This book explores the trait that makes our species stand out: a desire to find answers. From the confessions of a professional student to the search for the miraculous, this collection of essays, short stories, poetry, and art wrestles with the question of what brings forth a questing spirit. The book looks at how learning and teaching take place, as experienced in, and sometimes in spite of, the classroom. A teacher learns a truth from what becomes for him an absurdity - the assigning of grades. A Midwestern community is forever changed by the courage of one student. A writer learns how to give the perfect dinner party by dining with the John Dos Passos family.Symbiotic relationships between living and learning take readers on a literary pilgrimage to Virginia Woolf's neighbourhood where, at an abandoned railway station, the significance of a diary entry brings a writer's past into emotional focus. A humorist examines her disastrous early marriage to a sailor. A professional juggler adroitly handles the theoretical issues of multiple intelligences as played out in the business community.
As with earlier Chrysalis Reader volumes, "Live & Learn" is a literary smorgasbord, which may present readers with answers to some perennial questions: what aspects of the learning process are universal, and which are individual? How do we foster lifelong learning? Why do we ask 'Why'?
Author Biography
Robert F. Lawson's poetry has appeared in Three Rivers Poetry Journal, Salt Lick, Plum Review, Phoenix, Negative Capability, Lullwater Review, Kalliope, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and others. He is currently the major gifts and planned giving officer for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. A co-editor for the Chrysalis Reader and former editor for Simon & Schuster, Lawson does freelance editing and writing consultation as time permits.
Carol S. Lawson holds a master's degree in creative writing and literature from Bennington College. Her long and varied career in publishing has included editing a medical journal for Harper & Row, publications work for the U.S. Public Health Service and the Environmental Protectio
