mimsy and outgrabe

At the beginning of last week I sent a letter to some vice presidents, deans, and committee chairs at the college and also to the officers of the union, officially withdrawing from service at the college for the upcoming academic year. It's not a formal requirement, but it was one that I felt was necessary. I wanted to be as professional as possible, and let them know about my absence from their various committees and initiatives so that they might find a replacement for me, but I also wanted to be as clear as possible about my reasons for withdrawing from these positions. The reaction to my letter was as I expected. I received some emailed support from the committee chairs, and a long, good phone call from one of the deans, but mostly radio silence and static from the people who I'd hoped would read the letter and understand its implications, which are larger than my particular and personal set of circumstances and point to larger problems at the college. And that silenc...

Get yer minds out of the gutter, folks! "It" refers to one's self, one's consciousness, the essential voice that one shares with the world when one publishes a poem, or an essay, or an article -- or an essay on poetry printed in a journal, such as this one by my friend Stephanos Papadopoulos in the Los Angeles Review of Books last week. I love this essay. It's beautifully written, introduces me to poets I was not familiar with previously, and speaks to an issue that's timely and relevant. Also, and more importantly, I think it does what an essay should do, which is similar to a function of poetry: to raise a question that weighs on the mind of the writer, to reflect on that question, to explore that question. It may or may not answer that question, but you follow the writer's process as he or she thinks . (This idea -- of the essay as a mode of thinking -- is the most difficult to teach in Freshman Comp.) Of course, as I said above, the author i...