02/19/2020
A message from the faculty of the Webster University English Department
As many of you know by now, our friend and colleague David Clewell died on Saturday, February 15, at his home in Webster Groves. He was 65.
We are sad, we’re in shock, we’re stunned. This week, his office door’s stayed closed, something we’ve never seen before. We’ve come around the corner on the walk to Pearson House, and his car’s not there. We keep looking for him, and thinking about him, and we have to keep convincing ourselves that this thing that doesn’t seem real is terribly real. We are hurting.
But we’re also profoundly, deeply grateful that the universe somehow tossed all of us into his orbit and kept us there for as long as it did. We got to spend the last two-plus decades of David’s storied 35-year Webster career with him.
We got to work with him, as he modeled for us and entrusted us with the high standards and the kinetic legacy of this English Department. David was a force in the classroom, but he also called himself “just a glorified resource person.” It may have seemed self-deprecating, but we knew better: we saw again and again the magic David worked when he put the right book in the right person’s hands at the right time. He knew how to do that.
We got to learn from him, and to emulate him, and we’d fall short, and then we’d try again. What did he teach us? He taught us that poetry was designed to “rearrange a few of your molecules.” He taught us that writing was more important than being a writer. He taught us to take our work seriously, but not to take ourselves “the wrong kind of seriously.” He taught his students to “look it up or die,” and likewise taught his colleagues that curiosity was more than just a natural trait—it was a skill that could be sharpened through effort and care. He inspired us to embrace and respect and pursue our own enthusiasms with Clewellian passion. He made everyone around him better.
And we got to be David Clewell’s friends. Between the hugs and the tears and the pain this week, we’re all laughing and telling stories and remembering all the good stuff, too. Everyone has remarked on having been the beneficiaries, on various and repeated occasions, or no special occasion at all, of David’s talent for thoughtful, curated gift-giving: books, records, videos, T-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, toys, photographs, even vanilla Tootsie Rolls, all gifts carefully selected and customized to the recipient. But even more, we’ve remembered his generosity, his intelligence, his wisdom, his humor, his attention, his energy—gifts he freely and prodigiously bestowed.
And of course, the world got the gift of David’s poems—ten books of them over four decades, a body of work that stacks up to any American poet of his time. In a poem from his 1991 National Poetry Series–winning book Blessings in Disguise, David wrote, “Sometimes/ you wake up and you’re living your life/ in the static between stations, between the prayer/ and the answer.” Yes. Exactly. But again, we’re lucky. We can keep tuning in to that joyful noise by going to our bookshelves, our stores, our libraries. David’s work will always be there, the signal loud and clear.
