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ohn Guzlowski and I came to Charleston in 1981, along with Carol Stevens, Mark Christhilf, and Tim Shonk. We hardly knew one another at first: in those halcyon days when English shared the third floor of Coleman with Management and Marketing, offices were mostly doubled up, and in our cramped environment who one hung out with seemed to depend a lot on the corridor in which one was positioned. John and I grew to be friends gradually, and by January 1990, when the opening of Lumpkin Hall removed the crowding and placed us in the west corridor, a few offices apart, we two commuters (me to Ohio, John to Peoria) were sharing rentals on annually changing houses and apartments and running together one or two mornings a week. When, in 1992, John’s wife Linda Calendrillo joined the department, they generously offered me a room in their new house, and for three nights a week for three years we shared meals in what was the nicest place I have lived in Charleston. John had a bread maker in those days, and he cooked a fresh loaf or two most every day. I can still taste the luxury. I am thankful to John, Linda, and their daughter Lillian for giving me a home away from home.

Since Linda’s move in 1999 to become Department Chair at Western Kentucky, John and I have returned to sharing rentals, and we’ve now run and, on deteriorated knees, walked together most every school week for over fifteen years. We eat dinner together too–usually tofu and assorted vegetables, and every now and again a pizza–and as we eat and walk we chat about our classes and families; malign venomous politicians; praise, trash, and otherwise dissect books and movies; and pass insidious gossip about colleagues. John’s talking about the books he was listening to introduced me to Books on Tape, the greatest invention since the bread maker. Due, perhaps, to the idiosyncrasies of libraries, we’ve almost never listened to the same volume, but more often than not John, an inveterate reader with omnivorous literary tastes that belie his vegetarian palate, knows the tome on which I choose to expound.

So what is John Guzlowski like? His epitaph–some thirty/forty/sixty years hence–will be easy: Devoted and Much Beloved Husband, Father, and Son; Consummate Teacher and Scholar; Brilliant Poet; Unwaveringly Honest Observer of Himself and Others; a Humane Being in All the Facets of Daily Life. I will try to break these down.

Husband, Father, and Son: As husband, John is faithful not just in the casual sense, but to the core. Where the egos of many good men impede their wives’ success, he has been the support that sustains Linda’s accomplishments as she sustains his. Theirs is a partnership from which every spouse may learn. As father, John enjoys a closeness to Lillian that most parents might envy; put them together and the two exude mutual trust and warmth. As son, John gives himself to his mother unstintingly, both in time and in heart. As we share tales of parental illness and recovery–more tales than one would wish to imagine–John relays a mix of deep concern and wry humor that makes evident how he, at least, is able to carry on in the face of it all.

Teacher: John is a great teacher, the kind whom students admire even as “extremely tough” hardly begins to define his insistence that they obey the rules. He frets over classes, preparing meticulously for every session. He worries about each student, be she a star poet or a slacker who drives him up the wall (mental types which occasionally surface in one and the same body). In the classroom, he demands participation, and he has the patience to wait silently for students to come up with answers on their own. Outside of class, the constancy with which he meets with students individually, structuring his writing courses to include conferences every other week, gives his office the feel of a western outpost of Oxford. For many years John’s class in Literature and Psychology was one of the department’s defining courses. John has won so many teaching awards–the Distinguished Honors Faculty award, myriad Outstanding Faculty (Teaching) prizes, multitudinous summer research grants–because he has fully earned them.

Scholar and Poet: Read John’s writing on Isaac Singer, and you’ll be impressed by his insight and clarity. Read his poetry, and you’ll be blown away. He captures a moment, an image, a feeling, in a precise line that defines the truth of the matter. Find yourself a copy of Language of Mules. It is a book in which no words are wasted, and neither is anything missing. Mozart would feel a kinship.

Honest Observer: John can do this because he knows himself, because he directs his most severe questioning at himself rather than at others. Regarding his own behavior, he is a strict moralist. With others, he is gentler. He looks at us, and he notes our various qualities, but he doesn’t let his observation of our failings get in the way of his appreciation of our strengths. That may explain why John gets along with just about everybody. He likes people for what is good in them. He is a vegetarian who does not excoriate meat eaters.

And so he is Humane, which is why we will miss John Guzlowski so. We will miss his queries and we will miss his humor. And twenty or thirty years from now, as we grow old and retrospective, we will think of him as one of the very, very good ones.