SUPPLY CHAIN > POETRY
I am pleased to concur
with the expected unanimous yes
of your department, your fragment
of the bureaucracy into which
our university has devolved,
that Dr. X should be allowed
to proceed toward the eventual
paradise of permanency. I believe
that she has progressed satisfactorily
in all the ways that matter to us
in this crucial tenure review.
In thirty single spaced pages
you have repeated what the candidate said
in his twenty-page personal statement,
puffing up the sentences in packing foam
of letters from external reviews. Yes,
they have a global reputation
and have published in all the right journals,
peer-reviewed of course. A book manuscript
is being read at this very moment by an elite press!
She prowls the cutting edge of her field, machete
hacking the weeds and brambles of ignorance.
This brings us to their teaching.
Our students at this public university,
who will have to work for a living
and raise their children in erratic weather,
need the skills to sieve truth from spin.
As do we, pondering these paragraphs,
these numerical charts on his pedagogy.
We turn to the six years of student evaluations,
the syllabi, the assignments, the statement
of teaching philosophy, looking for problems,
promise, patterns. I am happy to report
that our teachers are still terrific
and their students know it and say it.
Two dozen letters from former pupils,
now at prestigious graduate programs
or laboring in the trenches at our local high schools,
detail the dedication—
the tough love paper comments,
the long conferences, the in-class comedy
(your grim look of late gave us no clue
you were so funny!),
the sequenced assignments,
the gradual unpacking of the subject
from impenetrable to clear transparent glass.
So far your candidate is batting a thousand.
But as you know, the candidate must attain excellence
in at least two categories
and no less than “strong” ever.
Ever. So we come to service.
Are they Mother Teresa?
Well, no. But he has served on committees
and chaired a time or two.
Her opinion has been sought by NPR,
I heard it on the drive into school.
It’s listed on their 12-page CV along with a lecture
to art lovers at the MFA.
Naturally there are letters in the file
which say her presence on committee X
made all the difference, and he promises
to be a good citizen forever.
At last we come to Institutional Need.
Do we need this person in order to go on breathing?
According to their file, she fills a crucial transnational space
in the department’s coverage of its multifaceted field
and contributes in some fashion to our already decent
ethnic, gender, racial, transgender, and international
demographic. We expect him to grow old and tired with us,
so age is not an issue.
Assuming that the several levels beyond our own
concur, agree and ratify our decision, we welcome you
to the diminishing country of lifetime employment.
You are now qualified for a large raise
and may take a sabbatical to recover
from chronic anxiety disorder and to begin
your next book/gallery show/grant-funded project.
Remember, review for promotion to Full Professor
is only a few years away.
Concurringly yours,
Pamela, Ph.D.
Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts
Pamela Annas grew up in the Navy, lived for two years in a village in Turkey and graduated from high school in Yokohama, Japan. She is Professor Emerita of English at UMass/Boston where she taught working-class literature, modern and contemporary poetry and writing, coached UMB’s ballroom dance team and directed its English MA Program. She is a member of the editorial collective and poetry editor at Radical Teacher, and has published books and articles on poetry, literature, and pedagogy, and poems in various journals and anthologies. Her chapbook Mud Season was published by Cervena Barva Press.