Magazine
Winter/Spring 2000

"The Tang of
the Apple on the Tongue"


by Mark Galliher '79

Don Baker's front porch was my first taste of Wabash College.

I had enrolled at Wabash sight unseen, and received notice that Baker would be my faculty advisor. So, a few weeks before Freshman Sunday, I drove myself to Crawfordsville and nervously rang the bell at Baker's home on the shaded street behind Lilly Library. We sat on his front porch, I on my best behavior, he in his shorts. He asked what I wanted to study. I thought philosophy or maybe English literature. We talked awhile, then Baker steered me to an introductory philosophy class and an upper-level English class taught by someone named Bert Stern.

Looking back, I suspect Baker knew that beginning my college career with Bert Stern would be like academic boot camp, and would shake up my conventional Midwestern attitudes. Over time, I took several of Baker's classes: a tutorial on the psychology of terror fiction, an introduction to Shakespeare's plays, and another on Shakespeare's sonnets.

Baker's "Introduction to Shakespeare" was one of those classes that drew a crowd, attracting biology and psychology students as well as English majors. Baker's love of Shakespeare's poetry was infectious. He coaxed us into getting beneath the surface of the plays, to see the political context of the historical plays and the complex psychology of the characters.

I think Baker preferred for us to arrive at our own conclusions through discussion. When we weren't rising to the bait, Baker was also an engaging lecturer, providing dramatic excerpts in a theatrical baritone. I usually composed my papers for Baker's classes late at night, hunched over my portable typewriter. My essays on Henry V and the rest were not scholarly, and Baker gave my writing plenty of red ink, where it was wordy or vague. Still, Baker tried to ferret out and praise any glimmers of insight: "You're on your way, Galliher! Keep it up!"

But more than his teaching, Baker's poetry made a lasting impression on me. When I entered Wabash, I was scribbling terrible poetry of the greeting-card and Rod McKuen genres. Early on, Baker got me to buy a book of poems by Ezra Pound, which was far over my head. I also bought my first book of Baker's poems, and I loved almost every poem I read. On the surface, the poems were simple and accessible. But they were put together like a Swiss watch-functional, compact, with powerful springs hidden out of sight. I wished I could write like that.

I finally took a poetry writing workshop taught by Baker and Bert Stern. Through the semester, Baker made us get beyond gushy writing and really think about how a poem is put together. I worked hard on my writing that fall. I also had a great time talking with the other guys, who all had different ideas about what made a good poem. I still enjoy reading the poems written for that class by my friends Jim Bowlin '80 and Bob Einterz '77.

But most of all, I learned that writing even one passable poem is fiendishly hard. I gained a deeper respect for poets—like Baker—who can produce a book full of poems, each one well made and vivid.

It's been 20 years since I left Wabash. Now, I practice law in Indianapolis. But ever since College days, thanks largely to Don Baker, I have continued reading and watching Shakespeare's plays. I even performed bit parts in a community production of Henry IV Part 1, a favorite from Baker's class. And I have continued reading all kinds of poetry, including Baker's new books as they came out. Since College, I have gotten over idolizing T. S. Eliot and his quotes from the Sanskrit and Dante. I have also gotten over thinking that "real" poetry cannot be metrical and rhyme.

But I have not gotten over loving Don Baker's poems and sharing them with my friends. In writing this, I reread many of Baker's poems, looking for a favorite to share. I found many favorites, some I had not thought about in years, including Baker's poems about his parents, his service on a bomber in World War II, and parenting his daughters. But the one that has stuck with me since I first read it is "Language," and it speaks to me even more strongly today than it did then.

Language
I no longer trust words. -Lillian Hellman

Whatever the words say,
it is the hand touching the arm that matters,
the apple peeled and shared.

But we are not born dumb.
Something in us urges another proof,
by color, clay, sound, movement, even

language, even the words you mistrust,
the words that allow themselves
to be stolen, sold, caged, exhibited, possessed,

but that sometimes, perhaps
in the dark on a sweaty pillow,
on some page, in some phrase you remember,

touch each other
as a woman and a man touch,
put for good the tang of the apple on the tongue.

In my daily work as a lawyer, it is easy to feel that words have become "sold, caged, . . . possessed," tools for selling things, not for disclosing the heart. But Baker's poems, like letters from a friend, interrupt and "put for good the tang of the apple on the tongue."

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