As I said, Ken, it's your problem. As for me, I was the first kid in my
whole extended family to graduate from college. Strictly working class. I
teach Humanities in a second-tier tech school, my position in the academic
poetry establishment is so fucking marginal I might as well be pumping gas
for a living. The whole anti-academic, classicism bullshit is just tiresome
& predictable & irrelevant. If you want to defend the Wright poem against
the charge of sentimentality, do so by all means, but don't snarl at me for
power I don't possess.
jd
On 10/24/07, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Joseph Duemer wrote:
> > Ken, you just don't like that I'm a professor. That's your problem, not
> > mine. I quoted a workable standard definition of sentimentality. Why not
> > respond to that.
> >
> > jd
> >
>
> No Joe, I will respond to what I please and as I wish to do so: you
> ventured into *my* playground this time and I just threw the ball at
> your face. But let's go here first: for your observation, dead on,
> Joe. You swung where I pitched it, and indeed connected first try. A
> very palpable hit. I've been haunted and infuriated by my exclusion for
> 34 years. Me: not sharp enough, not original enough, no cleverness to
> sell, didn't write my director's dissertation, plus he was not even of
> ill repute--and all this happened at a 2nd rate university where you'd
> better be sharper, more original, and cleverer than people from "good"
> places. A l'enfers avec moi, alors. Angel with the flaming sword and
> all that. Though I gather Academe isn't necessarily the Garden of Eden
> either.
>
> But jealousy is only part of the issue, it's the idea of assumed
> meanings that we are *all* supposed to get. I still don't know what it
> means to go over the line from sentiment to sentimentality. Where's the
> line? I don't know about commonly accepted definitions. I'm not in the
> field, remember? I'm a fucking proofreader this week. Not much call
> for Standard Definitions at ETS unless you're taking a GRE.
>
> Maybe it's just as well I didn't clear the cut to get into the
> professoriat. More reasons than I wish to get into right now. Imagine
> me at a department meeting asking a question like this? I'd have
> received tenure about the same time a Rottweiler sang arias from *Carmen*.
>
> 'Night, folks. Gotta get up in the wee small hours of the morning and
> till His Lordship's field. Till then....
>
> ken
>
> ------------------
> Kenneth Wolman rainermaria.typepad.com
>
> "I agree with the Chekhov character who, when in a crisis, he is
> reminded that 'this, too, shall pass,' responds 'Nothing
> passes.'"--Philip Roth
>
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
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