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The OSU Community Honors Poet David Citino
On Tuesday, November 28, professors, students, family, and friends gathered to celebrate David Citino's posthumously published collection of poems, A History of Hands. Citino, who earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, served as professor of English at the Marion campus for 11 years before coming to the Columbus campus in 1985. He passed away in the fall of 2006 knowing that The Ohio State University Press would publish his final collection.
Karen Holbrook, president of the university, offered a warm welcome and commented upon the sense of duty to his community that Citino felt. She quoted him as saying, "If a poet does have a responsibility, it's to just about everything." As Poet Laureate of the university, Citino composed poems to commemorate both times of trial and of joy. Holbrook recalled the "wonderful poem of welcome" Citino composed for her when she came to Columbus. Shortly after September 11, he also delivered his verse on the steps of Bricker Hall.
Following Holbrook's welcome, students and colleagues remembered David Citino for his kindness, generosity, and counsel. Morris Beja called himself "nominally, David's teacher, advisor, and even chair. But in truth, there is no doubt that it was he who taught me over the years."
Former student, Elizabeth MacDaniel, described meeting Citino for the first time when she took his American literature course. He bustled into class with an armful of books and propped himself on a desk. "I had just met a person who was to become my guiding spirit," she said. "As hokey as that sounds."
Following individual remarks, each reader presented poems from A History of Hands. In Citino's own words, he intended the poems of the collection to show an evolution "from a golden-tinged elegiac portrayal of past time to a more realistic confrontation with the starker ‘real world.'" Citino battled multiple sclerosis for years and also faced leukemia at the end of his life.
The poems, however, demonstrate that a person confronting such a stark "real world" need not abandon hope, wit, and strength. Wrote Ronald Wallace, "The titles promise humor and surprises and the poems fulfill that promise, and more. This collection leaves the reader with a feeling of love and celebration in the face of possible despair."
Citino authored twelve books of poetry, among them The Invention of Secrecy and The Book of Appassionata: Collected Poems. He won numerous awards, including the Governor's Award and a Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he published his work in countless literary journals and anthologies. "He was really ambitious. Wildly prolific!" said poetry professor, Kathy Fagan. "David found material… everywhere," Lee Abbott, fiction professor said. "The morning paper, on-line, in journals, walking the Oval, staring out the window, getting his morning coffee at White Castle. Nothing was overlooked. Nothing was given short shrift."
This attention to everything carried over to his students. Despite his productive writing career, "not a day, or an hour, passed without a student stopping by his office for yet more instruction," said Abbott. Former student, Kevin Griffith, agreed. "He was always in his office, always with the door open." Griffith, who was a student in the late eighties, recalls seeing the amber-colored letters running across the dark word-processing screen as Citino typed in his office. Regardless of the task at hand, Citino would stop and give his attention to Griffith whenever he needed it.
His devotion to teaching and learning extended beyond the individual level. Citino helped found the MFA in creative writing at Ohio State, and Fagan cited this as his legacy. "He was very interested in making this a friendly yet top-notch MFA program."
With numerous collections of poems, including his final, A History of Hands, another clear legacy is Citino's verse. "On the page, he makes me laugh, gasp, reflect and holler hooray, often in the same poem," said Abbott. "Beyond that, he leaves behind hundreds and hundreds of students who know more than most about ‘the willed word.'"
The university has established the David Citino Memorial Fund to continue David's legacy. It will support undergraduate and graduate scholarships and travel abroad experiences that enhance and broaden creative writing. Checks can be sent to OSU, Attention Margo Wolanin, Director of Development, 1501 Neil Ave., Suite 020, Columbus, Ohio 43201. The fund name and number (480268) should be written in the memo section of the check. Donations are also accepted online, on the iGive Web site