The Voice of Eric Pankey

		`The Voice of Eric Pankey`
		By Jeb Livingood

Asked if he still considers himself a "young" faculty member, Eric Pankey, English, shakes his head. "I'm feeling my age these days," he says. At 37, Pankey's aches and pains may be a bit premature, but if he hasn't logged all the years of a veteran professor, he certainly has the qualifications of one. He comes to George Mason after directing the Creative Writing Program at Washington University at St. Louis, and his fourth book of poetry, The Late Romances (Knopf), hits bookstore shelves in February.
Pankey's literary success started early. His first book, For the New Year (Atheneum, 1984), won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets when he was only 25. "It was basically my M.F.A. thesis," he says. "I was just lucky someone was interested in it. I was a young poet trying on various voices--once in a while my own squeaky voice rose above the others."

But as with most poets, Pankey's first book wasn't putting much food on the table. He began teaching English at the high school level and writing poetry, essays, and reviews in his spare time. Then in 1987, only four years after he received his master's from Iowa University, Pankey joined the faculty of Washington University at St. Louis. "It's funny though," he says, "teaching high school with five to six classes every day really gave me a lot of the organizational skills I needed to run the Creative Writing Program."
By 1988, Pankey's second book, Heartwood (Atheneum), was in print. "I was interested in capturing stories," he says, "and speaking honestly in a 'plain' voice." Two of his poems, "For Luck" and "Work," appeared in Poetry that same year, and by 1990, "Abstraction," was in The New Yorker. Pankey was working on a third book, Apocrypha (Knopf), and by 1991 he had it completed. In The Kenyon Review, David Baker wrote: "Eric Pankey is outstanding among an emerging generation of talented and accomplished poets--Apocrypha is one of the most carefully composed, subtly constructed books of poems I have read in years and is one of the most moving."
Apocrypha frequently mentions a "he" or "I" that Pankey says is not necessarily autobiographical. "That character is someone who once had a profound belief and lost it, yet he feels a certain nostalgia for the wholeness of that spiritual calm." This voice comes through in the first few lines of "Fool's Gold":

I was not the type to call forth angels,
But if I said there's a swallow rising as it banks
Over the white flat of the rail yards,
Tracing the long ellipse of its hunt,
You could believe me. I talked like that.
I looked to the birds for the perfection of geometry.

Pankey cautions that his "he" has not given up on spirituality. "He learns that questioning itself is a way of honoring belief." This inner dialogue forms the core of his new book, The Late Romances. "It became a meditation of what it is to live a bodily life," he says.
With the final proofs of The Late Romances at the publishers, Pankey has been able to concentrate on his new role as an associate professor at George Mason. A big proponent of public education, Pankey notes that Mason students are often very different from their counterparts at private universities. "So many of my students have part-time, even full-time jobs," he says, "people paying their own way take school very seriously--they demand things of me, but they also demand of themselves."

Related Links
Eric Pankey
GMU Grad. Creative Writing
Online Poetry Index
Online Bookstore
He's especially pleased with Mason's Graduate Creative Writing Program. "The graduate students I have this semester are the best group I've ever worked with in a workshop setting. They are generous readers, and they're willing to look for the perfect or Platonic poem in each other's work without forcing their own notion of style or content."
To Pankey, that sort of openness is critical in a M.F.A. program. He notes that unlike most academic disciplines, "We're not trying to prove anything in a didactic or scientific sense. We're involved in a fine art where we try to shape an order out of the disorder that is all around us." He also sees a writing program as having another significant difference: "I think people forget that a M.F.A. program also creates an 'oral history' of poetry in America. We're all haunted by the ghosts of our former professors and mentors, and we pass some of that on to our students--it's basically an apprenticeship."
A professor who perpetuates that kind of poetic heritage seems like a natural fit for Mason's program. Fellow poet and professor Carolyn Forche, English, says, "As our M.F.A. program has in recent years attracted gifted aspiring poets from all over the country, we are pleased to be joined by a poet of such prodigious poetic gifts, whose reputation as an inspiring and dedicated teacher is also impressive."
Pankey smiles at praise like that. He says he's still searching for that perfect sound, that perfect voice. "I'm like most every other poet," he says. "I feel a real horror looking back at my old stuff. I can almost always taste the poem I want to write, but that's rarely the one that comes out. Each return to an old poem offers an opportunity to get a little closer to that ideal."

		Asked if he still considers himself a "young" faculty member, Eric Pankey, English, shakes his head. "I'm feeling my age these days," he says. At 37, Pankey's aches and pains may be a bit premature, but if he hasn't logged all the years of a veteran professor, he certainly has the qualifications of one. He comes to George Mason after directing the Creative Writing Program at Washington University at St. Louis, and his fourth book of poetry, The Late Romances (Knopf), hits bookstore shelves in February. Pankey's literary success started early. His first book, For the New Year (Atheneum, 1984), won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets when he was only 25. "It was basically my M.F.A. thesis," he says. "I was just lucky someone was interested in it. I was a young poet trying on various voices--once in a while my own squeaky voice rose above the others."
		But as with most poets, Pankey's first book wasn't putting much food on the table. He began teaching English at the high school level and writing poetry, essays, and reviews in his spare time. Then in 1987, only four years after he received his master's from Iowa University, Pankey joined the faculty of Washington University at St. Louis. "It's funny though," he says, "teaching high school with five to six classes every day really gave me a lot of the organizational skills I needed to run the Creative Writing Program." By 1988, Pankey's second book, Heartwood (Atheneum), was in print. "I was interested in capturing stories," he says, "and speaking honestly in a 'plain' voice." Two of his poems, "For Luck" and "Work," appeared in Poetry that same year, and by 1990, "Abstraction," was in The New Yorker. Pankey was working on a third book, Apocrypha (Knopf), and by 1991 he had it completed. In The Kenyon Review, David Baker wrote: "Eric Pankey is outstanding among an emerging generation of talented and accomplished poets--Apocrypha is one of the most carefully composed, subtly constructed books of poems I have read in years and is one of the most moving." Apocrypha frequently mentions a "he" or "I" that Pankey says is not necessarily autobiographical. "That character is someone who once had a profound belief and lost it, yet he feels a certain nostalgia for the wholeness of that spiritual calm." This voice comes through in the first few lines of "Fool's Gold": I was not the type to call forth angels, But if I said there's a swallow rising as it banks Over the white flat of the rail yards, Tracing the long ellipse of its hunt, You could believe me. I talked like that. I looked to the birds for the perfection of geometry. Pankey cautions that his "he" has not given up on spirituality. "He learns that questioning itself is a way of honoring belief." This inner dialogue forms the core of his new book, The Late Romances. "It became a meditation of what it is to live a bodily life," he says. With the final proofs of The Late Romances at the publishers, Pankey has been able to concentrate on his new role as an associate professor at George Mason. A big proponent of public education, Pankey notes that Mason students are often very different from their counterparts at private universities. "So many of my students have part-time, even full-time jobs," he says, "people paying their own way take school very seriously--they demand things of me, but they also demand of themselves."
Related Links Eric Pankey GMU Grad. Creative Writing Online Poetry Index Online Bookstore		He's especially pleased with Mason's Graduate Creative Writing Program. "The graduate students I have this semester are the best group I've ever worked with in a workshop setting. They are generous readers, and they're willing to look for the perfect or Platonic poem in each other's work without forcing their own notion of style or content." To Pankey, that sort of openness is critical in a M.F.A. program. He notes that unlike most academic disciplines, "We're not trying to prove anything in a didactic or scientific sense. We're involved in a fine art where we try to shape an order out of the disorder that is all around us." He also sees a writing program as having another significant difference: "I think people forget that a M.F.A. program also creates an 'oral history' of poetry in America. We're all haunted by the ghosts of our former professors and mentors, and we pass some of that on to our students--it's basically an apprenticeship." A professor who perpetuates that kind of poetic heritage seems like a natural fit for Mason's program. Fellow poet and professor Carolyn Forche, English, says, "As our M.F.A. program has in recent years attracted gifted aspiring poets from all over the country, we are pleased to be joined by a poet of such prodigious poetic gifts, whose reputation as an inspiring and dedicated teacher is also impressive." Pankey smiles at praise like that. He says he's still searching for that perfect sound, that perfect voice. "I'm like most every other poet," he says. "I feel a real horror looking back at my old stuff. I can almost always taste the poem I want to write, but that's rarely the one that comes out. Each return to an old poem offers an opportunity to get a little closer to that ideal."