October 11: Adjuncts, Anna M. Evans, "The Adjunct's Villanelle"

I know some of my disciples have been missing the poems I usually post.  This time, I decided against choosing a Poet of the Week.  Instead, I've been reading the fall issue of the poetry journal Rattle, which featured poems by and about adjuncts.  You know, those underpaid "part-time" instructors on college campuses across the country.

I am a contingent professor.  Have been for twenty-some years.  The poems in this issue of Rattle really spoke to me on a very deep level.  They made me sad.  Made me angry.  Made me laugh.  Therefore, I have decided to share a few of my favorites from the issue.

I type this post right now in my university office.  In less than a half hour, I will walk down the hall, into a classroom, and spend the next three-and-a-half hours trying to get a group of young people excited about writing and research.  First year composition.  It's not an easy gig, and there are some tenured faculty who get paid a great deal more money than me to teach the same class.  That's what being a contingent is all about.

In two days' time, when my name is announced in Stockholm by the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, I'm hoping to become the first contingent professor to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Certainly, that would qualify Saint Marty to teach at least a class in mythology.

The Adjunct's Villanelle

by:  Anna M. Evans

You just come in and teach, then you can go,
she says, distracted by her tenure file.
I wish someone would tell my students so.

From there I leave to meet with one who's slow
to understand the work.  It takes a while
to teach him what he needs.  Then, I can go.

Another text:  the fetus didn't grow.
She's on bed rest for weeks.  Can I compile
the work she'll miss?  I can, and tell her so.

Two student emails wait:  one's in a show
and really wants me there.  Good kid.  I smile
and write back saying I'll be thrilled to go.

The second wants a reference.  Just say no,
I'm told.  I could, but cannot reconcile
this with the student I remember.  So,

The one whose mom died doesn't need to know
my story, how I have to swallow bile
when I hear how I come, and teach, and go.
I don't.  I wish someone would tell them so.

October 7: Touch-and-Go, Same Orbit, Nobel Prize, October 13

All this means is that the physical world as we understand it now is more like the touch-and-go creek world I see than it is like the abiding world of which the mountains seem to speak . . .

Dillard is talking about the frustratingly constant fact that the world is not constant.  It is malleable.  Mutable.  Constantly in motion, in a state of change or (dare I say it?) evolution.  Floods happen.  Forest fires and earthquakes.  Species come into being.  Species are snuffed out like candles.  Human beings sometimes have a hand in it, and sometimes it's Nature.

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you already know that I'm not a great fan of change.  I eat the same breakfast every morning.  An egg.  The same lunch.  Chicken sandwich, apple juice.  My days are pretty structured.  I work the same hours.  Teach the same hours.  Get home at pretty much the same time every day.  If Nature is an instrument of change, I am an instrument of stubborn constancy.  I am a redwood.  A mountain.  The moon.  Always there, in the same place, following the same orbit.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Nobel Prize in Literature.  How, early in the morning on October 13, my name will be announced in the Grand Hall of the Swedish Academy.  The Nobel Prize has been announced in the first weeks of October since the beginning of the twentieth century, with the exception of the years during World War II, when no prizes were awarded.  Thus, the Nobel Prize in Literature is a fairly constant thing, as well.

Next Thursday morning, I will get up at my normal time (4:45 a.m.).  I will shower, get dressed, eat breakfast.  Then I will drive to work.  When I get to work, I will fire up my desktop computer.  I do these things every Thursday.  And then, I will sit and wait for a phone call.  You see, just minutes before the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy announces the recipient of the Nobel Prize, she phones the selected writer to congratulate him or her.  When the phone rings at my desk next Thursday, I will pick it up and have a conversation with someone in Stockholm.

That's the way things always happen on the day the Nobel Prize is announced.  Always.  That's another constant.  And Saint Marty is not about to fly in the face of tradition, although he may take the rest of the day from work after he wins.

Neruda's Nobel diploma . . . He got the call in October