University of Arkansas (Poetry)

One of my undergraduate professors told me that in grad school, I would find a community of writers. I never gave any thought to all the implications of his statement. Four years later, this is the best introduction I can think of to review the program here, which is in the midst of changes.

None of the founders of the program remain on the faculty with the retirement this spring of Miller Williams. For poets, this means very limited choices for work-shopping as the department currently has only two poets. There are three faculty members in fiction. This hurts students when it comes to completing the required thesis — the director of the committee is busy with so many other students that little individual attention can be given.

The good news is that the department has visiting writers frequently, such as Franz Wright this spring concurrent with his Pulitzer Prize announcement. Visiting writers offer the opportunity to get a different perspective regarding one’s work, but not the sustained attention that one should receive from a program requiring a four-year investment. This is likely to be true in the future as no immediate plans to add a poet to the faculty are underway. I also found that members of the faculty are also focused on their own careers first and foremost.

There are contradictory opinions among my peers towards the faculty too, of course. While I adored Ellen Gilchrist’s workshop, one of my closest friends in the program, who is an extremely talented writer, was at total odds with her. Even when someone here loves you, no one is going to hold your hand in the dark.

The program is slanted towards traditional students, and there is no consensus within the poetry ranks even of the definition of poetry or its function as an art form. Additionally, there are some problems here for women. Many women faculty members have exited the program, as well as many women students. Your research can easily provide you with names. I hope that this trend reverses itself, but it is a slow process that makes two steps forward and one step back. As well, it has been my experience, and the experience of many of my peers, that some of the students are groomed more attentively than others. During my first year, another student inquired from one of the faculty members about the process for applying for the Walton-fellowships, which allows the recipients a year off from teaching with full financial support. The faculty member said, and I quote: “If you don’t know you’re getting one, you aren’t getting one.”

I didn’t want someone to hold my hand in the dark, but I did expect to receive a critical assessment and creative support in producing a body of work to complete the graduation requirements of the program, and the program did not fully meet my expectations in this way. I believe the experience of work-shopping should be about the poem, not the poet; the story, not the writer. Sometimes it is about the person and not the work.

I am not sorry I spent the past four years here; I believe calm seas do not a sailor make. I have made some of the most wonderful friends and I expect to stay in contact with them for the rest of my life. I found what my undergraduate professor sent me to find — a community of writers. There are parts of this town I don’t particularly care to visit, but I eventually found my own neighborhood to belong to.