During my professional career as an academic poet (and I wear that label proudly--I've never been a punk street poet, not even remotely), I have long marveled at the curious levels of my profession, something not terribly distinct from professional baseball with their farm systems or professional basketball and their developmental leagues.
On one end, you have the superstar academic poets, who may teach one course per semester, perhaps even one course per academic year, typically at a prestigious and money-ed M.F.A. or doctorate program in creative writing, teaching perhaps 10 students, advising several theses, and then doing a lot of readings, even having an agent. They make well over six figures. The other end, of course, is the well documented plight of the newly minted M.F.A. students, cobbling together adjunct positions at $2000-2500 per course, with no benefits, no office support, and hellish student loads, taking on five or six classes per semester.
In the middle are the range of "teaching artists," those who have full-time, sometimes tenured, positions at your regional state school or the generalist at the struggling liberal arts college. This has been mostly my life, teaching at schools with 3/3 or 4/4 loads, moderate expectations of publication, a promise of a sabbatical now and then, mostly good students, heavy committee work. These days, you might, might see 30 to 40 such jobs posted nationally for these schools for poets in a given year. They are plum positions, and I frankly lucked into my position here. But that's for another entry, I'm sure.
And there are "success" stories, rags-to-riches in this climate. One I know very well is that of Jay Hopler, who taught at my home institution as a creative writing adjunct, who despite my efforts to get him on full-time, was hounded out by an unethical lower-level administrator, but then who has gone on to being a Pulitzer finalist, founding a terrific M.F.A. program at the University of South Florida, and most importantly, is writing amazing poetry.
But the people in my profession that I admire are the many, many poets who teach at community colleges. From a mentor, the late Bill Studebaker who was at the College of Southern Idaho for years and years, to my good friend Michael Hettich at Miami-Dade College, to the U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan at Marin College, to rockstar and kickass activist Amy King at Nassau Community College, to disrupting Kent Johnson at Highland Community College, to Shaindel Beers at Blue Mountain College and more and more and more. They do heavy-lifting and transformative up-lifting with their teaching. They have mandatory office hours that keep them on campus fifty hours per week. They are primarily writing teachers, through and through. And their service work to the college can be soul crushing, not to mention all the fun program assessment that is their lives.
I don't know how they do all that, and they remain active in their writing and their profession. I think for many of them, it's all about what is necessary to them with their teaching and their writing. It's a deep love thing, an exhausting thing. I came very, very close to following that path, with an offer for a full-time job from the College of the Siskyous in Weed, California, oh, about twenty-five years ago--I was teaching at Idaho State on a temporary, three-year contract at that time. The attraction was being a part of backwoods, vocational-oriented institution, helping with the good work of assisting people to better their economic lot. And it was attractive in also being someone who could help people who needed some affirmation about the value of their own writing, their own small poems, seeing value in these very quiet and inconsequential expressions.
But the prospect of the 5/5 load, the isolation (70 miles to Redding! 350 miles to Portland!), the creepy right-wing, off-the-grid nut-jobbery of that stretch between Yreka and Klamath Falls, took the sheen off the romance. I would have been very good at it, an entirely different life for me. And while I know I've been of some use in the lucky and rather nondescript academic gig I have landed and stayed with for 20 years, I wonder about having been able to have done more "good" at the College of the Siskyous. It's not that I don't recognize how I have helped students at Florida Gulf Coast University, but I feel more expendable here--the moment I retire, they'll be able to hire a newer, shinier, better published, and more deserving version of me.
I think of someone remarkable like Bill Studebaker, how he lived his generosity, all the while being able to do that very, very selfish work of writing poems.
On one end, you have the superstar academic poets, who may teach one course per semester, perhaps even one course per academic year, typically at a prestigious and money-ed M.F.A. or doctorate program in creative writing, teaching perhaps 10 students, advising several theses, and then doing a lot of readings, even having an agent. They make well over six figures. The other end, of course, is the well documented plight of the newly minted M.F.A. students, cobbling together adjunct positions at $2000-2500 per course, with no benefits, no office support, and hellish student loads, taking on five or six classes per semester.
In the middle are the range of "teaching artists," those who have full-time, sometimes tenured, positions at your regional state school or the generalist at the struggling liberal arts college. This has been mostly my life, teaching at schools with 3/3 or 4/4 loads, moderate expectations of publication, a promise of a sabbatical now and then, mostly good students, heavy committee work. These days, you might, might see 30 to 40 such jobs posted nationally for these schools for poets in a given year. They are plum positions, and I frankly lucked into my position here. But that's for another entry, I'm sure.
And there are "success" stories, rags-to-riches in this climate. One I know very well is that of Jay Hopler, who taught at my home institution as a creative writing adjunct, who despite my efforts to get him on full-time, was hounded out by an unethical lower-level administrator, but then who has gone on to being a Pulitzer finalist, founding a terrific M.F.A. program at the University of South Florida, and most importantly, is writing amazing poetry.
But the people in my profession that I admire are the many, many poets who teach at community colleges. From a mentor, the late Bill Studebaker who was at the College of Southern Idaho for years and years, to my good friend Michael Hettich at Miami-Dade College, to the U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan at Marin College, to rockstar and kickass activist Amy King at Nassau Community College, to disrupting Kent Johnson at Highland Community College, to Shaindel Beers at Blue Mountain College and more and more and more. They do heavy-lifting and transformative up-lifting with their teaching. They have mandatory office hours that keep them on campus fifty hours per week. They are primarily writing teachers, through and through. And their service work to the college can be soul crushing, not to mention all the fun program assessment that is their lives.
I don't know how they do all that, and they remain active in their writing and their profession. I think for many of them, it's all about what is necessary to them with their teaching and their writing. It's a deep love thing, an exhausting thing. I came very, very close to following that path, with an offer for a full-time job from the College of the Siskyous in Weed, California, oh, about twenty-five years ago--I was teaching at Idaho State on a temporary, three-year contract at that time. The attraction was being a part of backwoods, vocational-oriented institution, helping with the good work of assisting people to better their economic lot. And it was attractive in also being someone who could help people who needed some affirmation about the value of their own writing, their own small poems, seeing value in these very quiet and inconsequential expressions.But the prospect of the 5/5 load, the isolation (70 miles to Redding! 350 miles to Portland!), the creepy right-wing, off-the-grid nut-jobbery of that stretch between Yreka and Klamath Falls, took the sheen off the romance. I would have been very good at it, an entirely different life for me. And while I know I've been of some use in the lucky and rather nondescript academic gig I have landed and stayed with for 20 years, I wonder about having been able to have done more "good" at the College of the Siskyous. It's not that I don't recognize how I have helped students at Florida Gulf Coast University, but I feel more expendable here--the moment I retire, they'll be able to hire a newer, shinier, better published, and more deserving version of me.
I think of someone remarkable like Bill Studebaker, how he lived his generosity, all the while being able to do that very, very selfish work of writing poems.
Comments