By Greg Lehman
Daily Titan Staff Writer

Joan Greenwood’s “Stirring Dawn: Selected Haiku and Poetry” was published posthumously, honoring the late poetry professor.

Professor Irena Praitis read selections from a newly-published collection of Greenwood’s haiku titled, “Stirring Dawn: Selected Haiku and Poetry” and shared her personal experience of discovering Greenwood’s poetry in spring 2008 through John Greenwood, Greenwood’s husband of over 50 years.

Greenwood taught English and comparative literature at Cal State Fullerton, where she also received the title of emerita professor.

She created a five-week haiku class at CSUF that students could repeat for one credit each, totaling three credits at the end of the semester if students took every section.

Greenwood wrote haiku almost every day and used them as a way of remembering the past.
“Writing haiku almost daily was a form of diary for Joan,” John said.

Howard Seller, a member of the Patrons of the Library who also arranged the event, said, “We have planned this event to honor the memory and poetic accomplishments of professor Greenwood.”
Seller said he had been friends with Greenwood for almost 40 years, and they taught together at CSUF.

“Since most people were not aware that she composed so much poetry, the program on Nov. 15 will provide the first opportunity for many in the audience to hear professor Greenwood’s work read by professor Praitis, who is herself an outstanding and published poet,” Seller said.

Praitis went on sabbatical in 2008 and drove up to Alaska from Southern California and then down to Arizona.

She brought the box of Greenwood’s poems with her in her car and began to read them in Arizona.
“It kind of traveled with me this entire long way,” Praitis said. “I opened the box, and I started reading these poems, and there was just something about them instantly that felt really special, and so I started typing them.”

Praitis began to organize the poems chronologically and saw exceptional strengths in Greenwood’s writing.

“I thought this is really going to amount to something,” Praitis said.

“I found them to be amazing in the sense that it was very clear to me that she had not written for anybody but herself and her family, her husband mostly … It was this incredible glimpse into somebody’s life, into their genuine thought and feeling without the idea at all of there’s supposed to be some specific academic or public audience for it, which made them all that more amazing,” Praitis said.

She continued that of all the lessons she learned through Greenwood’s poetry, love was the strongest.

Both John and Joan Greenwood, Praitis said, “Were absolutely, passionately in love with each other their entire lives.”

One poem, written after the Greenwoods had been married over 30 years, described John walking into the room, inadvertently distracting Joan from doing her work.

“I learned how cynical I really was in looking at what she wrote,” Praitis said. “We think … people fall in love passionately, but that doesn’t last, and you have to find something else that’s kind of stable and very staid. And here was somebody who wrote a lamenting poem … They were together, and they were in love with each other, and they were passionately connected because they clearly worked at it every single day and stayed connected to it every single day and never took it for granted at any given moment. I can’t think of a better thing to have learned than that.”

In the end, Praitis said that Greenwood embodied a devotion to the creative process that stood in the face of destruction.

“Joan was a dedicated teacher,” John said. “She never ‘burned out.’ She was an inspiration and mentor to her junior colleagues and a great many secondary school teachers, especially in Orange County.”