When people ask me what I do, I often tell them that I work at a business school. Some of the more literary inclined people aren’t interested in my going into further detail, at least not until I tell them at every student at this business school is required to take a Great Works of Literature course. Baruch’s mission to instill ideas and culture and values into their students through literature is what, I think, makes Baruch unique among business schools. What is even more amazing is that this semester, Charles Simic is Baruch’s Harman Writer-in-Residence. I first read Simic’s poems when I was a junior in college. I loved his poems, his essays, his interviews. Later, when I went on to teach writing, I taught Simic. I still do. I am always in utter awe of him and his thinking about language, how it takes on another life that has something to do with this one. Writers-in-residence are usually found in MFA Creative Writing Programs or liberal arts undergraduate institutions. To have a Pulitzer prize winning poet who is also the Poet Laureate of the United States in residence at a CUNY business school is sure to baffle and confound. I can only think that such an occurrence must mean the planets and the stars and their positions right now are responsible, but I’m sure it must have something to do with someone at Baruch who believes that literature is what can change or shape the world and our ideas about our place in it.

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