Catherine Forsa, Eric Earnhardt, Kurt Koenigsberger, Cara Byrne,
Kristin E. Kondrlik, Kate Allen, and Thrity Umrigar. Congratulations,
graduates!

Interview with Shelley Costa (’83)

CWRU: How did you first come to write mysteries? And why mysteries particularly? And why funny mysteries?

Costa: Actually, I wrote my first mystery story at the age of ten, and during my teens I was very drawn to romantic suspense. Nancy Drew happened early, and Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha Christie – which is something you’ll hear from many mystery writers. From childhood I have always loved what’s mysterious, and if it’s also grand and important besides, I’m happy.  The farther I got in my education, the deeper I felt the tug toward stories that fall anywhere between the detectable and the forever unknowable.  And in the most satisfying tales, I want it all – richly drawn characters, complex plots, themes of crime and human nature. As for funny, I love the experience of reading it because it’s especially hard to do when murder – so serious! – is afoot, and as a writer I like infusing a crime story with some humor because life holds what’s terrible and delightful in balance all the time.

The entire interview may be found here.

Ongoing Projects: Attempt at a Mythology

by Dave Lucas

Everything you’ve heard is true. Yes, all poets secretly and insufferably suspect themselves to be Orpheus, singing all the way to the underworld. Some of us will even admit it.

So perhaps it was inevitable that my first book, Weather, would treat the geological and human landscape of my native Cleveland in mythical terms. The poems of Weather represent both the effort to stake a claim on behalf of a place and to chart its contours in poetic language.

It may have been inevitable as well that I would then return to another kind of home, the mythological stories I loved as a child, and those I’ve come to know since. The poems I have been writing in the last few years, now collected in a manuscript called Attempt at a Mythology, continue the effort of mythmaking.

In this project I have tried to rework themes and reimagine characters from mythic and religious texts to explore their contemporary resonances, the ways in which the power of stories and these stories about power continue among us and against us. These poems would contribute to an individual mythology that might nevertheless transcend individual personality.

They would hear, think through, and respond to the Hebrew Bible, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Iliad, the Metamorphoses, the gospels, The Golden Legend, folk and fairy tales, the urban legends of adolescence, and more. If the poems of my first book map out my own plot of earth, these new poems attempt to expand the scope of the world they—and I—seek to know.

I think of myth less as subject matter than as a method for providing the illusion of personal encounter unique to lyric poetry. In other words, the metaphor (okay, technically a simile) that compares “thee to a summer’s day” is a myth that lasts only an instant, but that allows us to understand more clearly the “thee,” the “summer’s day,” and maybe even ourselves, whoever we are.

Only the momentary myth of metaphor allows us to see ourselves in the famous and strange myths of the past. Only metaphor allows us—well, metaphor, and the similarly strange and famous arrogance of poets—to imagine ourselves as Orpheus, about to sing.

Faculty of the Past:

Karl Owen Thompson
b. August 5,1881 Springfield, Massachusetts
d. December 10, 1958 Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Educational Background
Karl Owen Thompson earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Amherst College, studying history and biblical literature. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and winner of the Kent Senior Prize, he graduated cum laude with honors in English in 1904. He then attended Yale, pursuing a Bachelor of Divinity degree. Thompson earned the Downes Prize in Scripture and Hymn reading, as well as the Allis Scholarship during the 1906-1907 academic year. After completing his degree at Yale in 1907, he attended Olivet College.

In the Community
Upon moving to the Cleveland metro area in 1912, Thompson was active in the surrounding community, especially in religious and historically oriented organizations. Thompson was a pastor for the Glenville Congregational Church in Cleveland, Ohio, until he became a member of the Case School of Applied Science faculty. Additionally, he was a member of the New England Society of Cleveland and the Western Reserve, acting as the organization’s secretary in 1934 and 1935. From 1944 to 1947, Thompson served on the Board of Trustees for Schauffler College (no longer extant).

Career at Case School of Applied Science
Thompson’s long career at the Case School of Applied Science began in 1914, when he was hired as an instructor in English. In 1918, he was promoted to assistant professor and the head of his department—a position he would hold until 1946. In 1920, he became the secretary of the faculty senate and in the following year, Thompson assumed the role of librarian for CSAS. Not long after, he became an associate professor in 1922, followed by promotion to professor in 1928. In 1947, Thompson was named professor emeritus and maintained active connections with the school after his retirement in 1950.

Thompson was an unrelenting advocate for the college’s library during his time as librarian from 1921 until 1942. His interest in the acquisition of books and the importance of a quality research environment extended throughout his career stretching into his position as the first archivist for Case. In his later career and into his retirement, Thompson was an avid collector of all things related to Case’s past, expressing his intentions to write a history of the school. In keeping with his enthusiasm for the school, he also wrote a large number of poems in various styles about Case and teaching at the school.

Thompson was the creator of the Karl Owen Thompson Collection at Yale University. Housed in the library’s Manuscripts and Archives division, this collection contains approximately one hundred letters related to the School of Divinity and past college presidents.

In 1956, Thompson was presented with the Meritorious Service Award from the Case Alumni Association. Records note that “His scholarliness and personal charm won him the warm respect of the students during the 33 years he was a member of the faculty.”

Publications
Thompson published a number of pieces in technical writing, something that was key to his position. His book, Technical Exposition: A Textbook on the Application of Exposition to Technical Writing, Designed for Students in Scientific, Agricultural, and Engineering Colleges, served as a textbook for technical English courses at Case and other universities.

Publications:

1. Technical Exposition: A Textbook on the Application of Exposition to Technical Writing, Designed for Students in Scientific, Agricultural, and Engineering Colleges. (Harper & Brothers 1922).
2. English for Technical Men (Edwards Brothers 1938).
3. A French Nobleman’s Lessons in Democracy (The Society 1939).
4. The career, military and literary drama of General John Burgoyne, 1723-1792 (1955).

Entry by Kristen Herdman, from records in University Archives, CWRU, and from public documents.
Photo courtesy University Archives, CWRU.

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