Small college English, ’90s style

I just began a new term with thirty years at W&L in the rearview mirror. I looked up 1994: aside from the leaders and wars I remembered, Wikipedia reminded me that was the year Munch’s The Scream was stolen, Kurt Cobain died, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president, the Chunnel opened, and Pulp Fiction premiered (we saw it in a Pittsburgh theater on Christmas Eve). Some things I remember about academic culture then:

• In many ways it was terrible. My graduate professors and then a local real estate agent told me that W&L, and especially English, was a sexist snake pit. I learned that an EEOC case was pending against my department for gender discrimination. A lot of people condescended to me for being a young woman (twenty-six at first, yikes), including some students, who would write things in course evaluations like “you should smile more.” I could tell you worse.
• And the racism! Not that the northeast was a haven of enlightenment–it definitely was not–but it took forms in Virginia that I hadn’t seen before, such as a university speaker praising Robert E. Lee as a civil rights hero because he taught some enslaved people how to read. A colleague asked olive-skinned-but-white me at the copy machine, “How did you get so dark?” Again, tip of the iceberg.
• I was pleasantly surprised that, unlike in grad school, none of my new colleagues seemed drunk at midday.
• There were also genuinely good things. I immediately felt needed and appreciated by women and by LGBT colleagues and students. A tenured male professor across the hall was kind and worked to ease my way. I wasn’t the only one who knew that the W&L English Department needed a revolution and would strive to bring it about.

On the lighter side:

• Email was new and many people didn’t use it. I liked it!
• Course registration required signatures on paper from every professor. I’d arrive on campus to find a line snaking away from my office door; those poor students were actually running from building to building instead of trying to hit “refresh” with lightning speed.
• A few still chewed tobacco in class, but shortly the university would remove the spittoons.
• I only saw cell phones on The X-Files.
• I kept dictionaries and encyclopedias around to look up words and references in readings I was teaching for the first time. Sometimes I’d call the Italian professor for a quick translation or run to the library reference room. Tracing a pop culture allusion from a 1950s poem? Basically hopeless.
• For poetry submissions, I licked envelopes and stamps until my tongue felt disgusting. Never mind Submittable: we hadn’t yet hit the technological breakthrough of pre-moistened adhesive.
• Strangers called me all the time to ask grammar questions. Maybe they phoned the university switchboard and got referred to random English professors?

For this apparently antique person, September 2024 feels a little surreal. I prepped the syllabi and course websites midsummer, when I was procrastinating on something else, and I didn’t start additional class prep until a couple of days before kick-off, so I’m wandering around saying, “What? Students, already?” But I met my first year writing seminar Friday–they seemed bright and eager–and will convene my Advanced Poetry Workshop Monday. (Theme: “Haunted & Strange.” The featured image on this post is of cryptid stickers I’ll give out as a first day present.) I had some frustrations about last winter’s entry-level poetry workshop and received good advice on a Facebook thread, which I presumed was now buried forever, all those clever strategies lost. However, Former Lesley was good to me: turns out she pasted the thread into her lesson plan file. Hurrah for Former Lesley!

Otherwise, these past two weeks I’ve been working at things that tend to get shoved aside as the term heats up. I submitted a big grant proposal and labored over edits to the interior design of my next poetry book. Those of you who’ve been through this know there are always layout issues when you scale a 8 1/2 x 11 ms down to a 6 x 9 trim size, but this time the layout is especially complicated and time-intensive for everyone. I also realized that for the first time in years, I have NO poems under submission, so I went back through my files and I’ve been finding a ton of material that just needs a little work before it’s ready to go. No submissions yet, but I’m revising in spare hours, so maybe soon?

I did have a poem from Mycocosmic come out this week in a beautiful new issue of Beloit Poetry Journal. It’s a playful wintry one called “Minus Time”:

I’m also looking forward to fall break when I’m flying out to Minnesota to visit friends. I’ll also spend two nights in Minneapolis doing museumy things AND reading in Magers & Quinn, 10/10, 7 pm, with the amazing Athena Kildegaard and Heid E. Erdrich. On the off-chance you’re near there, it’s free, but they’re hoping people will register in advance so they have a sense of numbers.

Details on two virtual readings this fall forthcoming! And I’m looking forward to Zooming into creative writing classes at a couple of other colleges.

Plenty to do, but I’ve also been reading for pleasure, doing my breathing exercises, and generally trying to calm down. My anxiety levels aren’t yet where I want them to be, but I feel much better than I described in my last post. Onward!–but at a reasonable pace, I hope.