The authority of the U.S. federal government has eroded to the vanishing point. No longer do the three branches of government possess significant authority. Their collective ability to right the listing ship of empire has been negated by forces large…
This Sunday, 12 September 2010, I will be interviewed live on Conscious Discussions. The radio show will air at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S. That's 10:00 a.m. on the left coast. Guests can call in during the broadcast:…
My office, that is. I was asked to move out of my office the same month one of my articles graced the cover of the premier journal in my field Although faculty members are fleeing my department like fleas from…
As my final semester winds down, I am spending a lot of time with friends and colleagues. The extended gang of teachers and administrators from Poetry Inside/Out held our end-of-semester meeting yesterday. We read a few poems, shared a meal and much laughter, and generally celebrated our latest successes and my contribution to the program, which is coming to a close.
Departing is such sweet sorrow.
I love the Socratic aspect of academia, and it’s the part I do best. I supervise nine independent-study projects this semester, with a total of ten students. Most of them have spent a weekend at the mud hut, or soon will. Indeed, I’m just back from the mud hut, where I spent the weekend with one of the students, the poet in resident at the renowned University of Arizona Poetry Center. He called the trip “transformative.” I meet regularly with all the students, probing and pushing until they do more and better work than any of us thought possible. Ditto for the small, hard-working herd of graduate students I advised and mentored during two wonderful decades.