From secrecy to sonnets

April 27, 2004

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — More than three decades of service to his country gathering intelligence and handling some of the U.S. government’s most sensitive information has given Arthur McMaster a unique perspective on how the world works.

Now he’s found a medium that he can use to share it with others, and in a way he never could before: poetry.

McMaster, 60, spent 34 years working for the national security side of the U.S. government analyzing and gathering information with U.S. Army Intelligence, Special Operations and the CIA, much of it during the height of the Cold War. But in 2002 he retired and decided to redirect his energy toward earning a master’s degree in poetry at the University of Florida.

His time is now focused on writing and expressing ideas, a far cry from his former profession, where he learned how to keep his work private.

Still, McMaster does not flaunt his ideas outright. As a poet, he has learned the art of alluding and suggesting. He expresses his ideas and political convictions subtly, through metaphor and simile.

“I feel as though I have been let out of jail,” McMaster said. “Still, I call upon my experience only in the most tangential way. I could never deal with the details of my day-to-day work in poetry, but the total experience gives me a great deal of inspiration and ideas.”

McMaster, who grew up in upstate New York, joined the U.S. Army right out of high school and was sent to work near the German border where he, along with other young analysts and linguists, collected intelligence using their language skills. He spoke Czech, and said he learned much from the people and their culture during the 18 months he spent there.

“I loved it, and some of my best writing has to do with the Czech people,” he said. “Their tragic history, their wry humor.”

He returned to the United States and graduated from Indiana University in 1968 with a degree in political science. He then earned a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Maryland and went to work in Arlington, Va., for the CIA.

During the next 25 years, McMaster worked his way up through various government agencies, from the CIA to Army Intelligence and finally Special Operations, all while teaching night courses in political science at community colleges.

Most of McMaster’s work dealt with trying to determine how much of a threat the Soviet Union posed to the United States during the Cold War and learn about U.S. relations with countries that were a part of NATO. He was responsible for gathering information and putting it together in analytical reports for the “senior decision makers,” he said.

McMaster always knew he wanted to work in intelligence when he graduated from college, but he his love for poetry was never far from his mind. He wrote when he could but never found much time to devote to it.

One day he’d had enough.

McMaster decided that although he enjoyed his career, he’d spent enough time working in intelligence and that it was time to perfect his writing.

“At some point you have to stop and say, ‘Is this what I want to be doing?’” he said. “And it (intelligence) wasn’t.”

Now he draws on some of those past experiences for his verse. His master’s thesis is a set of poems about issues such as family, government intelligence, the Czech lands and his disgust with the purposelessness of war.

Although the average age of graduate students in the English department is starting to increase, McMaster is the oldest graduate student to enter the program, said poetry Professor Sidney Wade, who was his thesis adviser.

The transition to becoming a student again was not hard for McMaster, but he did find it challenging to teach writing and interact with college students again, he said. McMaster will graduate Saturday along with thousands of other UF students who will graduate in commencement ceremonies Friday through Sunday. The total number of degrees expected to be conferred in spring ceremonies, which includes those through the end of May, is 7,512, including 5,144 bachelor’s, 1,583 master’s, and 785 doctoral and professional degrees.

McMaster and his wife will then move in July to Greenville, S.C., where he plans to write and pursue work as an adjunct professor at Furman University.