Without questioning the power and manipulative nature of sexual relations between a student and his or her professor, I would like to hear thoughts on whether or not good teaching is by definition "erotic". And by that I do not mean something that leads to sexual unions between professor and student(s). But something of a relationship more akin to a dance, at times sensual. then counter-sensual (some might even say "meta-sensual" in its arrival at intellectual resolution and pleasure,) I can think remember some of my best experiences as a student were when a teacher embraced the subject as a "real body" of knowledge, as well as invited our embrace of that "body." In terms of poetry, when there is a resentment against the discussion of the poem is primarily defined as a theoretical object, isn't that resentment fueled by the sense that poem is literally losing its body, the one we, as readers, want to embrace most fundamentally on the level of
sensations, syllable by syllable, accent by accent?
Stephen Vincent
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
--- On Wed, 5/13/09, Amanda Surkont <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Amanda Surkont <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Walcott & His Discontents
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 9:20 PM
Well said, Ken. I have issues with those who hide behind anonymity in this
type of situaton. Opening the debate of his worthiness of the position is one
thing, sending anonymous packets is not the way to do that, IMHO. best, manda
--- On Wed, 5/13/09, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Walcott & His Discontents
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009, 10:22 PM
Mark Weiss wrote:
> OK, I'll weigh in.
>
> I have a very rigid code about these things. That a lot of inappropriate
behavior happens doesn't excuse it.
Of course it does not "excuse" anything. If Derek Wolcott sexually
harassed or even had a "consensual" affair with a freshman female
student young enough to be his daughter, he was a scumbag and deserved his trip
to the pillory and stocks.
What does it mean to say Yes? A year or two ago a man in my area was
photographed having sexual relations with a female Rottweiler. He was arrested
and hauled in front of a judge who said "How could you do a thing like
this?" The man's reply?--"It was consensual." He went to
jail. What a surprise.
I have had female sexuality waved at me, too: the cloying smile, the change to
seductive vocal tone from a female student while talking to me only in the hall
or in another public space. I have read the psychoanalyst Michael Eigen's
significant mentions of temptation in his analytic practice. He seems far more
candid than most men (or women) in his position might wish to be; indeed, Eigen
seems to have invented the TMI as a way of communicating. The temptation is
real. It is probably like priestly vows of celibacy in pre-Scandal Catholic
seminaries. That is, does anyone ever really *talk* about this aspect, or is it
left to an easily-deluded conscience to sort it out?
The same temptation is thrown at any clergyman, often at teachers, often at
anyone perceived as being in a position of power or authority. How could a human
bullfrog like Sen.Wilbur Mills gain the favors of Fanny Foxe, the Tidal Basin
Bombshell, unless his power was the largest part of his anatomy?
However, there is a statute of limitation on all crimes save murder. When
does Wolcott finish his sentence? A shit-sling of the type that seems to have
occurred now comes about 27 years after the incident, alleged or real. If I
recall this even halfway accurately, Wolcott had to leave Harvard, only to
resurface (I believe) across the river at Boston University, one-time home of
another vowed celibate, Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV.
In grad school 30+ years ago, a young man had a habit of "affairing"
with a girl from his just-concluded class. Not DURING it, after it. He had a
code.
In grad school 30+ years ago, a young woman came onto me in Pathmark with all
the subtlety of a Canal Street doxy in Civil War New York. She did this in front
of my wife. I had no clue. My laughing and sarcastic wife had to clue me into
the dynamic she spotted. Men never have a clue unless they are natural
predators, and I would like to believe I was not that way back in 1972. But
women spot everything.
> When I taught, and when I was a therapist, students and patients flirted
with me all the time, often outrageously. Of course it turned me on, but I
didn't respond, because I had a responsibility not to, and because they
weren't flirting with me so much as with my position of authority. This
wasn't easy, as the women were often very close to me in age, and I might
have been interested in other circumstances. I did date an adult student of mine
in an ungraded non-degree extension course, but only after the course was
over--we didn't even flirt till then.
You were fortunate. I had weekly smoke-by-the-cars discussions in the parking
lot with a 40 year old Israeli doctor's wife in my class. Her hints of
abandonment and discomfort surely were meant to lure me. They did not. We
arranged we would talk at semester's end. She didn't call and neither
did I. Maybe we both got smart.
> Yup, lots of teachers and some therapists succumb to the temptation or
initiate a flirtation. Therapists risk losing their licenses, and they should.
Increasingly, teachers risk losing their jobs. That seems fair to me, whether
it's a man coming on to a female student, or a woman etc etc etc. At the
very least, the relationship distorts the class as a whole. And most of the time
it's taking advantage of the student's pathology.
>
My older son stands to "inherit" a high school English teaching job
from his years-ago 9th grade English teacher, who finally is retiring. The man
married one of his former students. Rumors were rife about how he
"dated" high school girls. To call this "cheesy" is to
insult cows in Wisconsin.
> But the disparity between student and teacher is different in kind than
that between doctor and nurse, say, or between an older and a younger faculty
member. The teacher of young students becomes a parental projection, whether he
or she likes it. To take advantage of this can be extremely destructive. When it
goes as far as marriage the destructiveness is often more extensive--wife
eventually grows up and dumps the prick.
See the above. A man in his 40s marries a high school girl. Songs of Innocence
and Experience. The girls look experienced, some may very well be--yet to grab
Dylan's line, "[they] break just like a little girl." If they
break away from you, you're seen the core of innocence triumphant. For the
young lady, at least.
> And then there's the case at hand. Walcott is in fact pretty
notorious. Some interesting anecdotes have been coming up on WOMPO, but
there's been noise about him for a long time. And we're talking about a
forty or fifty year age discrepancy. Plus what would seem to be an overwhelming
sense of entitlement, coupled with a great deal of drinking. Trial by internet
is a terrible way to go about things, but the poetry chair is a very public
appointment. Like it or not, this was to be expected.
If Wolcott is what you say, then there's very little to extenuate his
behavior before, during, or since the Radcliffe incident. What continues to
bother me is the apparently endless vengeance of people who are rerunning stuff
that happened 35+ years ago. To prove what?--that Wolcott is unfit to hold his
position? Who might they have preferred in times past? Berryman, Lowell,
Dickey? Again: where is the statute of limitations to cap Wolcott's
offense? Perhaps his statement that he's avoided commenting on the 1982
incident is inflaming tempers; if he addressed it honestly and without
subterfuge, might it have gone differently? Quien sabe?
Ken
-- Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/
http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
---------------------------------
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available
prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
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