Fostering Wonder

by Amy Durkee-Pollock ’87

Thom Satterlee ’89 wrote the sequel to Star Wars when he was in fourth grade. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that Leia and Luke were siblings, so he married them
off. Although he started writing while he was quite young, it wasn’t until his junior year in high school, while studying contemporary poetry as an exchange student in Denmark, that
Thom realized he wanted to be a poet. Although his work includes fiction, essay, and literary translation, Thom considers himself first a poet.

In college, Thom’s day began at 5:00 a.m. He’d crawl out of bed, start the coffee brewing, and pop in his one and only Gershwin tape for two hours of concentrated writing. He’d
pore over his poems, writing new work or revising the old, mechanically flipping from “Rhapsody in Blue” to “American in Paris” as the tape ran out. “I have always been ambitious,” he says in a buttery voice. “Through childhood, all that ambition
was directed toward soccer. As I moved away from soccer, I poured all that energy into my poems. Somewhere I read that writing was a craft that took discipline and I took that
seriously.”

Thom demanded a lot from writing professors John Leax and James Zoller. Daily he’d take his new work to them, absorb their comments, then resolve to revise what was worthy
the next morning. His major in philosophy, as suggested by author John Gardner, was to “provide ideas that would later be important in one’s stories.”

In college, Thom wrote primarily about his family, but now he writes little from personal experience. “It seems more and more that research informs my writing rather than personal experience.” Currently, he’s working on a series of poems about John Wycliffe. “I find I can explore interesting ideas through someone else’s mind. I’m not bound by my own experience.” As he talks about the incredible amount of research required for this project, it’s evident that the research itself gives him pleasure. “I enjoy bringing another time to life for people.”

Thom embodies the term “scholar servant.” His master’s of fine arts is in literary translation because “not many people can read Danish. I can introduce English-speakers to great
Danish poets that they would otherwise not be able to enjoy.” As assistant professor of English at Taylor University (Ind.), he strives to contribute to the development of his students. While some writers lament the toll their faculty status takes on their writing, Thom insists that his teaching nourishes his work. He regularly schedules his writing to coincide with the work his students are doing. This gives him the motivation of an assignment and also provides a model of his own writing to share with his students. His interest in people and the experiences of others is genuine and seemingly insatiable, and he’s grateful for the criticism of his students.

Why are writers important? Thom considers this silently for a while, then says, haltingly, “Because they’re bridge builders. They foster wonder. They help us understand our own
experiences and they expose us to the experiences of others. Writers make us more understanding and sympathetic.” Certainly his “A Three-Gun Salute for Mother Teresa” (Christianity and Literature, Spring 1998) lifts us into a world not our own.

“ . . .Where her body lies, flowers are the color of her bruised knees, the casket black as her Bible, and the trees from miles around would be torn from their roots to shape a simple cross. These things are left behind . . .”