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Poetry & Self-Identification


One of the perks of being a graduate student was a valid justification for keeping odd hours. All night vigils were common as I waited for an unaccustomed silence to give me respite from "dumbfoundry". Pulling all-nighters in search of a thesis, as though somehow the archetypal stream of consciousness was freer in the wee hours of the morning, was a common occurrence. Inevitably, the next day’s start would be delayed and often graduate tutorials were scheduled as late afternoon classes so as to accommodate both my professors and myself. My mind was never sharp in the mornings anyway. A very good argument might of course also have been made for bouts of afternoon obtuseness.

My afternoon starts meant that my departure toward a downtown university campus coincided with my father’s return from work. As I walked out the door I could see him making his way down the left side of the street. Sometimes he would emit a soft but audible whistle as I crossed the road in a huff hurrying toward the bus stop so that I might make my tutorial on time. But no matter how I cloaked it in that rationalization, it was a clear attempt at avoidance. The truth lay more in the fact that I was so preoccupied with breaking out of a “working class” mold that I even tried to physically avoid my working class origins.


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Kathy Lou Schultz seems on the money when positing that with respect to university, “not everyone enters such a program with equal amounts of privilege and completing a degree while providing for the acquisition of particular cultural capital is not a great leveler.” (1) Albeit, education is mistakenly seen by the working class as a “way out” of the quagmire of this caste. But sometimes it’s more like owning a tuxedo with no place to go. Or as Schultz describes her own sense of marginality: “Amphibious, we live in both worlds, but belong to neither.” (2) And though we are indistinguishable from the “genuine” article in a Zelig type fashion we are always wary that we might be found out. We fret that “they” might see through us and realize that we really are vapid and uncultivated because we secretly prefer the Doors to DeBussy.

Still we want to be part of an intellectual community and/or a writer’s community. Wanting to be a poet only exacerbates the dichotomy as poetry and working class ethics seem to be diametrically opposed. There is little room for the quiet contemplation that is necessary to foster a rapport with the poem in the survivalist mentality which pervades the working class experience. Parents inevitably want their children to attain degrees that tout their professionalism to relative and neighbor alike. For my efforts I have a B.A. in Anthropology/ minor in Sociology and a M.A. in Sociology. My father still, to this day, doesn’t know quite why he sent me to university for and how to describe my educational achievements to significant others.And no, he doesn’t quite know what to make of my poetry either!


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1&2 from "Talking Trash, Talking Class: What's a Working Class Poetic, and Where Would I Find One?" by Kathy Lou Schultz . This essay first appeared in tripwire: a journal of poetics, no. 1, Spring, 1998.