Winter 2008 Issue

Faculty Spotlight – Marcellus Leonard

Marcellus Leonard

Marcellus Leonard’s poetry has been described as “hypnotic and sensual,” as “lyrical and persuasive.” His voice warms the room and quickens the pulse. His persuasiveness incites movement: stones become dancers who cannot help but slide and snake themselves around the sound of his velvet voice. “I love to read [aloud],” he said. “To me, reading is publishing.”

“Shake the Thunder Down,” one of Leonard’s poems in a book of the same title, was inspired by Leonard’s experience at a writing workshop at a Shaker enclave in Kentucky. The Shaker notion of purity required that nothing exist between the soul and the savior, especially not a lover; for the Shakers, the savior is the lover. Thus, Shaker women and men took vows of celibacy, slept in separate houses, and although they ate in the same room, they did not sit at the same tables.

When Leonard found himself at this workshop, sleeping in a bed made and occupied by a Shaker and eating at a Shaker dinner table, he was overcome: “It was all supposed to be fun, but I found myself mystically obsessed with the grounds.” Out of that obsession came the poem, an auditory feast of innuendo, passion, heartache and freedom.

“Sometimes when I’m writing, I’m just a scribe,” observed Leonard of his skills as a poet. “Sometimes I’m crafting. Sometimes I don’t know what I have until I’m done. That’s when I think I’ve been spoken to.”

Leonard, associate professor of English and interim director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at UIS, didn’t go to college until he was 41 years old. Until then, his professional life included a position as a secretary in an industrial carpet-laying company in Chicago from 1960 until 1964, and then nearly 15 years in retail store management.

But he had always wanted to write.

At his last retail position, he came under the direction of a snarly district manager. “She and I ran afoul of each other,” he remembered. “She arranged to have me fired and I arranged to file a complaint and they arranged to pay me to be quiet.” Leonard used the money to go back to school. By then, it was 1981, and he’d been accruing community college credits since the ‘60s. He was able to get credit for his life experience in retail and took poetry and creative writing courses. He graduated cum laude in two years with a B.A. and 145 credit hours from Chicago State University.

However, he couldn’t find work right away, so he went to graduate school that fall and finished the next spring. Chicago State hired him to teach part-time and to write for campus relations. He discovered that teaching was his real métier. Two years later, he decided to go back to school at Illinois State University for a Doctor of Art in teaching writing, graduating in 1991.

While completing his dissertation “The Classroom Writers’ Forum: Teaching Basic Writing in the Cultural Context,” Leonard explained that “word got to Sangamon State University somehow about me.” This proved fortunate for both Leonard and SSU: “SSU asked me to apply for the position of writing specialist at the Center for Teaching and Learning.”

Although he had never been to Springfield before and technically had already been hired at Northeastern Illinois University, he hadn’t yet reported for duty. “[Northeastern] would have had me teaching five classes,” he said. “It was an inner-city school, and I would have had a long commute. I came here to teach one course and spend 30 hours a week at the CTL. I loved it.”

Leonard’s philosophy of teaching is simple, but also unique: Students learn better in a nonthreatening environment that is respectful of individual experiences and backgrounds; grades should not be given harshly; and students learn better in one-on-
one consultation. Leonard is famous for his willingness to work with students in extended, one-on-one relationships. For example, he has tutored a number of international students with serious language barriers as they struggled through freshman composition requirements. Similarly, he extensively tutors students who come from backgrounds that often leave them underprepared for the rigors of college life. In fact, Leonard’s doctoral research on the relationship between a writer and his own ethnicity and race forms the theoretical basis for his mentorship, which often leads him to urge his students to take the next step as writers and write about their own lives in a way that embraces their personal identities.

“Can I be of some difference to these students who are struggling?” he asked. He acknowledges that, as an instructor, he has opportunities to make a difference: “My life and their lives have touched, and my life has been enriched and rewarded by it. Just by the nature of being a teacher, you know you’re going to touch people’s lives.”

Leonard’s mentoring goes beyond undergraduates: Brian Jackson, MA ’01 ENG, experienced Leonard’s poetry classes as a graduate student and worked closely with him as a graduate assistant in the CTL. Jackson had been a teaching assistant for Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, two of the major Beat poets, at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colo., and later went to school at New York University to continue his association with both poets. He returned to Springfield to run his own business for eight years before deciding to return to graduate school at UIS. Leonard quickly became his mentor. Jackson went on to earn a doctorate in trans-Atlantic Modernism from St. Louis University.

“For both my creative and expository writing,” Jackson reflected, “Marcellus was willing to work with me on a sentence-by-sentence basis — something few instructors are willing to do. His insistence on ‘clarity and grace’ — on writing that emphasizes limpidity and not the writer’s ego — was the foundation of his approach. It became mine and remains as the very heart of my writing praxis today.”

Kandice Pryor BA ENG ’92 MA ENG ’05, another of Leonard’s graduate students, took a playwriting class from Leonard. Although she has only written one play — in the class — the writing experience and the support Leonard provided were singular for her. In fact, Pryor went on to a career at the CTL, working with Leonard: “Marcellus Leonard … remarkably dedicates his time to ensuring students’ success,” she said. “Despite wearing his many hats on campus, his students — both in his courses and those who enter the CTL looking for help — remain his first priority.”

Leonard is thinking about his future: his next big project is to complete two new books while on sabbatical. “I’ve always been a person in search of the self,” he acknowledged. “When I go on sabbatical, I will be working on a creative autobiographical fiction — not exactly memoirs, but so many wonderful experiences and interesting dilemmas.”

 “Have I a philosophy of life?” he asked.

“I’ve been cautious, loving, I have a keen spiritual awareness…There are lots of questions and few answers…I think everybody who dares let his mind wander has these questions.”

Leonard’s work at UIS has included teaching writing and managing staff and resources at the CTL. His dedication to teaching has helped establish the university’s reputation as a student-centered higher education experience. “Dr. Leonard’s mission to helping all students succeed has changed so many students’ lives,” said Pryor, “and his much appreciated efforts at UIS continue to inspire us all.”