS, the accomplished writer, poet, and teacher, James T. Whitehead
18 of Fayetteville, Arkansas died Friday, August 15, 2003, at the age of sixty-
19 seven (67); and
20
21 WHEREAS, Mr. Whitehead was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on March 15,
22 1936, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and stood six feet five inches (6'5")
23 tall by the time he went to Vanderbilt University on a football scholarship,
24 where he met William Harrison, the budding writer who became his life-long
25 friend and associate; and
26
27 WHEREAS, as a student Mr. Whitehead had a keen intellect, a firm sense
28 of justice on the race issue that was roiling the South at the time, and a
29 fully formed ferocity on a broad range of thought from the painting of
30 Vermeer to the theology of St. Augustine; and
31
32 WHEREAS, Mr. Whitehead left Vanderbilt with a bachelor's degree in
33 philosophy and a master's degree in English, graduated from the Creative
34 Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and then joined William Harrison
35 to found a similar program at the University of Arkansas; and
36

12-11-2003 15:53 DLP VJF985
1 WHEREAS, at the University of Arkansas Mr. Whitehead began a love
2 affair with all things "Razorback" and was one of the most ardent supporters
3 of both men and women's athletic programs; and
4
5 WHEREAS, the Master of Fine Arts Program Mr. Whitehead established at
6 the University of Arkansas in conjunction with his friend and poet, Miller
7 Williams, became one of the nation's most acclaimed, with students including
8 Barry Hannah, Ellen Gilchrist, and others who have made their mark in
9 fiction, poetry, translation, and film; and
10
11 WHEREAS, in 1971, Mr. Whitehead, then a poet and teacher at the
12 University of Arkansas, published the story of Sonny Joiner, an oversized
13 former football player and a man of excesses, intellectual and otherwise,
14 passionate about history, theological discourse, painting, politics,
15 quarreling, literature, and sports -- much like himself; and
16
17 WHEREAS, this coming-of-age novel "Joiner", Mr. Whitehead's only
18 published novel, about segregationist Mississippi has received critical
19 acclaim; and
20
21 WHEREAS, Mr. Whitehead, known as a skilled sonneteer favoring a
22 conversational style that drew on his affection for the country Southerner,
23 also published four (4) books of poetry, namely "Domains", "Local Men",
24 "Actual Size", and "Near Hand",
25
26 NOW THEREFORE,
27 BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE EIGHTY-FOURTH GENERAL
28 ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS:
29
30 THAT the House of Representatives mourns the passing of James T.
31 Whitehead, and honors his years of service to the state and community as a
32 writer, poet, teacher, and champion of education.