Poetic passions
Nooter's passion lies in poetry. She has been writing since high school but found that a demanding college climate challenged her to improve herself. "When I got to college, I felt new pressure to discover whether or not I was a poet, and that made it difficult to write," she said.
She took "Writing Poetry" with Professor of English David Sofield in the spring of her freshman year and found it both discouraging and didactic. At that point, Nooter had never dealt with criticism and didn't know how to revise her work. "There was pressure to make it a really good poem rather than enjoying the process," said Nooter.
Nooter's courses helped her redirect her focus and engender a more mature style. "Poetry and Nationality," a course taught by former Visiting Writer Glyn Maxwell, stands out in her mind as a major stepping stone. "Glyn has a particular vision about what poetry should be, which I found to be very helpful," she said. "It was the first time I'd started to belong to the world of poetry writing." Nooter's progression included a special topics class for which she had to submit a collection of poems to the English department, an experience that helped her become more serious in her work. In her last semester here, she studied with Visiting Writer Daniel Hall. "It all turned out very well," she said.
Although being an English major can encompass a broad range of intellectual endeavors, Nooter focused on writing and reading poetry. She was fascinated with trying to discover what makes poetry "good."
Around the world
With classics, Nooter studied Greek literature. She had a background in Greek tragedy and took Greek and Latin in high school. "In classics classes, you sit and read a play from beginning to end, read supporting materials and maybe bits of plays. Since you have to read line by line, it takes time. There's so much translation," she said.
Nooter has traveled frequently, primarily during her college years. With the help of the Collar Prize for Greek from Amherst, she vacationed in Greece after her freshman year. During her sophomore year, she won the MacArthur-Leithauser Award for an English student with creative promise. Nooter used that money, which is intended for travel, to visit Tunisia and see the ruins of Carthage.
"Carthage is the city of Dido, who is the tragic figure in 'The Aeneid,'" she explained. Nooter was fascinated by Dido and spent six weeks traveling there and writing. "It was a difficult experience because it was the first block of time I'd set aside just to write." Nooter also went abroad to Rome during the second semester of her junior year and studied Roman archaeology.
When opportunity knocks
For the awards she's won and the opportunities they have opened up for her, Nooter is very grateful. "I'm thankful to the people who set up these awards and to those who have been involved," she said. "They believe in poetry as a real thing."
Nooter won the Lionel Pierson Fellowship, which is given by the American Philological Association (APA) of classicists in the U.S. The association funnels all classics jobs and has about 3,000 members. The award is given to a single American or Canadian senior to study in either England or Scotland for a year. It has been in existence for four years, and Nooter is the first female recipient as well as the first recipient from Amherst. They pick four candidates to fly out to an annual APA conference for an interview in January. "The conference was an illuminating experience. I saw the classics world in a new way," Nooter said. "It's a very political and small field, and the people were all really nice and smart."
Nooter plans to take seminars and read and scrutinize Greek literature and other classics. Her workload is equivalent to "simultaneously working on one long independent paper, like a thesis, and a few supporting papers." She hopes to gain a knowledge of the English interpretation of the classics and use that knowledge in America.
Although she is genuinely excited about the opportunity the scholarship has given her, she isn't quite sure if she has found her final career path. "I'm not sure if I want to be a classicist-it's one of a few options," Nooter said. "I don't know how you go out into the real world and write poetry. I'm trusting in the idea that one keeps writing and something will happen."