Perchance to Poetry Prof

I’ve been a bit swamped at the end of the semester with a number of academic obligations that it’s been tough to keep up with this one, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. A few years ago I made up my mind that I was going to be what some so pejoratively referred to as “an academic poet.”

The definition I had always heard was that this was a poet who published mostly to help his promotion and tenure cause in a university department, which meant that the work produced leaned toward the mediocre. Somehow the integrity of the work had been compromised because the poet was now an artist in service to an academic community, not to the artistic one. And though I agree that there is much mediocre literature being produced within academia, I also came to recognize that the non-academic world was also producing crappy writing as well. Additionally, some of my favorite poets are academics, so the blanket statement quickly comes into question, especially when it’s uttered by those who are not academics and therefore have little experience or knowledge about the expectations, rewards and commitments of the profession.
Instead of focusing on the hateration coming from non-academics, the artistes who scoff at the MFA programs and such, I’d rather celebrate the fact that I love my job, tough as it sometimes becomes. I get to walk into the classroom two to three times a week and talk about literature. I get to introduce young people to poets and writers they have never heard of and we think critically as a community about context and content, form and structure, history and memory, society and culture. I get to share my excitement of discovery and guide younger artists as they flex those creative muscles. I love what I do and that’s that. Are there bad days? Of course, a job isn’t a job without them. But they’re few compared to how many times I walk out of a seminar or a workshop satisfied that this community I’m in moved forward.
For me, academia was always my safe space. I wasn’t afraid to be gay, or Mexican, or a bookworm, and it was in the writing classroom that I learned to express emotion I had not been able to before. I became unafraid to declare that I loved to read and write, and I have continued to do so since then.
That’s what I see when I enter the classroom—young minds who need a challenge, who are also trying to find a place for their voice in the world. And boy do I push. I have a reputation for being a tough instructor, but it’s because I take what I do seriously. And when conflict or resistance or confrontation arises, I need to go back to the reasons I decided to be a teacher in the first place.
So I’d like to commiserate with other academic poets out there who are nearing the end of their fall semesters—I hear you (and the sound of 30+ writing portfolios dropping on the desk). Just a week or two and this chapter will come to a close.
And for those who think that we academics take vacations between semesters I say “Get real!” That’s when plenty of writing gets done, when we play catch-up on all the writing and reading projects we set aside to work with our students.
I’ve got a manuscript to copyedit, a few book reviews to submit, an award to judge, and about 50 books to read, starting with the reading list for next semester’s seminar on the literature of the apocalypse. On the list: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead among six texts. It should bring me the Christmas cheer I’ve been waiting all semester to sink into.