Martin Walker wrote:
> Here's what can happen to you if you profess poetry at an academic establishment. Funny the way even Ruth Padel talks of "printed facts"when they are simply printed claims.
> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/walcott-pulls-out-of-oxford-job-after-sex-smear-campaign-1684037.html
> mj
> Du siehst mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit. - Gurnemanz
>   

I just ordered a collection of Wolcott poems.  I did not own one.  It 
was time to spit back.

But of course given the Rupert Mudrock culture we live in, I know about 
The Scandal. The Scandal is more important, apparently, than the 
likelihood that Derek Wolcott is among the chief poets to emerge from 
the former British colonial web. I also recall that in Academe, 
Wolcott's "issue" acquired the same level of moral outrage as Roman 
Catholic priests molesting boys in the Archdiocese of Boston. Poets may 
be the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, but when did any of us 
take vows of poverty (involuntary), chastity (oh sure...), and obedience 
(throw me a bone and I'll hump your leg)?

Well, yes it is less about sex than about implicit power exercised over 
someone who most likely had none. That of course discounts motives. How 
easy to play a straight-up political line and ignore motivations.  Derek 
the Vile Seducer and abuser of trust.  Yes, maybe Wolcott really did hit 
on a female student, crassly and arrogantly. Maybe he didn't wait for 
the term to end. Maybe he just found her astonishingly attractive and 
made a move. *Maybe she said yes and then took it back*. You think David 
Mamet invented that poison?

All the same I cannot believe that something going back to 1982 is still 
"in play," regardless of the veracity of the allegations. And I really 
do not care whether Wolcott had a sheep in his office, nor am I 
concerned that he may have hit on someone long long ago in a galaxy far 
far away as long as the female wasn't my daughter, sister, or wife (I 
have none of the above, which is a nice way to say I don't care if he 
was playing Angelo in his private production of *Measure for Measure*). 
I almost wish I had kept a little list of the graduate faculty I knew 
30+ years ago who scored with their female graduate students or their 
graduate students' wives. In fairness, I also heard of a female English 
professor at Princeton who reportedly (told to me by one of her 
post-Nassau Street colleagues) drove one of her undergraduate male 
students to commit suicide over a love affair that went sour. I will not 
use her name (smart move, Kenny-boy!!). But nobody put her head on a 
pike, called her a "cougar," or suggested she was a tramp with a Ph.D. 
They may have *thought* it but nobody apparently said it. She just moved 
from Princeton to Columbia. Social incest lives in the golden ghetto.

This almost surely goes on in 2-year colleges too. It is perfectly 
possible to gaze lustfully on a 19-year-old female student *who is being 
blatantly seductive*. They *can* be that way even when the come from 
semi-rural New Jersey. It is also possible to engage one's mental 
faculties and recognize that implicit power and real age are huge 
deterrents.

It would be gratifying if the other two candidates for the Oxford post 
told Oxford where to stuff their honors and declined the office. But in 
the end whoredom is not only sexual, is it?

ken

-- 
Ken Wolman	http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/	http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray