Tom Trusky

Anthony Thomas Trusky
Born (1944-03-14)March 14, 1944
Portland, Oregon
Died November 27, 2009(2009-11-27) (aged 65)
Boise, Idaho
Nationality American
Fields Literature
Institutions Boise State University, Hemingway Western Studies Center
Alma mater University of Oregon
Northwestern University
Trinity College

Anthony Thomas "Tom" Trusky (14 March 1944 – 28 November 2009) was an American professor, poet, writer, editor, film historian, and book artist. He is known for promoting western regional poetry, recovering the films of Nell Shipman, and rediscovering and promoting the work of Idaho outsider artist James Castle. Trusky was a Professor of English at Boise State University from 1970 to 2009 and director of Hemingway Western Studies Center from 1991 to 2009.

Early life and education

Trusky was born in Portland, Oregon, the oldest of four children. Trusky was of Polish descent on his father's side; Scots-Irish on his mother's side. He attended high school in Newport, Oregon, worked one summer at a Georgia Pacific paper mill in Toledo, Oregon, and then attended the University of Oregon where, after switching his major from biology to English, he earned a B.A. in 1967. Trusky earned an M.A. in English from Northwestern University in 1968 and the following year traveled to Dublin, Ireland to attend Trinity College as a Rotary International Fellow in the Anglo-Irish Literature Program.[1]

Career

Teaching

Finding himself living in Boise, Idaho in 1970, Trusky successfully applied for a teaching position in the English Department of the then newly renamed Boise State College (formerly Boise Junior College, later Boise State University).[2] Trusky was an energetic teacher who taught everything from basic freshman composition, to writing poetry, to book arts. His imaginative courses, high standards, and wildly creative assignments challenged, and sometimes frustrated, students. Trusky could come across as a crusty teacher with zero tolerance for cookie-cutter sentimentality; as one student remembers, "I was taking a poetry class and the first thing he said was, 'If anyone wants to write about unicorns, they should consider another class. Unicorns aren't real and shouldn't be read about in poetry."[3] On the other hand, Trusky could be wildly supportive of student work that dared to push artistic boundaries. Former student Andrea Scott recalls that Trusky:

promoted my graduate thesis, "I'm Not Perfect Anyway." The book combined my interviews and photography of women who had facial scars and how it affected them. Tom saw my vision and said "Go for it," even though others thought the project was "weird" and didn't fit the norm for a graduate thesis. Later, he secretly took my project to New York, where it appeared at an art gallery. I found out when he sent me a letter—typical Tom style.[4]

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education named Trusky Idaho's Professor of the Year in 1990, 1991, and 1993.[5] Trusky also played a major role in the founding of Boise State University's Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program.

Cold drill

In 1970 Trusky founded cold drill, a graphically striking, loose-leaf magazine in a box. From the beginning cold drill was intended to, in Trusky's words, "destroy the elitist, old-girl, old-boy networks" that dominate many collegiate literary magazines.[6] Working in partnership with scores of student editors, Trusky came up with such innovations as scratch-and-sniff poetry, handmade paper crafted from Idaho native plants, and the memorable 1985 "All Idaho" edition which features graphics inspired by the art found on burlap potato sacks. Over the years cold drill won a number of first-place awards from such entities as the Associated Collegiate Press/National Scholastic Press Association, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, and the Rocky Mountain Collegiate Press Association.[7]

Ahsahta Press

In 1974 Trusky and his Boise State University colleagues Orvis C. Burmaster and Dale Boyer co-founded Ahsahta Press, a non-profit press specializing in western American poetry. Ahsahta reprinted the work of such early western poets as Peggy Pond Church, Genevieve Taggard, H.L. Davis, Hazel Hall, Gwendolen Haste, Haniel Long, and Norman MacLeod. Ahsahta also takes credit for discovering, and initially publishing, the work of such contemporary western poets as David Baker, Utah Poet Laureate Katharine Coles, Wyn Cooper, Gretel Ehrlich, Cynthia Hogue, Leo Romero, Linda Bierds, Richard Blessing, and Carolyne Wright. Among his other achievements as an Ahsahta Press editor, Trusky edited the anthology Women Poets of the West (1978), a volume that remains one of Ahsahta's best sellers.

Poetry in Public Places

Starting in 1975, Trusky initiated the Poetry in Public Places (PiPP) series. Each year nine poems by Boise State University students and/or non-student western poets would be printed on colorful posters and distributed free of charge to appear in schools, on metro buses, and in other public venues.[8] In a 2001 interview Trusky said of the Poetry in Public Places series, "My goal was to break the neck of rhymed poetry and slap sentimentality useless, and to bring diversity in all its senses: literary, social political, philosophical and nonsensical." [9] The PiPP series would continue in various forms for over two decades.

Nell Shipman

A lifelong lover of movies who came to have a keen interest in feature films shot in Idaho, Trusky began researching the work and life of Canadian-born silent-screen actor, screenwriter, and producer Nell Shipman in 1984 after learning that she had shot films at her Lionhead Lodge studio on Northern Idaho's Priest Lake. Trusky would spend more than twenty years tirelessly working to promote Shipman's work and recover her extant films. The search for lost Shipman films stretched all the way to the then-Soviet Union and resulted in, among other coups, the recovery and restoration of Shipman's 1919 film Back to God's Country.[10] Thanks to Trusky's efforts, all of Shipman's extant films are now available on DVD. In addition to recovering her films, Trusky published Shipman's autobiography The Silent Screen and My Talking Heart (1987) as well as Letters from God's Country (2003), a collection of Shipman's correspondence. Kay Armitage, professor of film studies at the University of Toronto and noted Shipman scholar, credits Trusky with bringing Shipman "back to life."[11]

James Castle

Starting in 1993 Trusky became fascinated with the life and work of James Castle, a deaf, self-taught artist who was born in Idaho's remote Garden Valley; spent five years at the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind; and enjoyed a brief artistic vogue in the late 1950s and early 1960s before being largely forgotten by the time of his death in 1977.[12] Trusky's scholarship helped raise the awareness of the late artist's work. Trusky authored a self-published biography of the artist, James Castle: His Life & Art (2004), and contributed to the documentary film Dream House: The Art & Life of James Castle (2008). Trusky's obsessions with both James Castle and Nell Shipman reflect his preference for the work of overlooked, under-appreciated writers and artists as opposed to that of literary and artistic superstars whose places in the canon have already been assured. As Trusky said in an interview conducted in the year 2000, "I get to speak for Nell, and I get to speak for James. . . . They don't have their voices. Their art is their voice."[13]

Hemingway Western Studies Center

In 1991 Trusky was named Director of Boise State University's Hemingway Western Studies Center, a position he held for the remainder of his life. As Director, Trusky led a two-year effort that, in 1993, resulted in the Library of Congress designating the Hemingway Western Studies Center as the home of the Idaho Center for the Book (ICB) and appointing Trusky as the ICB's first director.[14] His position as Director of the Hemingway Western Studies Center allowed Trusky to pursue projects that interested him, including Idaho by the Book (a literary map of Idaho), the Idaho Authors card game, and the mounting of a variety of highly creative exhibits on topics ranging from zines to refrigerator art. It was thanks to the Hemingway Western Studies Center that Trusky was able to publish a number of books, including Some Zines: American Alternative & Underground Magazines, Newsletters and APAs (1992), Missing P ges: Idaho & the Book (1994), and James Castle: His Life & Art (2004).

Book arts

A lifelong collector of eccentric and artist's books, Trusky was always interested in creating books that were as much works of visual art as literary texts, an interest he first expressed through the creative design of cold drill. Over the years Trusky attended a number of courses on the books arts and spent an entire sabbatical in New York City taking book-arts courses at Columbia University and the Center for Book Arts. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing for the rest of his life Trusky taught graduate and undergraduate book-arts courses at Boise State University.

Personal life

Trusky was married for many years to Tara Burt. For the last two decades of his life Trusky lived with his partner, Enver Sulejman.

Trusky died quietly at home on November 27, 2009 while sitting on his couch addressing Christmas cards and making notes about drawings by James Castle.[15] Trusky willed his lifetime collection of artist's books, including a number of works by James Castle, to Boise State University.[16] Most of Trusky’s ashes were placed in the Snake River at Celebration Park, while a few were deposited at the foot of James Castle’s grave.

Selected bibliography

Books, DVDs, etc.

Articles, booklets, maps

Poetry

References

  1. ↑ Tom Trusky. Obituary. Idaho Statesman. December 8, 2009.
  2. ↑ Tom Trusky. Obituary. Idaho Statesman. December 8, 2009.
  3. ↑ Oland, Dana. "Boise State's Tom Trusky Dies - Creative, Dynamic, Funny and Mischievous, the Longtime Professor Will Be Missed, His Colleagues Say. Idaho Statesman. Thursday, December 3, 2009.
  4. ↑ Oland, Dana. "Boise State's Tom Trusky Dies - Creative, Dynamic, Funny and Mischievous, the Longtime Professor Will Be Missed, His Colleagues Say. Idaho Statesman. Thursday, December 3, 2009.
  5. ↑ ‘Iconic’ Boise State University Professor Dies: English Professor Tom Trusky Instrumental in Initiating University’s Master of Fine Arts Program. Idaho Press-Tribune (Nampa, ID). Thursday, December 3, 2009.
  6. ↑ Lee, Marie Russell. "Maverick Magazine: Unorthodox Publication Leads the Nation by Being the Exception to the Rule." Focus: Boise State University. Winter 1989. Vol. IX, No. 2. P. 36-37.
  7. ↑ Lee, Marie Russell. "Maverick Magazine: Unorthodox Publication Leads the Nation by Being the Exception to the Rule." Focus: Boise State University. Winter 1989. Vol. IX, No. 2. P. 36-37.
  8. ↑ Hillenger, Charles. "University's Tribute to Hemingway: Cultural Complex at Boise State Bears Name of Author." Los Angeles Times. January 25, 1987. P. D 10.
  9. ↑ "Boise State Student Union Gallery Features Poster Poetry." June 2001. http://news.boisestate.edu/newsrelease/archive/2001/june/pipp.html.
  10. ↑ Wierenga, Jeremiah Robert. "Story Girl: Nell Shipman, the Little Lass Who 'Went up on Stage' and Never Came Down." Boise Weekly March 10, 2010. http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/story-girl/Content?oid=1515660
  11. ↑ Wierenga, Jeremiah Robert. "Story Girl: Nell Shipman, the Little Lass Who 'Went up on Stage' and Never Came Down." Boise Weekly. March 10, 2010. http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/story-girl/Content?oid=1515660
  12. ↑ Flagg, Marianne. "A Passion for Castle 's Art." Idaho Statesman. Thursday, January 27, 2000. P. 1E, 2E.
  13. ↑ Flagg, Marianne. "A Passion for Castle's Art." Idaho Statesman. Thursday, January 27, 2000. P. 1E, 2E.
  14. ↑ "New Idaho Center for the Book Approved." The Library of Congress Information Bulletin. December 13, 1993. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/93/9323/cfb.html.
  15. ↑ Tom Trusky. Obituary. Idaho Statesman. December 8, 2009.
  16. ↑ Woodward, Tim. "Eccentric Professor Tom Trusky Wills Boise State University a Stunning Gift: Frugal English Teacher Secretly Assembled an Art Collection Worth Hundreds of Thousands." Idaho Statesman." December 5, 2010.
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