There is an axiom, often attributed to Henry Kissinger but actually the discovery of political scientist Charles Sayre, that goes as follows: “In any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the stakes at issue.” This principle, known as “Sayre’s Law”, has a corollary: “That is why academic politics are so bitter.”
I wonder where’s Kissinger now?
I raise this because of a disturbing Associated Press story that appeared in Boston newspapers yesterday. The former director of the “low-residency” master’s degree program in poetry at New England College, Henniker, New Hampshire, has been accused of luring away faculty and students to Drew University in New Jersey, where she has set up a competing program. Enrollment at New England College has dropped precipitously–from ten to five.
New England College: Beneath the placid exterior lies a placid interior.
“Low-residency” refers not to the scant number of students, before and after the alleged haiku hijacking, but to the fact that both programs allow students to do much of their coursework off campus, and require class attendance only for brief periods each year.
William Wordsworth
This is a recipe for disaster. You know poets–always wandering, like Wordsworth, lonely as a cloud, or like Frost taking the road less traveled by. You’ve got to keep an eye on these people.
Frost’s fork in the road: He took it.
Especially when there’s so much at stake. For $33,000 a year, you could be an entry-level claims inspector for the Farmer’s Insurance Group, or a fare inspector for the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission. Compare that to the position of Director, Low-Residency Master’s Degree Program in Poetry; indoor work, with no heavy lifting! It’s a poet’s dream! You could write a sonnet about it!
Macari: “You’ll never see a nickel of that thirty-three grand, baby!”
As so often happens when there’s a falling out between a poetess and a jilted liberal arts college, New Hampshire College is suing the blue stockings off of Anne Marie Macari, who left for the browner pastures of New Jersey. A Jersey politician button-holed by a newspaper reporter after a public hearing on possible pollution from a proposed chemical plant was once asked “Is the choice for New Jersey between jobs and cancer?”, to which the politician replied “I don’t see why we can’t have both.”
Camden, New Jersey
So let this be a lesson to you. If you’re going to let your poet wander around off her leash in a “low-residency” environment, be ready for a fight when she ends up setting up a suspiciously similar program somewhere else.
The lines you save may be your own.
