Along the back roads of rural Mississippi, on the shores of a 700-acre lake near Eudora lives Gordon Osing, a professor of English at The University of Memphis.
"Edge of the Delta, home of the blues, I love being there," he said. "I love the blues."
Osing is a published author and celebrates the rich heritage of the area in his work and in his life.
He started teaching at The U of M in 1973 and founded the River City Writers Series in 1976.
"I knew that there was nothing like being close to a writer, to take your measure of him (the writer) for yourself," he said. "It's a good way to decide if you want to write.
"The writer's life is a lifestyle, and it's something worth going for if you have the talent."
River City has brought many important and talented writers to The U of M like Eudora Welty, Shelby Foote, Gary Snyder and Howard Nemerov.
"Gordon founded the River City Writers Series and built it into a nationally-recognized reading series," said Thomas Russell, director of the MFA creative writing program at The U of M. "He was responsible for introducing Memphis to some of the biggest names in the world of letters, including John Updike, Seamus Heaney, W.S. Merwin and Carlos Fuentes."
River City doesn't only give people from the community a chance to see the authors. The authors also give students individual guidance.
"Imagine a guy or a gal that's been writing short stories for four or five years. They get advice from the writer," he said. "It's invaluable advice."
Although The River City Writers Series is a major contribution to The U of M, Osing has also found the time to write several books of poetry and teach.
His latest book, "Things That Never Happened: Fictions of Family Eros," is comprised of stories in verse, which is a traditional method that isn't used commonly in modern writing, according to Osing.
"The new book is an exception. It's more narrative, more intellectually inspired," he said. "It will bring my work back towards common speech, but speech under the influence of a fascination with what common speech can convey."
His latest work recounts episodes in his life and was partially inspired by a Chinese novella by Shen Fu in which the author tells his life story five times from beginning to end, each time with a different emphasis.
In order to understand his work and what makes him tick, one must understand Osing himself.
"He's the number one Zen blues poet of the Delta, completely unique, and quite capable of letting his imagination range over the widest variety of subject matter," Russell said. "He's the universal poet of the local. He knows how to live and work in the buried bones of the world."
Osing's journey started in 1937 when he was born on a "sleeting night" in Chandlerville, Ill.
"I was a child just before and during World War II. I spent my childhood and adolescence in the 50s," he said. "My generation has a specific time reference. War dislocated everybody.
"For about 15 years they (his parent's generation) had nothing like an ordinary life. The Great Depression and war interrupted life."
The Baby Boomer's job in society is to finish up the assimilation into American society that their parents never had a chance to do, Osing said.
"We were always aware that our parents and grandparents were from somewhere else," he said. "We knew that we would believe differently from our parents. We had to accept that through education and assimilation that our lives would be different."
Unlike many people of his generation, Osing has moved out of a strictly metropolitan or urban setting to a home that he and his wife designed together.
"One never gets done assimilating. We want better cars, better houses, better friends," he said about the American experience. "The role of assimilation colors every single thing that you think or say or have or do everything, including the good and bad things that are results of the metropolitan on your private self."
Osing's first exposure to poetry was when he started attending the American Poets Series at the Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Mo. when he lived there.
"I went there to hear these poets and I thought, 'that's great man. Kind of like a one-man religion,'" he said. "I got myself in love with it."
He was at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville when he was offered a chance to interview for a job at The U of M.
"I got a job accidentally while at I was at a workshop about what works and what doesn't work in poetry in Little Rock," Osing said. "I guess that he liked the cut of my gibb. He liked my talk."
In 1986, he was invited to be the first exchange professor with Central China Normal University, which produced a working relationship with Chinese scholars.
Later, Osing was given a Fulbright lectureship in American Studies at Hong Kong University. His time in China produced four books.
"Every month that you spend outside of this country is worth a year in college," he said. "Travel develops an intellectual custom to be adversarial to yourself, to oppose yourself, your customs, ideas and habits. Anything outside your culture is good for you."
He has written "six or seven" books on his own, and is currently writing another, which is tentatively titled "Vaudevilles" and describes performances in various places in the world, according to Osing.
He is also never afraid to give advice to people.
"Escape from the speed of living. Think about other people and take your place among them," he said. "You don't have to choose. You can do anything if you have the ambition and heart for it."
