Criminy.  I knew I hadn’t blogged in a bit, but I didn’t realize that the silence stretched back to the 21st of February.  Of course, that sense of surprise comes from an addled mind that essentially double-posted over at Myspace yesterday, so let’s keep our expectations low, shall we?

Alas, this is a bit of meta-bloggery, a post to promise more posts at some later date.  The past couple of weeks have been hectic–we wrapped up our campus visits on the 23rd and 27th, and in between I’ve been busy writing letters of recommendation, revising master course syllabi, and grading–but I hope to be square with the fates by Sunday.

At that time I’ll try to tackle questions related to professorial sexuality in a fourth installment of “Sex and the Single Professor,” and I also plan to post another addendum to my job market commentary, perhaps in response to recent keyword searches and perhaps (assuming I can find ways to remain adequately detached from the material details of our own attempt to hire an Early Modern scholar) in response to my own search sensibilities.  I am nothing if not intrepid.

I’d also like to thank the folks over at the English Who Got In Lounge  on LiveJournal, who have some kind words to say about my job market posts and who offer some insightful running commentary on the search process in a variety of voices.  It’s a more expressively organized, more detailed, more leisurely reckoning of the kind of frenzied free-for-all that appears over at the Scratchpad job search wiki, and much more salutary for that reason.

Back I go to the hells that spawned me.  I’ll see you anon.

Well, awake at least.  Check back with me later.

I’m already sugared and caffeinated, so you would think I might feel somewhat friskier.  About this time each year, however, the threshold of functional friskiness becomes harder to achieve.  Hundreds of exams and essays will do that.

The seriocomic aspect of my own end-o’-semester travails is that I quite like grading essays; I have never finished a batch of essays without learning something new.  Could I live without another “In this essay I will attempt to demonstrate that Beowulf is something like a hero” exercise?  You betcha.  For the most part, however, witnessing a fresh engagement with a text, wherever it might lead, is always interesting.

That being said, I have my limits.  At the end of each semester I think most profs reach a point of saturation and then supersaturation; I can only read so many essays in a row before my tolerance begins to diminish.  I might ambitiously grade ten, take a break, grade eight more, fix a meal, then grade six more.  That will get me through half a survey class.  The act of actual grading, however, only comes after my third reading (I use one reading to screen for outliers who approached the assignment in an unorthodox way, a second reading for appraising qualitative variations on similar themes), so you can probably imagine why I’m tapped out.  By the time I get down to blogging or other forms of recreation, I’m generally ready to be frivolous.

A kindly well-wisher has urged me to take my virtual presence somewhat more seriously, and at heart I agree with her.  When it comes time to approach the blog with due sobriety, however, I find myself drawing up short.  On any given day I am likely to a) offer carefully measured counsel on a few dozen student essays, b) agonize over a verb, adjective, allusion, or metrical hiccup in a poem, c) rearrange a sentence in a story a half dozen times to maximize its impact, d) hammer out the logic of an article or proposal with painstaking care, or e) compose e-mails that smack of para-legalese as I remind a student why I cannot accept a late exam or set out some kind of phrasally dense committee initiative.  Accordingly, when it comes time to blog every couple days I am seldom inclined to approach the mode with the gravity it probably deserves.  I read and write almost constantly, and even I deserve to blow off steam once in awhile.

In my case, said ventilation is something of a challenge.  I find research, teaching, and writing satisfying, if not pleasurable; I love my work, and when I’m in work mode, it engrosses me.  My primary avocation, as you may have guessed, is writing verse; my secondary diversion is writing fiction (and I rank them first and second here only to pander to my blog audience; it’s quite frankly a dead heat).  When I’m not chipping away at some writing project, I read for pleasure.  My genuine “recreation,” then, consists of letting my brain cool down by drooling in front of the teevee.

Do I have spare time?  Oodles, technically, but only because I’m a time-management ninja and can create hours out of the aether whenever I want.  When it comes to filling said time, however, one might rightly surmise that I lack imagination.   My default mode involves a fairly small constellation of activities, all of which directly or conceivably constitute work.

As we sidle toward semester’s end, I’m accordingly trying to unwind some of those bindings.  It’s a tricksy endeavor, if only because I don’t experience work as inhibition, as some obligation that prevents me from doing the things I really want to be doing.  I reckon it’s one of those tell-the-dancer-from-the-dance matters, one I’m not willing to fight.

O’er the break, however, I’ll see what I can do about realizing some of this “recreation” stuff.  If that leads to more sober, focused bloggification, so be it.

Welcome to the new virtual homestead of William H. Wandless–the “H” stands for heautontimorumenos!  Oh, would that it did, dear Reader, would that it did.

Fun facts:  I decided to use my middle initial after Googling “William Wandless,” which turned up 456 hits, at least some which refer back to me.  When I Googled “William H. Wandless,” however, I came across the following news item from the 20 November 1884 edition of the New York Times:

On Tuesday, William H. Wandless, aged 56, committed suicide at his boarding house, No. 18 Orient Avenue, Brooklyn, by opening the arteries of both arms at the elbow with a penknife. He was found dead in his bed by a fellow-boarder. Wandless was a glass cutter. His suicide was due, it is said, to despondency resulting from his inability to find employment.

This blog may never approach that level of detailed reportage, but now I have a kind of macabre transparency to aspire to.  And that, my friends, is the origin of the inner “H.”  It also helps that I sign my work “William H. Wandless,” but that’s not much of a story, is it?

If you’ve arrived here, chances are you’ve read something I’ve written.  Said reading might have included my now-defunct anonymous blog (for which I hope a parent or adult guardian scolded you roundly), but it also might have included my barefaced public writing.  In either case, welcome! 

My eldern readers (comrades all, none of whom I deserve) will know that this is my first attempt at writing informally in a self-identified guise.  Anonymous bloggery may be liberating in some wise, but I am nowadays of the opinion that if I’m unwilling to own up to my words, I really oughtn’t be typing them.  As a result of this transition to a more public persona, expect a little unsteadiness at first.  I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be writing or how, but I am eager to see what shape this self-representation will take. 

I am by trade a literary scholar, but I also write poetry and speculative fiction (read:  horror, fantasy, and sometimes sci-fi).  I used to hammer away at creative work avidly, privately, but once I entered graduate school in 1995 I felt obliged to focus wholly on my studies.  My writing from 1995-2006 was thus devoted exclusively to professional preparation and advancement, and it was not until the summer of 2006, as I prepared to assume my post at Central Michigan University, that I seriously considered revisiting that lost, beloved country.  Though I’ve met with early encouragement on several fronts, I still feel as though I’m working through a three-pronged novitiate; quite frankly, I hope I never lose that sensibility.  However, thanks to the help of excellent mentors, friends, and colleagues and the feedback I’ve received from myriad kindly and generous editors, I feel like I’m on my way.  Think of this blog as an especially life-affirming episode of Mary Tyler Moore, give or take the beret.

In a post I’ll save for later, I’ll explain how my fiction, verse, scholarship, and teaching are inseparably intertwined.  For today, however, a short origin story and a blog-specific raison d’être will have to suffice. 

I’ll try to update semi-regularly (at least once a week, more often if anything exciting transpires), and I should let you know that this venue will concentrate primarily, but not exclusively, on the writing of poetry.  I’ll most assuredly regale you with my thoughts on the various and sundries of my existence, and I may yet create a separate public venue devoted primarily to my fiction, but I’ll try to remain reasonably focused here.  I hope a little proactive compartmentalization will help readers find what they seek more readily.

Next time:  My love/hate relationship with adverbs…and a scathing critique of Encyclopedia Brown!