On this episode, recorded this past Fourth of July weekend, I talk with Dr. Liam Corley, a man who inhabits various – some might say “conflicting” – identities. He is a professor of early American literature at a State University, which means he is deeply informed about America’s past. At the same time, he is an active member of the armed services, who, in 2008 at the beginning of his teaching career, was deployed to Afghanistan as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. What’s more, he is a man of faith, compelled by “the moral beauty of Jesus.” And if all that isn’t enough to cause some kind of psychic “collision of values,” he is a published poet, which is one of the ways that he makes “an aesthetic response to truth.” Given that he reconciles such a diversity of identities within himself, I asked him to reflect on those same identities that appear to divide our national discussion about America. Not surprisingly, he holds out no clichéd, easy answers to any one tribe: in a democracy, he says, we’re all culpable. Perhaps the best way to understand Liam Corley (if “understand” is the right word) is through his poetry, and I was delighted to close the show with him reading one of his latest poems, “A Veteran Observes the Republic and Remembers Ginsberg.”
LINKS:
•Survey: https://lifewayresearch.com/2015/07/01/americans-optimistic-about-future/
•Links to Liam Corley:
http://www.cpp.edu/~wccorley/
http://www.cpp.edu/~wccorley/download/chronicle-off-prof.pdf
http://cccc.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CE/0744-mar2012/CE0744Reconsiderations.pdf
https://www.wrath-bearingtree.com/2018/03/new-poetry-by-liam-corley/
•Webpage: asmallgoodthing.org
•Art (Homepage) by Sokyana Srey: https://www.instagram.com/articusb/
Art (Comments page) by Erica Hernandez: https://www.instagram.com/erasinair/
•Music: David Hilowitz. https://freemusicarchive.org/music/David_Hilowitz/Film_Music/
VYVCH. http://freemusicarchive.org/music/VYVCH/Crazy_Fog/09_-_Still_On
