I attended the English Institute lectures in the fall of 1976, shortly before I resigned from my teaching job. Geoffrey Hartmann gave a talk in which he said that the word was 13
primary, that it came before everything. In the question period I asked him, ―Do you really think that when a baby sees the mother, it thinks, ―Breast‖?
Geoffrey Hartmann blew a fuse. ―No further questions!‖ he shouted, and walked off the stage.
As the meeting dispersed, Robinson, who had been my Chaucer professor at Harvard, came up to me and said, ―You asked a very interesting question.‖
I said, ―You probably don‘t remember me, but I was having terrible trouble with Middle English and you called me and my friend Clio in to your office and asked us, ‗What‘s the problem?‘ I said, ‗After I read Chaucer for while, when I close my eyes I see a lot of ys and gs.‘ ‗Oh,‖ you said, ‗You must be very eye-minded,‘ and you suggested that Clio and I read Chaucer aloud to each other. After that neither of us had any problems. You were incredibly helpful. I‘m teaching Chaucer now and that‘s what I tell my students to do.‖
―Well,‖ Robinson said, very shy and pleased, ―at least I did something right in my life.‖
He asked to me to come to his office and talk.
We talked about my interests in linguistics and in Piaget and also about my poetry and my painting. He was terribly nice.
He said, ―You have a lot of strings to your bow.‖