Tulliver Lines
Intern/Amanuensis
I am a rising senior at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where I study English literature.
I’ve lived in Brookline my whole life, where Sherman has always been a neighborly presence. While my interests often take me to the deep parts of library stacks that are totally sunlight-free, Sherman has persuaded me to work with him and to look out at the world through his eyes for a little while. My passions draw me most to Middle Eastern affairs, and, at times, Central and Eastern Europe.
My mother — a close friend of Sherman and his wife — was a Moscow Correspondent in the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation from 1986 to 1993, and from her I’ve received both an education and a continuing interest in the world. My own writing tends toward the creative side, but I am eager to find ways of narrativizing the research that I and others do, and to describe both the physical and emotional aspects of being a part of an outward-looking community.
My area of personal inquiry right now centers on the poet Louis Zukofsky, and on the placement of Jewish perspectives in the first wave of literary Modernism. That interest more or less inevitably intersects with one in modern Israel and its place in the Middle East, as well as the tensions and differences between diasporic and Israeli Jews.
I spent last year reading English at Lincoln College, Oxford. There, I was able to broaden my mind to include the principles of American and British literature simultaneously. I hope to work further to allow such simultaneities to flourish, as they seem to me to constitute the most useful kind of understanding in the sense of ‘an understanding’, something which exists between and not just within people. Such understandings are what allow me to do my work, as they delimit that which can be a subject, whether an image in my poetry or in the day-to-day observations that I use in my prose.
Through that desire to have and work (live) within limits, I take an interest in the world and world affairs. The general ‘tide’ of history seems to be an exertion of gravity (towards or away from capitalism, democracy, liberalism, authoritarianism, etc.) in the all-important space of ideas, while in the world, curiosity and joy are felicitous surroundings for the soul.
If to have a community is to have people who fascinate, who drive one into the world, who change ‘before one’s eyes,’ I hope to have this one bring me into a different level of interest in the good unfolding around the world (outside the Anglosphere particularly) even in the present time.
[Teichman:] I thoroughly anticipate a fun-filled, mirthful time with Tulliver. I surely cannot know what will evolve, but I know it will yield fascinating outcomes. He is a fencer in spirit and sport. With this foilist, there will be a lot of parries and ripostes ahead. He has chosen among other tasks, as yet to-be-defined responsibilities, to take on the complexity of my calendar and scheduling across the globe, meeting our community and decisively engaging, attracting, and perplexing one and all. Our first days began with his ambivalence towards Remi, informing me he cares not a whit about sport, that his diversions into Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy distract him from his beloved Kenyon Review and translations of Slavic poetry. What a compelling brew. I wonder whether we will ever get anything done given our propensity to talk together.