Category: Whitman today

So apparently one way to get to the top of my field–Walt Whitman studies–is to be a bully. Or perhaps just an outright psychopath.

Dave McNair. “Tale of Woe: The death of the VQR’s Kevin Morrissey.” The Hook.

He says that one of the convictions that underlie his “Leaves” is the conviction that the “crowning growth of the United States is to be spiritual and heroic,”—a prophecy which in our times, I confess, does not seem very near fulfillment. –John Burroughs, 1896

Walt Whitman scholar Ted Genoways, at work on archives of the poet’s correspondence, is embroiled in a controversy over alleged workplace bullying at the prestigious journal which he edits, the Virginia Quarterly Review. Concern over academic bullying has surfaced following the July 30th suicide by the journal’s managing editor, Kevin Morrissey. After Morrissey’s death, the locks were changed at the VQR office. Currently, Genoways is working in a location separate from the main editorial office, and has retained the services of a lawyer. Meanwhile, VQR’s online editor, Waldo Jaquith, has resigned, commenting, “I gave notice of my resignation… four days prior to Kevin’s death… if things are that bad, I walk.” There is also lingering police presence on campus, now that a break-in at the VQR office resulted in the theft of a computer.

Brendan Fitzgerald. “VQR editor Ted Genoways retains lawyer as lit mag pushes toward deadline.” Charlottesville News and Arts, #22.32, 08/10/2010 – 08/16/2010.

UPDATE: According to the Chronicle of Education: “After the suicide, the staff members … were told they would be putting together the upcoming fall issue on their own, without Mr. Genoways, who is on leave on a Guggenheim fellowship. But this week, people close to the Review said, Mr. Genoways submitted to the review’s design company a completely different version of the fall issue — with a different cover — than the one staff members had been working on. Now, say people close to the review, the staff members are threatening to take their names off the masthead.”

I don’t know what all this says about the leading lights of Whitman scholarship, but it seems to me that at the very least they are happy to embrace a calculating control freak, as long as he brings in the big Guggenheims.

Mary Frost of Walt’s old newspaper, The Brooklyn Eagle, informs us that the Borough of Brooklyn has finally embarked upon a $4.5-million renovation of Walt Whitman Park. The design centers on a grassy hill and a fountain that will cool residents in a globally-warmer future. Four Walt Whitman poems will be engraved in granite on the sides of the fountain.

Schematic of Walt Whitman Park, Brooklyn