Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Read last night at Sarah Lawrence College, with Ron Egatz, Jean Hartig and Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Rachel and I workshopped with Stephen Dobyns during our MFA. She is returning to Sarah Lawrence next fall, but this time as faculty. A number of students, undergrads and grads, came, and a few faculty, including Kevin Pilkington and Patrick Rosal. A few people told me afterwards that they liked my reading. I hope they liked the poems as much, if not more. It's hard to tell since no one bought a book. I returned to the city poorer by the cost of my train fare. Chris Hanson-Nelson, who organized the reading, spent more time, effort and money than I did. It was generous of him. I don't think the college should presume on the generosity of its alums. It might not have the money to pay us for reading, but it could at least reimburse our travel expenses in some imaginative way.

Yesterday I spoke on an alumni panel at Sarah Lawrence College about life after the MFA. There were three other speakers, Joel Aure, who was my classmate, and two other women, Melissa and Karen. All three took the route of adjunct college teaching, whereas I represented teaching at an independent school. I was fascinated and horrified by how they "glue" (Joel's neat word) together a living from adjunct teaching, substitution calls, and workshop gigs. At the very last moment, a college may call to cancel a course due to poor enrollment, or to add one. The adjuncts are also miserably paid. All the creativity and energy that could have gone into their writing have to be spent on networking and follow-up and frenetic lesson preparation and thankless piles of grading. What was I thinking when I thought of taking that route after graduation? It is the kind of life that only a young person can sustain and enjoy. The speakers were in their late twenties and early thirties, an...