The following excerpt is from an article in the AWP Job Listing online. You have to be a member to read the article, so I’m not sure if the link will work for everyone.

The article is “Economic Crisis Affects Academic Job Market” by Emily Lu (November 2008).
“The number of academic jobs announced in the AWP Job List declined 54% from 586 in 2006-07 to 316 in 2007-08. Tenure-track job ads declined by about 57% in 2007-08 from 2006-07, although 68 ads listed in 2007-08 did not specify whether they were tenure-track appointments. In 2006-07, 327 announcements were tagged as non-tenure track, compared to 241 in 2007-08. The total number of job ads in the AWP Job List decreased by 56% in 2007-08. (See Tables 1 and 2.) In addition to the erosion of tenure-stream jobs, English faculty face additional challenges. Faculty salaries in English still lag behind other fields. Data compiled by the CHE places English language and literature faculty salaries are at the bottom of the pay scale at 4-year institutions. The average English instructor’s salary is $39,834 compared with the $55,364 average salary of Engineering instructors or the $42,420 average salary of instructors in Communications, Journalism, and related studies. The economic disparity continues at all levels of employment. Full-time Assistant Professors in English earn $6,743 less on average than Assistant Professors in Area, Ethnic, Cultural, and Gender Studies. At the top levels of employment, English Professors make $4,671 less than Philosophy and Religious Studies Professors.11 (See Table 4.)”Lu goes on to talk about the disturbing trend of tenure-track jobs being lost through attrition as the older generation retires, and she states that one tenured professor can be replaced with eight adjuncts.Sigh.

A few days ago, I heard an interview on NPR with Steve Earle and his son Justin Townes Earle, who has also gone into the music business. It’s a great interview about children following (or rebelling against) the family tradition. Here are two things that stick:

Justin Townes Earle mentions that when he first tried to write songs as a young man, he realized that he didn’t have anything to say. When he asked his father what to do about it, Steve Earle simply said, “Read.” The younger Earle reports that this made all the difference. As an English comp teacher at a community college, I love this. Too many of my students idolize popular musicians without knowing what goes on behind the music/video.

At the end of the interview, as the NPR commentator is signing off, you hear Steve Earle say “Justin, call your grandmother, please.” It’s a very parental moment. Then, Justin Townes Earle responds, “I will. I’ll call her this afternoon,” with just a hint of the child scolded in his voice.

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The trouble with a break from my school work:

I have time to catch up on everything on my desk at home, which means lots of slips of paper with titles and authors listed. While I’m reading through all the books & journals that have piled up over the last four months, I end up ordering more!

The new Indiana Review arrived a few days ago. Here are the standouts for me.

Four poems by Amaud Jamaul Johnson dealing with the complicated issue of race in the south. Of particular note is “Miss Thelma.”

The short story “Pamela” by Dave Madden. The main character is a 17-year-old girl. The premise of the story is clever, the author announcing in the first paragraph that the narrator’s father has bought her a new car but will only give it to her when she learns to type sixty words per minute. (The story is set in the time of the Apple IIe, and the father wants his daughter to be prepared for the computerized future.) At first I was suspicious of what almost seemed like a plot trick…keeping us reading as the narrator takes the self-tests and falls short of the goal, but the story involves several layers of conflict that cohere, in the end, into a truly enjoyable coming-of-age read.

Kim Philley’s poem “Quantum” is a wonder of sounds, including these lines: “I am deep in a bantam / grief, narrow shoulders full tilt / in the stereophonic –“

And, J. W. Richardson’s poem “Abdelazer,” which takes the first line of the first stanza and repeats it in jazz-like variations for each subsequent stanza. The poem includes many allusions to well-known pieces of literature, including the title itself and a reference to Their Eyes Were Watching God…one of my top 10 novels of all time.

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Finally, a request for the New Year. Please consider doing the following:

1. Buy a book of poetry or a collection of short stories (read and share with others).
2. Shop at an independent bookstore.
3. Subscribe to a literary magazine.
4. If you read something that moves you, consider letting the author know (if possible).
5. Use your local library (most can use interlibrary loan to get books not on their shelves).

One of the greatest rewards I received from attending an MFA program was the community of writers I met and in some cases with whom I still work. Over the holiday break I’ve had the privilege of reading a young adult novel-in-progress, written by a good friend from my Fayetteville days. I say novel-in-progress, but really it’s very near the final revision stages.

As a poet, I still feel a bit unsure of the usefulness of my comments, especially because I’m not really in touch with the young adult market. However, I became completely wrapped up in the main character and her conflicts, and from time to time, I forgot that I was reading from pages printed from a Word document and not from the actual, eventual, book. I am in awe of my friend for stringing so many words together and creating such a complex, real character. And so, my friend, I’m wishing you all the best success in 2009 with this amazing book!

Carolyn Guinzio’s second collection, Quarry, has been patiently waiting on my desk for the last several months, and I wish I’d gotten to it sooner. Still, poetry books have no expiration date…thank the stars. I’ve spent the last few hours transported by Guinzio’s poems, her fine eye for the details of the world, and her ability to remain restrained where others tend to overwrite, overwork and become overwraught.

The book opens with a series titled The Weekend Book. Here’s a bit from one of its poems “Of Ancient Lights”:

“Light in the eyes of the law is ancient
after twenty years. The sun must reach
the church arch and transom,
the windows of timber-
built homes. We fixed the divisions

of the calendar: Nothing
should have to be born
more than once.”

Nearly all the poems are effortless to read, and yet they tug and pull after the last line. For me that’s a sure sign of success, and there are too many fine examples to list them all here. (An added bonus is the cover art, a gorgeous photograph of Anita Huffington’s sculpture “Luna.”) I’m guessing this book will be one I return to over and over and find something new within each time.

struck upon a word and become enamored, and then because you said the word too many times, felt it slip into something foreign and ungainly? For me, today, the word is “cloister.” There’s so much great weight behind the word, and I am using it in a poem, but at this point, every time I try to say it out loud it feels a bit ugly.

The best news of all is that I am writing again. Three new drafts this week, which is sort of a lot for me. I guess all the pent up words from the past four months are pouring forth. Thanks to all of you who offered words of support when I complained about not writing!

Just got the new Poets & Writers and can’t quite believe I have the time to read it upon receipt. I looked for a link to Gabriel Cohen’s article “On Not Writing” (in the Literary Life section), but couldn’t find it online. It’s a short article on all the things we do while building up to writing, with moments devoted to writer’s block as well.

Here are three passages that jumped out at me:
“The world doesn’t need us to be writers, and it doesn’t fall apart if we stop.”

This is an echo of a Virginia Woolf quote that I’ve blogged about before. In light of Hall’s article from my last post, ambition is cast in a different light when I realize that nobody is begging me to write.

“It’s a craft, a job, a daily small achievement. … And it’s better to actually build one modest, serviceable little cabin than to never complete the glorious mansion in your head.”

Again, this rang an echo from Hall’s article on ambition.

“In real life, getting to the computer is a matter of delayed momentum: I finally hit the keyboard not because I’ve been struck with a cinematic bolt of inspiration, but because the self-disgust of not writing finally gains enough mass to roll over my anxiety about what to write.”

All I can say about this is…holy, yes!

Thanks to Ashley McHugh over at the Linebreak blog for linking to this old article by Donald Hall on Poetry and Ambition. Many of you may already have read it, but it was new to me. It covers many topics that occupy me in the late dark nights. The article was written in the early 80’s, yet the points Hall makes seem as prescient today.

Here is one blurb:
Poems have become as instant as coffee or onion soup mix. One of our eminent critics compared Lowell’s last book to the work of Horace, although some of its poems were dated the year of publication. Anyone editing a magazine receives poems dated the day of the postmark. When a poet types and submits a poem just composed (or even shows it to spouse or friend) the poet cuts off from the poem the possibility of growth and change; I suspect that the poet wishes to forestall the possibilities of growth and change, though of course without acknowledging the wish.

Hall goes on to chastize the MFA movement and workshops specifically. I tend to disagree with those who categorically blame MFA programs for some perceived deterioration of the quality of contemporary poetry. However, the point Hall makes about the weekly workshop and the students’ desire for affirmation and praise rings true. I certainly remember the sting time and time again of having a poem fall flat in front of my peers. Yet that sting spurred me to revise and revise and revise. It was crucial for my development as a writer that I be told I wasn’t a bright shining star.

Hall’s point is that a poet’s ambition should be to achieve the greatness of Dante, Keats, Yeats, etc. and that the publish or perish climate of today tends to work against that goal. One thing that stands out is when Hall mentions that if any of us achieve true, lasting greatness as poets, we will never know it since only time (past our lifetimes) will tell.

It’s a long article, and I’ll continue to chew on it.

Friendship has privileges, and for me that means getting a copy of my friend Tara Bray’s new book Mistaken For Song before the availability date (a few more months). Tara won the 2008 Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize for this amazing book. (Okay, I’m a bit biased, and yes, I’m using her first name where I’d normally use the last name of whichever poet being discussed. I just can’t get that kind of distance from a friend.)

I’ve read the complete work through twice now and am awash in images. One of Tara’s greatest strengths as a writer is her use of the unexpected in her densely-packed images. For example, in the poem “On Starlings,” she describes the title birds as “tree tempests, dazzlers, knuckle-headed saints.” I love that use of “knuckle-headed,” which in the context of the poem seems to arrive out of nowhere and yet be perfectly placed at the same time.

Speaking of birds, the book is chock full of them. A few years ago, there was a panel at AWP on bird imagery in poems. The danger, I suppose, being in the overuse of feathers and beaks in contemporary poems. However, the birds in this book rise well above (sorry!) any glimpse of cliche. Knowing her as I do, I know that Tara’s fascination with birds is not used as a means to an end; instead, she has fully immersed herself in a first-hand knowledge of birds, well beyond the chance encounter. Here’s a glimpse from the book’s opening poem “Carolina Chickadees”:

They whip and dip, sled quick slopes
of air, and I plead to feel them beat
upon my ear, chatter, tease me,
meek cheek-fires I want to swallow whole.

It is a new experience for me to read a book composed of poems I’ve watched evolve over the past several years. Tara is not just a friend, but a writing partner, someone with whom I exchange early drafts of a great majority of my poems. It is such an honor to see the poems now in their new home, living side by side, even though composed sometimes years apart. The arc of the manuscript is graceful, the stitching together of the poems almost unseen as each unfolds seamlessly into the next.

One of my favorites is “Rain,” a poem celebrating marriage and motherhood. Here are a few lines that have remained with me since I first read them some time ago:

I am loved twice, two orchids, two glimpses
of the afterlife, two clearwing butterflies,
two fox sightings–twice scraped, twice owned.

And, later:

There’s only night and rain, husband, babe, sleep,
this black string of small good things.

The lens of this book is definitely the natural world, but at its heart, Mistaken for Song is a book about the incredible paradox of human life: that joy and grief exist in such close proximity, so intrinsically linked, as to be inseperable.

One more poem recommendation for today. I just fell in love with Anna Journey’s poem “Red-Haired Girl Wants You to Know” over at 42opus. It begins:

Red-Haired Girl Wants You to Know

The sycamore mark on her inner thigh is a continent

about to divide itself into the angel

that sat in the votive light

of a fourteen year-old’s cigarette, and the angel

that was never there

but for the inked tattoo of wings under each blade

of a bartender’s shoulder.

The poem develops in a lovely, complex way from there.