Flaherty: Lines of Reflection

Lines of Reflection was inspired by correspondence between two Pomona College colleagues. Professors Richard Loucks and Richard Barnes were both students here, they both spent their entire teaching careers here, and they both spent many hours in Bridges Hall of Music over the course of nearly half a century.

Richard Loucks’ connections to Pomona and to Bridges predate his student days as an undergraduate. His father wrote the alma mater. Professor Loucks taught music theory in the Music Department for over 40 years, during the course of which he attended countless concerts in Bridges and participated in many as a performer or vicariously, as a maker of keyboard instruments featured in concerts.

Richard Barnes taught in the English Department for nearly 40 years, and displayed an avid interest in music, active as the rhythm section of many jazz ensembles and as a listener of a wide range of music. He was very supportive of musical activities on the campus, and could often be seen in Bridges Hall, listening to students, faculty, and invited guests, or performing.

Facing a difficult illness in 1993, Professor Loucks commissioned a poem from Professor Barnes:

"Do you accept commissions? I need a poem to help me through some problems. Would you make me one? Ten or twelve lines would do. If you are willing, fill it with lovely words; include the phrase "The earth is so beautiful . . ." I can feel this poem inside me sometimes, but I cannot find it. Despite the above you are under no constraint to use those suggestions, nor is its purpose to alleviate anything. I am just asking for a poem to memorize, and contemplate - - like a tree or a beautiful dog.

The older I become the more the beauty of the earth fills me with joy and peace and amazement that everything I look at is in some way beautiful. I cannot get over wondering how it happened.

I can not converse about this. My voice fails me when I need it."

Professor Barnes responded with the poem you will hear tonight, and invited me to set it. Professor Loucks passed away in 1993, and Professor Barnes in 2000. This second concert in a series celebrating the reopening of Bridges Hall seemed the ideal event to present this setting of Professor Barnes’ beautiful poem.