When I meet someone new and the person learns I’m in the English Department, the person logically assumes I am an English professor. 

I think it, sometimes, too. I do grade papers. I do go to the library more than I go to any bar, sporting event, or internet locale.

But whenever I listen to Garrison Keillor I just freak out. He is the patron saint of English majors, or Club Secretary, or First Dude of English Majors and I have to take a moment to say: I AM NOT IN THIS CLUB. It’s a cool club, I’m so happy we have it, a lot of my best friends are in it; I love the Treasurer and the men at large….But I am not really an English Professor.  And it’s never more profoundly clear to me when I listen to Prairie Home Companion. It’s like being a Brit in

Like most artists in academia, I am not an actual true certified real English professor. I play one. Poorly. I’m an artist, not an academic. I’m incredibly lucky to have this job.

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This is what people think, I think, when they hear two words, English Professor. Grammar, glasses, tweed, elbow patches, tedious perfection, weak to poor grooming skills, holy sacred enviable and scary love for literature aka difficult to apprehend poems such as those by Keats and Yeats. Pronunciation of which or of whom is uncertain and avoidable. I assume this because of one sentence: “I better watch what I say!” Nine out of ten new people say this to me, when I am introduced as an English Professor. “Better watch what I say!”

You better watch what you say, but not for the reasons you are thinking. I’m not interested in your grammar. For better or worse, I’m not really an actual English professor! I am a writer.   If I was (were? Was? Were?) an English professor, I wouldn’t be correcting grammar or probably even noticing it when I am about town, having my social life…. I would be Off Duty.

I am not interested in spelling as an enforcement practice, but more as a dedication to pattern. When it comes to grammar and spelling, I’m like a drummer, a person who loves beats, all kinds of beats. I’m not interested in curation, but more in how you are put together, and what are you reading and noticing and learning and how are you growing these days? I’m in interested not in telling you the difference between less/few but rather in asking you what is the tiny tiny thing you noticed today that made your heart thrum and what words could give a shape to that and I’m interested in the high point of your day. And what you remember about the last time we talked. And how that knits a self, a holding space.

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When I give my work to Jackie, my first reader, she corrects, every time, with a little haphazard face—not smiling not frowning, just grimacing in a wavy line penciled in the margin at the site of the offense—my Lie Lay issues. I know lie lay. Janet Burroway taught me Lie Lay.  I teach (really well, I think) Lie Lay. Lie Lay, Lay Laid. I get lie lay and lesser fewer and also who whom. I know these things! But when I turn my work over to my friends, my love, my agent, my readers, they find MANY ERRORS. Errors that would horrify any English major or librarian. I’m not a good English major. I’m not a real English major. I’m a pirate, a poacher, a wanna be a hanger on, along for the ride, crashing the party, a mouse in the house of English; I’m something else.

 I want to do it right. It’s just not….what I live for.

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I love my English professor colleagues and they intimidate me. I need them, as I need furniture and friends and sunlight and love and conversation, and I respect them; I as bow down to philosophers.

But writers aren’t really English professors. We’re makers. We’re rascally. We’re difficult like children are, or weather, or novels. Or monkeys.  

I’m not an English professor.