I was introduced to Prof. Amy Olberding’s 6 March 2018 Aeon piece “The Outsider” through my Twitter feed (for which, my thanks, @JonathanHsy and @mckellogs). In it, Olberding relates her experiences as an academic who grew up in a relatively poor, rural environment, negotiating the tensions associated with that specific divergent background amid the prevailing cultural narratives of academic life. She cites the example of her grandmother as an instance of successful negotiation before moving to reject the dominant narratives of academia toward those people who share her background, using another of her forebears as an emblem of her resistance to assimilation to academic mannerism and life.

I read the piece as something…less than Olberding writes it. Where she occupies a coveted position, I am on the fringes of academe. Where she emerges directly from farming country, I do so only at a generational remove–and from socioeconomic circumstances both more and less constrained than hers, for while she and her immediate family were better off than many of her kin, I and mine were not, though my parents had and have skilled-labor and white-collar jobs, and I do so, even now. Too, my “y’all” occasioned less comment than hers seems to have, since I went to school in Texas and Louisiana, and I had trained myself more or less “out” of “the accent” long before the thought of academia entered my mind. And there are the obvious concerns of my being a white cis-hetero man and the myriad ways that being so eases my experience of the world in the United States.

Yet even for that removal, I could not help but read Olberding’s piece as a testimony of things like those I’ve known. And I am glad that she holds fast to the identity of her origin as she does; I have not been able to do so. For many years, I worked to set myself apart–in part because I was set apart in some ways, the object of a transitive verb, but only in part. I relished being “the smart one,” as I have discussed before (likely to people’s annoyance when they have noticed). I enjoyed the sense of distinction, the idea that I knew more things and was better because of it. And I very much enjoyed being able to learn yet more things, equating knowledge with personal value and thus treasuring the increase.

I am more or less past that, now. (I do still like to know things, and more things, but not so I can abuse others with them.) Trying to be an academic and failing at it, as others have tried and not succeeded, has taken from me the thoughts that I do stand apart and that I should stand apart. Moving back to the town where I grew up has reminded me that I worked not to be part of the place–and now that I have a daughter, and she is here, I recall how not having the kinds of roots that my classmates had hurt. (I would spare her that pain, although I do not know how to do so.) So, for what little it is worth, I commend Prof. Olberding for doing what she describes in the piece–and I hope more will do as she has done.

Notice me, senpai!

Another of the WordPress blogs to which I am subscribed is Elan Mudrow’s–it is another I encountered from appreciation for mine (which I enjoy and for which I am grateful). The blog usually posts photos and other images, often accompanied by relatively short poems; one example of such is the 2 March 2018 piece, “To Wander.”

Evidently, this got published before I had completed it, or else the completed version went away. I don’t know what happened, and I apologize for it. -GE, 6 April 2018

On 5 March 2018, Colleen Flaherty’s “When Students Harass Professors” appeared in the online Inside Higher Ed. In the piece, Flaherty uses the case of Matthew Vivyan at Florida SouthWestern State College to exemplify an under-reported problem upon which she then expounds: harassment of faculty by students. Flaherty outlines the “normal” course of harassment–usually downwards in institutional authority–before noting the difficulties and complications involved in reporting and investigating the phenomenon. The piece follows with comments regarding what measures are taken and what can be done against such situations, and it concludes with advice for how to proceed further with them, at need.

I am fortunate, of course, to be in the position I am–and to have been in the positions I was. For one, I am certain I have done things that could–and perhaps should–occasion comment and complaint, and I have not much suffered as a result of them (although it could well be the case that certain employment decisions were made in light of such actions–but I have no way to know that, and, if I erred and was rebuked for it, I accept that as just). For another, I have rarely if ever been in the position of being harassed by students. I have had the occasional pupil who offered to “do anything for a better grade,” but I had been warned of such things, so I took measures against them.

There is really only one instance that stands out for me. While I was teaching in New York City, I had many students who were problematic for various reasons. One such, whom I’ll call Ifeche here (it’s not his real name), was routinely disruptive, not only being inattentive, but loudly so, and usually sitting in the front of the room so that his antics could not be ignored. At one point, not long after the middle of the semester, as I was lecturing on one thing or another, I noticed that Ifeche’s hands were blow the desk. This was not unusual; many of my students texted from their laps. (I cared–and care–little; as long as they do not disturb others, I am content to let students pay attention elsewhere. The matter tends to take care of itself). So I continued lecturing–until I noticed Ifeche’s arm jerking rhythmically and, as he shifted, that his hand was down the front of his pants.

At that point, I commented–and sharply–about the matter (Looking back, I am glad that the comment was “Get your hand out of your pants! What’s wrong with you?!?” rather than one of the many snarkier comments that occurs to me now–of a kind with the things that may well have gotten me into trouble in the past). Ifeche, grinning or smirking, left the room. I did not report the incident, which I probably ought to have done, and he came back for the next class meeting, to my distaste. And as I read Flaherty’s 5 March piece, I recalled it and wonder if I was sexually harassed–and if my students were, and I did little to aid them.

Care to help the consideration continue?

Another of the WordPress blogs I follow is @ bittersweet diary, to which I was introduced when its owner liked a post made to this webspace. (I appreciate it, by the way.) One relatively recent post to the blog is the 25 February 2018 poem “Calamity.” Preceded by a black-and-white photo of a blonde-haired, pale-skinned woman exhaling beneath dark gray waters under a cloudy sky, the poem reads as some thirteen lines of free verse grouped into four irregular stanzas. No dominant pattern or rhythm or rhyme presents itself, no regularity of line-length appears, a disorderly structure perhaps connoting the calamity of the title and appearing in the first and penultimate lines of the poem.

That near-bracketing is one of the few structural elements in the poem; a few other instances of repetition help to give the poem a shape, namely “I drowned” in the second and third stanzas (ll. 4, 5, 11)–linking them–and the anaphoric “Not once did I [even] try” in the second stanza (ll. 6-8)–reinforcing its distinctiveness. They, along with the consistent tenor and vehicle, serve to keep the poem a coherent piece of writing despite the inherent disorder of free verse.

They also serve to unify the piece across a particularly strong juxtaposition of the narrator, metaphorically fire in the third stanza, and the dominant image of the addressed lover as an onrushing oceanic storm. The two lines treating flame stand out against the watery rest of the poem, evoking the idea of the narrator being doused by the addressee, fires extinguished by the calamity in which the narrator drowns utterly.

Additionally, there is an interesting neologism in the poem: “everywords” (l. 5). The phrase where it appears would normally be rendered as “In other words,” indicating that another way of saying or explaining the phenomenon would be presented; in such a case, the “drowned” of the preceding line would be presented in different terms, likely expanding upon it in some way (although the word is not arcane, to be sure). The construction, however, is “I drowned. / in everywords, I drowned” (ll. 4-5), the narrator tacitly saying that there is no other way to explain what has happened. Every word that could be used is used–and repeated, further foreclosing the available ways to talk about what has happened amid the calamity. That traumatic events tend to restrict how they can be discussed, usually by surpassing the ability of the mind to frame them, is amply attested–and enduring a calamity, as the narrator claims to have done in interacting with the addressee, is the stuff of which trauma is often made.

It might be easy to read “Calamity” as one among many break-up poems, or else as a quiet reaction to an abusive relationship–the idea of obliteration and subsuming in the poem lends itself to the latter. I am not sure that either is actually the case, however, although I find that I am not able to articulate clearly what the poem is actually doing. (That may be me more than the poem, though.) And it is possible that that inarticulabilty is the point, that in presenting something that seems like it ought to be accessible–because a short poem talking about a bad relationship should be–but actually is not is something that befits the title. Reading the piece may not be a calamity, but being unable to read it results in something not unlike one.

Help me avoid my own calamity?