Friday poetry challenge: Replaceable You

I’m trying to replace myself but it isn’t easy.

The Powers That Be like to insist that I’m irreplaceable—usually when they want to sweet-talk me into taking on some extra bit of work—but nevertheless they want to quickly identify someone to replace me as Director of our Center for Teaching Excellence so I can train my replacement over the course of the fall and make a smooth transition that will maintain our momentum. They’ve asked me to write a job description so they can seek and sort applicants, which is a nice switch from the previous selection process, which ran something like this: "We need a Director. You’ve done it before. Do it again."

So I’ve spent some time trying to succinctly describe my duties and the characteristics needed to fulfill them, because I have to write something more specific than "Wear yourself out trying to meet everyone’s needs without adequate resources or support." I have crafted a bunch of bullet points using HR jargon to describe skills, tasks, and dispositions, but I haven't shared the other list, the secret list that can’t be put into words in an official document. Things like "The successful candidate will possess the ability to say yes in a way that clearly means no, a willingness to allow others to take credit for one's own work, and eternal patience with people seeking the magic wand that will make all their classroom problems disappear."

It could be worse--it could be verse!

There once was a Center Director
whose seat was equipped with ejector,
but before she took flight
the boss asked her to write
a description to help them select her

Replacement, an ideal mixture
of cheerleader, scholar, and fixer;
whose magical skills
could cure all teaching ills
and multiply budgets--neat trick! Sure, 

We're seeking a teacher who's stellar
with students, and then we'll compel her
to trade classroom chores
for admin meetings (bores!)
and "unspecified duties." (Don't tell her!)

So the Center Director is trying 
to describe her own job (without lying)
because she must replace
herself--in some haste--
or else she'll be here 'til she's dying.

 

Your turn--put your replacement's job description into verse. 

Because it was there

I walk alone across the snow-covered campus, my shoes crunch-crunching over snowy walkways stained blue from ice-melt salt that doesn't do much good in single-digit temperatures. At one point I'm forced to guess the path along an unplowed walkway, but I finally make it to the safety of the library. From my office window the campus looks deserted except for the occasional figure bundled up as if prepared to trudge across the icy expanse of Hoth. 

Why am I here? I don't teach on Tuesdays so I could have stayed home, but instead I braved the treacherous roads to spend a day catching up on scut-work and meeting with students. Is it really worth risking my life just to get to campus?

Fortunately, the worst of the Snowpocalypse missed our area; we had no power outages or falling trees and our pipes didn't freeze. But we had plenty of snow, ice, and cold, and the cold is just getting colder. I broke out the long-johns and bundled up thoroughly, but in the short distance I walked from car to building, my face started to hurt.

I suppose I wanted to prove that I could do it. Living with people who scoff at bad weather is a challenge. If I'm hunkering under a blanket with a cup of hot tea and a good book when the resident lumberjack says it looks like a good time to go out and cut down some trees--well, I can't help feeling like a bit of a wimp. It's pretty lame to beg out of driving in snow because I learned to drive in Florida, where snow never entered the picture. I mean, it's true, but that was more than 40 years ago and I've developed some snow-driving skills in that time. The fact is that I just don't wanna.

But I wasn't getting any work done at home and I do have some appointments today, so here I am in my office wondering whether anyone will actually show up. I'm filling the time with meaningful work: peer-reviewing an article for a literary journal (meh), rescheduling all my Monday meetings that were cancelled because of weather, preparing for a campus presentation  that promises to be the highlight of my week, looking out the window at something other than yard birds--which are lovely, of course, but the birds don't pay my salary. 

Campus feels eerily quiet today and I doubt that I'll stay much beyond lunchtime. I'll meet with my students, congratulate myself for making the effort, and then trudge back along the frozen expanse of Hoth to my warm, cozy home. It's a luxury, of course, to go home to a warm house when so many others are left out in the cold, and so I contribute to local charities that serve the homeless and pray for a world in which no one has to stay outside on a day like today.

The view from my window

Snowpocalypse staredown

What else is there to say?

Birding the Snowpocalypse

Years ago a friend from California visited our house and her young daughter was jumping up and down about these beautiful red birds at the feeders.

Cardinals. She'd never seen a cardinal before. 

Around here, they're common as dirt--especially on a day like today, with snow all over everything and an easy source of seeds at our feeders. It's not unusual to look outside and see a dozen or more cardinals vying for position. Later during mating season the males get all territorial, but right now they're content to hang out all together in the trees surrounding our feeders, along with woodpeckers, titmice, chickadees, finches, juncos, and a solitary towhee. It's unusual to have juncos and towhees at the same time, but there they are.

So far, Snowpocalypse has been pretty, with just a few inches of snow covering the roads last night and more big, fluffy flakes coming down this morning. But now the snow has changed to sleet. Who knows what's coming next? No plows have come down my road yet but I don't have to go anywhere today so I think I'll stay home and watch the birds. I can worry about the roads tomorrow.

The view from my bedroom window.

First towhee of the season. 

Friday poetry challenge: Toddlers at the top

Someone said that working in academe right now is like desperately holding on to an abusive relationship: just when you think things are getting better, a fist comes flying at you out of nowhere. 

It was nothing, really--just a little love-tap. Probably entirely accidental. Taking this latest blow personally would be just as petty and childish as taking bad weather personally. I mean, the storm hits everyone--it's not particularly intent upon ruining my weekend. But it would be nice to be able to do the work I love without wondering when I'll be floored by another arbitrary slap in the face.

While I play the toddler pouting in the corner, I wonder what it would be like if toddlers ruled the College. A previous administration taught us what Leadership by Tantrum looks like, and we've seen any number of bright shiny programs and plans get tossed aside the moment a new toy gets plopped down in the playroom. We've seen otherwise rational people hoarding goodies so no one else can touch them, and we've seen the hand of discipline being applied to exactly the wrong backside. Most of all, we've learned that it does no good to stomp our feet and cry that It's not fair! The kid who cries the loudest may occasionally get rewarded, but he's more often sent to the time-out box. So I'll sit over in my corner and sulk for a bit, but by next week this will all be forgotten and I'll be back in the playroom hoping for the best. (And--wham!) 

These toys are mine,
and that one, too! 
I don't want you,
or you, or you

to touch my things.
So here's the line:
on this side, every-
thing is mine.

On your side, play 
with broken toys.
Not fair? Who cares!
These bring me joy! 

Hey, give it back!
Don't make me mad!
Don't kick or I'll
be calling Dad!

I'll scream and cry
and raise a fuss!
He's here! Oh dear--
now all of us

are fleeing from
his angry spanks.
He missed! I'm safe!
He got you! Thanks

For soaking up
his angry blows.
Next time he'll get me.
(So it goes.)

Now your turn: what would happen if toddlers ruled your workplace? 

Where have all the students gone?

There was a time, not so long ago, when I started every semester hoping to scare a few students away. On the first day of class, after all the syllabus-related preliminaries, I would give students a poem they'd never seen before and require them to write about it, just to show me what they could do in 20 minutes, and I didn't complain if a few students went right over to the Records Office to drop the class. After all, my courses were generally full and a few drops meant good news for students on the waitlist.

Well, times have changed. I can't remember the last time I had a full class, much less a waitlist, and I've had multiple classes cancelled due to low (or nonexistent) enrollment. This semester I'm teaching American Lit Survey for the 25th and final time, but instead of 20 or 25 students including a swath of English majors, I started with 11 students. One student dropped yesterday, so I'm down to 10--with the drop deadline a full 10 days away.

And English majors? I may have one, unless someone has not yet declared. It looks like most of the students on the roster are majoring in finance or accounting, plus a couple of Education majors and a history buff. I can't afford to scare any of them away or I'll end up with no one to teach this semester, so I'm treading lightly. 

Further, one student made a comment on the first day of class that set off alarm bells. I won't reveal the content, but the comment and attitude put me on alert: if ever anyone was prepared to secretly record my class and post snippets out of context online, this is the one. I have never worried about the Powers That Be trying to constrain or control the content of my courses, but these days nothing scares me more than a student who knows how to record on a smartphone. We're all just one wacky ad-lib away from the wrong kind of notoriety.

But what can they do--fire me? I'm retiring in December. I can't afford to scare my small cadre of students, and I refuse to waste much time letting them scare me. If students can find a way to put up with me for a few more months, I can ride off into the sunset with my wacky ad-libs waving in the breeze. 

On a day like today, who needs a poet?

On a day celebrating the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr., I'm thinking of Walt Whitman, which seems an odd choice. Whitman died decades before King's birth and his ideas belonged to a different century; nevertheless, I told my American Lit Survey students that since we're discussing Whitman in class on Wednesday, they should spend a little time on MLK day to sit and read Whitman's "The Wound-Dresser."  

What can a poem about Whitman's Civil War experience possibly say about the ongoing struggle for civil rights?

Whitman didn't fight in the Civil War--too old--but his brother fought and was wounded at Fredericksburg. Whitman traveled to a field hospital to tend to his brother's wounds, but then he accompanied a trainload of soldiers to a hospital in Washington, D.C., where he spent the next three years volunteering as a nurse.

Given the state of medical science at the time, it was a messy and unpleasant business, one that seems profoundly out of place in a war poem. Early in "The Wound-Dresser," Whitman describes the young people clamoring for war stories, asking him to "be witness again, paint the mightiest armies of earth," to describe the "hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous" that led to Union victory. We've certainly had plenty of poetry extolling the glories of war, right on back to The Iliad, but Whitman had little experience of glory. 

Instead, he takes readers alongside as he moves through a hospital full of broken bodies, providing what small comfort he can. "Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, / Straight and swift to my wounded I go," he writes:

To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd again.

No glory here--only blood and gore, wounds and refuse. In a poem full of pain, he won't allow readers to look away:

From the stump of the arm, the amputated,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look'd on it.

But the poet has looked on it, and not just the bloody stump but "the fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen"--how many wounds over three years of battles? And what kind of help could a poet possibly offer?

"The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, / I sit by the restless all the dark night," he writes, and sometimes, when nothing can be done, he wishes for the wounded the sweet succour of death.

He evokes the stench and mess of gangrenous flesh, the futility of so many promising lives lost, the human cost of fighting for a worthwhile principle. I tell my students that the image of the poet spreading comfort among the hospital beds provides an emblem for American authors after the Civil War. Who will mend the great bloody gash in the American psyche? Who will help suture the gaping divisions that continue to tear the nation apart? Whitman reminds us that equality does not arrive easily but often requires blood and sacrifice, and if we're not fit to fight, then the least we can do is tend wounds and bear witness.

Which is why, on a day like today, we still need nurses and wound-dressers, and we'll always need poets.