Celebrating the intellect
The sky was as gray as flint, and a cold wind bit hard like a March memory. But all else was celebratory at the first public event of Commencement Week, the 224th Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises. The weather inside Sanders Theatre was sunny, with a chance of advice. Harvard President Drew Faust headed the procession of dignitaries, Phi Beta Kappa officers, and honorees into Sanders for the celebration of letters and passionate intellectual exchange. Invited to speak were novelist and short story writer Andrea Barrett, who teaches at Williams College, and poet, translator, and critic Donald Revell, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Revell, whose work for three decades has drawn praise for its joy and sincerity, offered up six poems from his collection “Pennyweight Windows.” He lived through the tumult of the 1960s, and began and ended with poems inspired by protest. “Survey” professed nostalgia for the 20th...