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Imagination
Glimpses
into the
’’
Sascha Feinstein
very once in a while you come across a true polymath whose talent
could find a home in a variety of mediums. Sascha Feinstein, a
professor of English and creative writing at Lycoming for more than
20 years, had options when he was growing up. He came from a
highly artistic household in New York City - his parents were both
abstract expressionist painters who were among the famous crew
that blew off steam at the boisterous Cedar Tavern in Greenwich
Village during that movement’s zenith in the 1950s. A passionate
devotee of jazz from a young age, Feinstein learned the saxophone,
and founded and edits Brilliant Corners, a jazz-focused literary
journal. He gigs regularly in the Williamsport area and even hosts a
jazz radio program on WVIA, a local public television station. But in
college, poetry took the prize and became the vessel for his vision.
Among the many books he has written or edited, Feinstein
has penned two editions of poetry, “Ajanta’s Ledge” and “Misterioso,” winner of the
Hayden Carruth Award, and his poems have been published in the American Poetry
Review, The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review and
numerous anthologies. As a professor, he has won the Constance Cupp Plankenhorn
Senior Faculty Award, the Junior Faculty Award, and has been recognized as the Artist
of the Year in 2008 by the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for the Arts program.
“Poetry will never be music, but poetry without music is not poetry that lasts,”
Feinstein declared. “My musical background helps with that. Sentence variety and
elements like line breaks can be like pulses in music. The spaces on a page of poetry
resemble rests in music. There are all kinds of fascinating analogies. That’s also the
reason I push students to read their poetry out loud. Poetry comes from an oral
tradition, and using your ears will help your writing.”
E
Poetry will
never be music,
but poetry
without music
is not poetry
that lasts
41
www.lycoming.eduF E AT U R E S
BY CHRIS QUIRK