Bob Lucid, mentor: photo & 5-minute audio clip
The late Bob Lucid (Bob hired me, mentored me & later secured 3805 Locust Walk as a site for what become the Writers House) spoke in stunning, seemingly aimless periodic sentences. This photo was taken just after I interviewed him as the Writers House turned 10 years old in 2006. And here are 5 remarkable minutes of Bob talking during that interview:
(Note that he begins by saying “Architecture is destiny,” one of his favorite, and truest, of Penn truths.)
For Writers House trivia fans: our first Program Coordinator—Shawn Walker—lived at the Writers House (on the third floor) and had her cat with her all the time. This little creature had been one of Shawn’s mom’s many felines and she became the Writers House cat. Yes, a cat lived at KWH. And its name was… “Lucid.” (“Lucy” for short.) Shawn revered Bob Lucid as much as I and many others did.
So many of Bob’s radical ideas about learning-through-living informed our first plans for what would happen at 3805 Locust.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 
Founder/Faculty Director, 