Welcome Home Professor Alfred

William Alfred, Kenan Professor of English, wishes he could still follow his normal routine--seeing as many students and friends as possible during the course of a day--but will be unable to do so "for at least a week" says Esther Brooks, who is staying with Alfred during his recuperation from a recent heart attack.

Alfred, author of the play "Hogan's Goat" and a favorite among Harvard faculty and students, returned home from Stillman Infirmary this week, and is now sequestered in his Cambridge home ("no visitors, for a while, while he mends," says Brooks).

So far, it has been difficult to keep the well-wishers and Alfred apart; Joanne T. Dempsey, a graduate student in English who is teaching Alfred's English 10 section in his absence, said earlier this week that many of his students are reading poetry "to talk to him through it."

And, Brooks says, the five student members of Alfred's Exeter Book Seminar are preparing free translations of old English poems to send Alfred as a get-well card.