ya mama got jell-o feet w/ fruit in the toes.

10.05.2005

college dropout?

i skipped my first two classes today. prolly gonna fuck up a lot as far as my work load goes. sad thing is, i dont care.

i came out here looking for something. searching. i haven't found it. i have no idea where it is, but its not at temple. its not in the academic study of poetry or even in poetry itself at this point in my life. and sometimes i feel like its not in philly, either. but i dont think its at home.

i feel weird here, very awkward and unsure of myself and small. i mean i like it here, dont get me wrong. but 'i live in philadelphia' does not fit in my mouth or in my mind. everytime i have to fill out something and supply my address, i begin to put down my louisville address. it just seems so surreal, and accepting this new reality is slow. if i wasnt such a withdrawn hermit, im sure it would speed up, but school makes me feel so waterlogged, so sluggish; i can't possibly be good company with the stress it's glued to my shoulders, so 9 times out of 10 i just opt to be alone, or with the one person i know doesnt mind my lethargic/tempramental/blue moods. i feel uneasy all the time. i think that's because i dont feel that i lay any claim to this city, so i dont own it and i guess that intimidates me. it's so weird. its just all so weird. that's the best word i can use to describe this whole experience thus far: weird.

but yeah. back to school and how i hate it. i really, truely hate it. i dont even know where to begin.

im taking three courses. poets of the black arts movement, queer theory and literary criticism, and the mandatory poetry workshop. let's start with the first class--poets of the blk arts movement.

i like it. i love revolutionary shit & that's what this class is all about. poetically speaking. soemone in the class (there are only three of us, four if u count the girl who is only sitting in on the class) told me that he read that temple's african american studies department is one of the only ones in the nation still pretty closely aligned & defined by "black power" as a... theory, i guess. or a manner or mode of pedagogy. or whatever. the professor's okay. she likes to talk a lot, and she goes on tangents often, but she always remembers where she left off. she's obviously very smart too. so that course is cool.

queer theory has the potential to be cool too, but as of yet its been pretty boring.. so far we've read a bunch of boring theory, 'moby dick,' and poems by 'hart crane' who ive decided that i absolutely loathe. here's my professor: http://www.paulagordon.com/shows/delany/delany-photo.jpg he's a very racially ambiguous looking guy, as u may or may not be able to tell by looking at that picture. but when he first walked in the classroom on the first day i thought 'sweet! a black dude!' but the more i looked at him, the less sure of that i was. very fair skin, good hair (quote/unquote). and all the facial hair makes it hard to really see his face. and speaking of his facial hair, it reaches waaaay way down now to his belly, which is rather bulbous, and it leaves like.. a little mound of beard crusties on his shirts and i absolutely HATE it. i wanna just bring a broom to class with me and swipe at it as he talks. or hire a homeless mr. squeegie type guy to just sit under his chair and pop out every 5 minutes to rub him down with some newspaper for $.75. but i digress.

he's a name dropper. that's annoying. and he's very fascinated with himself and insists that everybody else be as well. ooooh, he lives in new york. ooooooh tim curry the actor used to babysit his daughter in the 80s. oooooooh he's had random anonymous gay encounters with 30-50 thousand people in his life. ooooooh he fell in time square and broke his rib 5 days before the semester began, hence the dramatic cane he limps around with. all true stories. so yeah. that's class is okay. there's supposed to be some explicit depictions of sex at some point in the course though. im holdin out for that.

and so, we come to the huge festering boil on the asscheek that is my life. the poetry workshop. if this class was not on my schedule, i sincerely doubt that there would be huge problems at all. firstly, it's important to note that i've discovered and decided that poetry just is not for me right now. i dont like writing it, i barely like reading it, except for certain poets. i dont want to be a published poet right now. i dont want to teach poetry. and at this level of academia, ur ass better make sure u absolutely love what u're studying to apply urself and do well. i dont. and that's not to say that i never will again, its just that right now, this is now where the heart of my passion dwells. i dont know where it DOES dwell right now, but i know that it is not here. so, im dealing with that in addition to the rest of my problems with the course--

jeez i dont even know where to start now. okay.

i spoke to a professor in the writing department about some possible funding before the semester started. he knew i was in the poetry program and he happened to mention that he and the two women who run the program--my workshop professor and another lady, who are in charge of running the workshops each semester--had a falling out because of their differing views on poetry. he said they were very much into experimental poetry. in my experince, that's an understatement. and by 'experimental' poetry i essentially mean weird shit that doesnt really seem to mean much of anything. like:

this is a map.
'take this and do not lose it'
. they told us and we listened
snowflakes
baby arms , citizens.- and fireflies
long legs that started the spring.
, but none of the above.

see? weird shit. im the only one who doesnt write that way. of the assigned readings she gives us, all of it is that way. no attention is paid to other forms of poetry at all. talk about alienation. i dont feel like there's a place for me or my poetry in that classroom; in my black arts class we've been discussing how one of the main goals of the black arts movement was to establish a new way of looking at black art and literature-- ie, u cant read an amiri baraka poem and evaluate it the way you would a robert frost poem. you know? and that was a concern of mine in this program. i mean it just set the stage for me being singled out, treated as a either delicacy or a nuisance, but a token in either case. and that's most assuredly what happened when it came time to discuss my work. ill explain that part later.

so in class im typically very quiet in class. this is more or less my first real poetry workshop, and i didnt know what to expect. but never in a million years would i be prepared for what i found. now i could be wrong here, but it is my conjecture that black literature and poetry puts heavy emphasis on meaning. what does this poem mean? what is it saying? how is it saying it? you know? but in this class, with this poetry, it's all about form. it's all about page space and line breaks and enjambment and diction and syntax and technical shit. im not saying that black folk dont concern themselves with this when they write, but its inSANE the way they focus on it in this program. i mean we've read shit and never once discussed the potential meaning. wtf is that about? i mean they obsess over it, so much so that it makes me not want to write anymore. moreso than i already dont want to write. i tried not long after id had a couple of workshops under my belt, cause ill need to write new pieces if im expected to have enough material to get me through this semester, let alone the whole year. or whole two years. but i was writing and obsessing over the same things they obsess over, and it just sucked everything that i ever thought was good out of the writing process. the piece i wrote was not in my own voice. im not adverse to change, but this is a change that doesnt feel good or authentic. nothing about they way they treat poetry seems authentic. i mean its such bullshit; they sit around for 3 hrs (each class is 3 hrs) dropping names ("there's something very kerouac-ian about this in that--"), fashioning deeply involved visions regarding the placement of a single solitary comma ("it really adds a sense of movement, of desperation.. the endstop there makes the entire verbosity just pop and implode"), and tension. the word tension is said no less than 85 times per hour in that class. everything "creates tension." everything. this line and this concept--"im very interested in the tension surrounding this." this vowel sound next to this capital letter--"it creates a tension that im particularly interested in.." it's amazing. its dumbfounding. and that's exactly how i feel. dumbfounded. if this is really what poetry is and what its about, im very unprepared in in over my head. but really? it just seems like a bunch of grad students sitting around masturbating each other with big words and concepts that they paid good money to learn. that's not what poetry is to me. i hope i never get used to that.

so, im quiet in class. i never know what to say. i never have anything deeply metaphysical or anything to say, and i feel such pressure to supply those kind of comments to the conversation. but if i did that, id be bullshitting. im not paying to bullshit. i tried to confide in the other black girl in the class/poetry program, but.. she's very much into the whole experimental thing too, let's say. so i dont think she really understands what im feelin or where im comin from. i think i may have offended her, in fact. so, i resolved to tell my professor what was goin on with me so i didnt just look like im not doing the work and not trying or anything.

this lady was hard for me to figure out. ive recently decided that i dont like her. she doesnt look very likable (picture and samples of her work can be found here: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/duplessis/). that picture doesnt do the full unlikableness of her appearance and personality justice. her eyebrows are black and gray, but her hair is a thinning, dyed-to-death shock of red affixed in one of the dumbest haircuts ive ever seen. most disturbingly interesting to me is her mouth. her teeth are arranged sort of in the shape of a parrot's beak, like this: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/graphics/taxonomy/animals/aves/Parrot/JSC%20980814%20Zoo%20Parrot%201.JPG given that shape, her tongue peeks out whenever she parts them the same way a parrot's does, the way it sort of clucks and rolls around in there, all thick and dry and awkward, almost too big for it little cave of shelter. her mouth is like that. plainly put, she is not an attractive woman. that doesnt have too much to do with why i dont like her, though. i just wanted to point that out. it does, however, make her holier-than-thou, smarter-than-u attitude rather ironic. the nerve of ugly ppl to be uppity.

so anyway, i went to go talk to her and i stepped in her office and was immediately uncomfortable. there's something in her manner that manifests in her gaze and the way she talks to you that just does that. i had the worst time trying to tell her what was wrong with me and it was so frustrating. i was 100% truthful, as truthful as i could have been--i told her that i didnt feel prepared for the class, told her that im not used to approaching poetry this way and that i dont really like it, that the class doesnt make me feel good, told her that i dont think i like poetry the way i used to, blah blah blah. and almost every point that i made, except the one about not liking poetry anymore, she discredited--at least in my opinion she did--by sort of waving it off and saying 'yeah, everybody feels that way;' 'yeah, everybody goes through that;' 'yeah, other people are feeling the same way.' um, okay, i understand that and its significance but bitch, im not 'everybody.' im an individual and its not fair to just write off all my angst as something that's fine because everybody else feels that way. there's other shit at work too that she just acted like she didnt want to see or acknowledge and it was so upsetting. i was depressed the rest of the evening. at the end of the meeting though, we resolved that i would committ to reading 10 pages a night in two of the books on poetry she gave me, on freewriting for 15 minutes a day, and to contributing more in the classroom. which is fine; she's not asking me to do something pointless or something that i cant do. but i dont want to do it. cause i dont like poetry like that. so the drive isnt there. i think that's important; she didnt pay too much mind to that.

needless to say, i havent touched those books, nor have i been freewriting, mainly because im so stressed that i feel like i dont have the time to do so.

the way the workshop is set up is like this: each week (the class only meets once a week) we discussed the selected poems picked out by the professor, poems of classic, well-known (to those in the academic poetry world), published and established poets. we do that for an hour, then we spend the remaining two hours discussing and workshopping the 5-7 pages of poetry submitted by two of the students in the class. since the class is rather small this semester, each poet will have their work shopped three times this semester. that means that i'll need to have 15-21 pages of poetry to share and discuss with everybody this semester. that's 15-21 pages of poetry that i dont have. anyway, that's how the class works. typically the class has no problem doing that. whether or not the poets actually value the comments posed in class is another story, but there's usually no problem getting the discussion popping off. we shopped my pieces last thursday. i counted three start silences of 5-7 seconds each. these are silences that didnt exist in the discussion of anyone else's work. now. this was disheartening a bit, but i understood it. its very plausible that they just didnt know how to approach it or treat it, and were nervous about how to get the ball rolling. the pieces that i threw together i guess were a little heavy (in other words, a couple of them had the 'n-words' in them. one even had 'nigger' AND 'nigga' in it. oy). so i mean i understood it. it was unfortunate, because perhaps if we werent given solely 'experimental' shit to read, maybe that nervousness wouldn't be there. but i mean it was whatever, i wasnt surprised. actually the discussion of my work wasnt so bad. got a couple compliments. they liked them a lot more than i do.

after a student's/poet's work is discussed, they go and meet with the professor afterward, just to discuss things. i was fine with the way the discussion of my work had gone, and wasnt anticipating anything mindblowing to happen in the prof's office. but yo man.. when i tried to tell her what i just typed up there, that there was a little nervousness and hesitance, she pretty much said no, there wasnt.

...excuse me?
i was there. i felt it.

but no. she said that it wasnt there. note: she didn't say that she personally didnt think it was there, or that she didn't notice it, she said no, flat out, it wasnt there. im wrong. that basically made me feel like i was creating it myself because i want special treatment. maybe i'm jumping to conclusions in feeling that way. but, she then jumped to conclusions when she then assumed that i only sensed or felt that way because i didnt get the response that i'd wanted, or in her words, because everybody didnt love my work as much as i do.

um, while u frontin
i was perfectly fine with the discussion (almost--i'll tell u the part i wasnt fine with a little later)
and furthermore, i dont even LIKE my work in the first place so what i look like bein mad at somebody else cause that dont like it either?

she made me feel like i was imagining shit man. dont do that to me. dont patronize me like that. so the communication just isnt there. i told her that im apparently not explaining myself efficiently (read: she wasnt listening to me) which is why she wasnt getting what i was trying to say. so we resolved that i'd write out everything just to get my thoughts out (uninterruptedly). i decided im gonna email it to her whenever i get around to writing it because she does need to know how im feelin.

i got an email later the next day from another girl in my class. here's a little of what she said:

Anyway, I was hoping to see you because I wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed reading your work and I thought that the workshop of it on Thursday was really unfortunate...I also wanted to tell you that I was really put off by the way that Rachel spoke in class, and I feel bad for not speaking up against her. From discussing Thursday's workshop with other people, I know that everybody is really quite disgusted...

it felt good to hear this because it helped me name another thing that was bothering me. here's the story behind that:

at about the hour devoted to discussing my work was drawing to a close, the professor spoke for 10-15 minutes about black people. black language, black poetry, black semantics. it reminded me of something de la croix said to the jewish lady brought in to make his show black-people friendly in 'bamboozled' when he said: "continue, oh great niggerologist." i mean yall this chick was the absolute authority on black people the way she was talkin. and i felt so.... retarded. because she felt like she had to give the class a briefing on the habits of the negro for them to understand my work. it was like another star to mark my difference and more than that it was offensive. what was offensive about it, you ask? well. there came a point in her lecturing where she made reference to the way black people talk, saying that our voices have more of a vocal range in normal, everyday conversation than other folks. she then proceeded to imitate a black person talking in order to highlight this difference. now, it wasnt as stereotypical as it may be playing out in your mind.. she didnt go 'yo yo yo big homie, g-money, my nizzle!' or anything like that. i think she used the phrase 'and then i said.' but the whole thing was very, very uncomfortable, and truth be told, i couldnt pinpoint a concrete reason why. it just was. i didnt think anybody else would feel the same way cause, well.. aint nobody else black. except the other black girl. but im sad to say that she doesnt really register as black in my mind. i know, i know.. but she doesnt. sue me. anyway. after her impression, she then looked at me and said, 'excuse my blackface, that wasnt appropriate' or something to that effect. she most definitely said 'excuse my blackface' though. yeah. uncomfort level was through the fucking roof at this point. none of this registered with me as i was sitting in her office upset though; i just knew that i was upset, and when i read the email that i quoted u above, it became clear to me that oh my god.. that's a reason why i was upset. u know? i think that that bit of uncomfort was lying rather dormant in me cause i just wanted to make it home... so when i was pushed over the edge in her office, the uncomfort i felt over that whole thing had already planted the seed.

and furthermore, as i was sitting in the station waiting on my train to go home, i pulled out the copy of the comments on my pieces she'd given me. she suggested/reminded me, prefaced with 'i'm sure you know this already,' to be careful how i use the word 'nigger.'

....

THE GREAT NIGGEROLOGIST STRIKES AGAIN!!!

fuck her man. iont like her. and im bound and determined to let her know that i didnt appreciate that at all, and since she wont listen to me or take what i say to heart, im perfectly okay with doing it via email.

i dont wanna do this anymore, yall. ive been searching. searching searching searching for something and i dont know what it is, but im certain at this point that this is not it. im glad to finally come to that conclusion, but im afraid at the same time. there are lots of people in my family so in awe and enamored at the thought of me being in graduate school. now ima withdraw? what then?

i told my mama how i was feeling in regards to that. she said, 'who cares what anybody else thinks? you gotta do what u gotta do.' that made me feel really good to hear that. cause it means that finally, she understands what im goin through.

but i do want everybody to know that my decision to withdraw, if that is in fact what im deciding to do, is not because im weak. its not because i just dont want to do the work. its not because ive had a couple of bad classes. its because i dont feel in my heart that this is where i need to be right now. bougie ass academia + poetry just doesnt work out for me. some of the best poetry in the world is being written right outside the windows of that 11th floor classroom, right beyond all the barriers that keep the privileged kids from the underprivileged, past the obvious separation between "us" and "them." that's the shit i dig. im wasting time and a whole lot of money. im 23 and broke. i dont have that much to waste.

there's a creative writing party on friday. ive been so withdrawn from my classmates, and everybody's always tellin me how they really want me to come out with them sometimes, so someone made me promise id go. i desperately dont want to go. my weekends are reserved for mushy lovey dovey time; i dont have the time or opportunity for that during the week. and now i gotta go smile in all these ppls faces and act like i want to be there. that sucks.

so yeah. this could potentially be the entire story of my academic graduate poetry career.

i might could be comin to join u, kanye!
and i dont feel bad about that.

i just dont want anyone else to feel bad about it, either.


3 comments
|~| trace 10/05/2005 12:45:00 AM
Comments:
wow.
 
^^^^^anonymous.
 
jesus christ!
 
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