Masked Man Black

<p>We all wear masks. There are people with whom we can take our masks off and speak from the heart. Professor Walker is an expert in masks or personas. And he well knows that sometimes masks let us speak deep truths about the world. He also knows masks sometimes protect us sometimes keep us from ourselves and sometimes cause us pain. Paul Dunbar in We Wear the Mask asks of the world and of poetry Why should the world be over-wise / In counting all our tears and sighs? Yet it seems that now as then the world pays too little attention to the tears and sighs about which Dunbar sings. We are so grateful that Walker has taken the time to sit with death and pain and heartbreak to sit and tune his voice to sing these elegies so that we can gather around him to sing through our tears with head held high.  -Jeremy Paden</p>