Scholarly
Like the poet Robert Frost, I enjoyed a dalliance with academic scholarship. Except it was more than a dalliance and I wouldn’t say I really enjoyed it. I both narrate and come to terms with it in a poem, “A RAKE’S PROGRESS: A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS,” in my newly released poetry book, LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man. I excelled as a scholar, when I was a student; and I was an excellent teacher–attested by consistently high student evaluations. During my identity as a scholar, I published scholarly articles in University Journals, and published a scholarly book. And this dalliance with the identity of “scholar” lasted a good portion of my life.
I thought that ought to be enough. Yet, despite all that, due to society, I was unsuccessful in landing a full-time professorship, like so many other brilliant scholars and excellent teachers. But it cuts deeper. In my poem, I express, “How ill-suited I was for a serious academic career.” A poet, reflecting back, can see it. But in the throes of an academic identity, one doesn’t; I didn’t. An artist is a creative soul. Sadly, there is little room for creativity in the university system. But it was meant to be. My soul was forming all the while:
“The process of my formal education was but a shell in which I formed
The facts, forms of kowing, interlocutor interactions
Outside; the self incubating within the process”
I exploded out of the deep like a fiend, and now I claim artistry as an identity. Currently, I’m trying to lose my mind.
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David Fekete 