University of Wisconsin-Richland
Professor Emeritus of English 
Wisconsin Teaching Scholar, 2008-09
The feeling of solidarity and connection was crucial as I kept on teaching. It was a long career, and harder and harder as the years went on thanks to political shenanigans. But connecting with SoTL as a discipline and WTFS colleagues were vital lifelines.
I began to try to write well about teaching in a more thoughtful way, and part of that was self-publishing a short-run chapbook called Each Other’s Anodyne.
The following poems were part of that chapbook: “Each Other’s Anodyne,” a long poem (technically a “crown of sonnets”) which allowed me to explore and grieve what we were all going through in 2011 with the enactment of Act 10 and the protests and the ramifications. “The Amazing History of Hiving” was trying to get at how amazing it is to teach well and connect with students. “Nothing Can Stop Us” was very fun to read to groups of professors! In fact, one campus dean was so excited he wanted to raise funds to send a copy of the chapbook to every Wisconsin legislator. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I said absolutely not. That felt to me like the Bible verse about what not to do with your pearls—legislators were not the audience, and I was certain they’d figure out how to use my words to do the opposite of what I had hoped, which was to console those of us doing the work.
One very fun opportunity came about in 2003 when Dr. Cora Marrett asked me to read poetry to the Board of Regents, and I read “The Voice of the Legislator.” I would have very different things to say to them now that they have closed many campuses, including my sweet little Richland, and just swept away the tenure of 30+ faculty members like so much dust.
I published a poem about the closing of the UW Colleges (before the closing of any actual campuses) as the conclusion of a scholarly collection of articles from my former UW Colleges English Department Colleagues in Materiality and Writing Studies: Aligning Labor, Scholarship, and Teaching, edited by Holly Hassel and Cassandra Phillips (both participants in WTFS).
On a very basic level, WTFS and SoTL made me thoughtful and reflective about every single thing I did in the classroom. From the very beginning, I used Randy Bass’s example and probed my “received” teaching to see what was useful and what was not. I did ongoing research in creativity studies and used what I learned to structure creative writing classes and a course called Creativity and Problem-Solving, but more importantly, I found ways to use creativity in all my classes and articulate to students what they were doing and why.
In that sense, one of the best things I ever learned was from Lendol Calder during Faculty College, the practice of a “think aloud.” I used the particular process in classes numerous times, but also took it as a general teaching practice. If there was a sticky concept or skill, I would model for students how I worked through it, in “think aloud” fashion, and got them comfortable with doing the same thing for each other and for me. SO MANY TIMES in a one-on-one session with a student, when I asked them to walk me through what they were thinking when they did ________, I could pinpoint precisely where they went wrong, but even more importantly where they went right.
To whatever extent I was a good teacher in my long career, I can first thank some basic constitutional traits I can’t take credit for: genuine love of students, sense of fair play, strong urge to bring everyone along. Then there’s the whole work ethic thing. But finally, and importantly, I can truly thank the University of Wisconsin System for funding WTFS and Faculty College because what I learned and the people I connected with made all the difference for me and allowed me to continue to teach well in a very difficult era.
Biography:
Marnie Bullock Dresser retired as a full Professor from the University of Wisconsin-Richland in 2023. In retirement she is sleeping well, being a caregiver for her mother, and writing, writing, writing.
Poetry:
EACH OTHER’S ANODYNE
The weary teacher lays his pen aside
And rubs his eyes, says to his wife, “All right,
I’ll come to bed.” They both know he will try
To grade some more in the morning. All through the night
Another teacher wakes up anxious, mad
At everyone. She yells at her husband and son,
But it’s not their fault. It’s not the teachers’ fault.
In a dark time, our hard work shines too bright.
We’re public target practice. We’re spittoons.
For a time, a shining time, we were solid
In the middle class, rewarded for working hard
To help synapses snap and shimmer in the light.
Tempus fugit, damn it, sad but true:
The best shows all get cancelled way too soon.
The best shows all get cancelled way too soon.
Post-modernly they hooked us and we swooned
At heroes rounding all the genres up
To drove them o’er the plains. Inspire us!
The hooker with the heart of brass blew up
The patriarchy, blam! The runt did chin-ups
Until he made the winning catch, two times.
The rocket rounded earth, accompanied by chimes
At midnight, and we, we got attached too fast
To what the larger corporate sponsor failed
To see a profit in. It couldn’t last,
But we had no idea the cruise ship had sailed.
We made a snack and snuggled, and watched the show.
The nights were longer then, with deeper snow.
The nights were longer then, and deeper snow
Made driving slower. Now darker days have come
Despite the later sunsets. We didn’t know
How sweet it was—our biggest worry was some
Stupid internet scam our students fell for—
An octopus living in trees. Like always, slow
In winter—we did our jobs, shoveled some more,
And then the Packers won the Super Bowl!
For Valentine’s, our governor went nuclear.
So far he’s systematic—everything
We care about, he wants to cut. Budget despair
Has set in hard. It will not ever be spring.
But up in the gray, three sand hill cranes, flying north.
Up in the gray, three sand hill cranes, flying north.
Inexorably, the seasons change. They do.
But broken-hearted, raw, beleaguered blue—
We cannot trust the calendar. It’s death
We see when we look around—dead trees, dead grass
Below the layered shale of sooty ice.
Just like “always winter and never Christmas,”
We long for a miraculous thaw or a looking glass.
Not knowing is the worst; at least we think
It is—we’ll think that until we learn the worst.
However far we’ve learned our hopes can sink,
they’ve sunk so far, and farther, and farthest.
We thought we had a thaw, but it froze again.
The ditches are full of ice. But it is thin.
The ditches are full of ice, but it’s too thin
For skating. It makes a satisfying crunch
When you stomp it. Let’s watch the two of them—
These women hiking, sharing a picnic lunch.
One’s tiny—she can almost walk across
The ice before it breaks. Almost. Not quite.
Crashing, they are each other’s anodyne.
One lover catches another and she laughs,
“You silly thing.” And just like that, the tears
come flying out, “I’m sorry I dragged you here.
I can’t even make you my wife. This stupid state
Is stupid. I hate it. Hate, hate, hate.”
“Please don’t hate on my account. Not ever.
We’ve made a home. Your students need you here.”
We’ve made a home where students need us. Here
In the trenches, in the cold and the muck of open admission,
We’re spinning plates for students, showing where
Centrifugal becomes centripetal
With just the right transitional phrase. They take
The plates away from us, they break the glass
Bell jars and ceilings, they celebrate the figures
That animate their dreams the night they made
The quadratic formula prove itself on threat
Of death, organismic, de dicto, real.
Whatever ivory tower there ever was,
It’s gone for good, and most of us are thrilled.
We may stay—we may move on—but we are sure—
If not Wisconsin, somewhere, someone will learn.
If not Wisconsin, somewhere, someone will learn
That when you titillate the lesser devils
Of our nature, when you go all Soviet
And wish my cow would die (you ate your own),
You’re just a toddler berserker tearing down
the walls, affronted when the ceiling lands.
America seemed like such a good idea.
I guess it’s possible it might again.
Uncertain of so much save that we stand,
The union of other and each, screaming
At the snow, we can keep each other warm.
We can be each other’s anodyne,
Inventing for each other a kind of summer
When weary teachers lay their pens aside.
THE AMAZING HISTORY OF HIVING
Use your eyes, I tell my cubs, see the bees.
Follow your nose, I tell them both,
always two cubs, when I dream about being
a mama bear teaching my young to find honey.
It smells so good, I tell them, it smells like life.
And we climb the tree and we ruin the hive
and we gobble it down, we devour it all,
the honey, the bees themselves, the larvae.
Then we fat-bellied bears toddle off
to sleep off the stupor of heaven, to dream
about being professors.
There are precisely, approximately,
one thousand four hundred and twenty-one
disparate, desperate tasks
related to teaching well,
to actual student learning,
including the writing and revising
of lectures, assignments, directions,
discussion prompts and syllabi.
We listen to, we orchestrate, enjoy,
evaluate what students say and do.
As well as tracking grades, remembering
names, and keeping up with email.
Etcetera. Times four courses.
When things go well, I have the sense
of a series of hives, all humming with life
and cranking out honey.
And when it goes badly, it’s the absence
of bees I’m aware of, the silence,
essential work just not getting done.
Like the mysterious missing honeybees—
Did they go off, one by one? Did I kill them?
Do I carry, in my good intentions, something
Deadly to them? A virus? A bacterium?
And once they’re gone, will they ever return?
Not to mention when it all swarms
At me, at students, when we’re all stung,
Confused, in pain,
Every one of us anaphylactic.
But when things go well, I have this sense
Of an academic unit as a hive,
A chapter as a moveable drawer,
A small group discussion like a honeycomb….
In the amazing history of hiving,
Countries and regions develop their own
Style based on what’s blooming
Unaware of the perils of course design.
Delving is what we do best, we beekeepers
Of the academic world, we brave brewers
Of sticky ideas, we savvy cultivators
Of the elusively productive queen of learning.
NO ONE CAN STOP US (a rock anthem call and response)
When the quiet student
In the back row asks a question,
And it’s a good question,
A really good one,
And another student answers
With evidence and insight,
String that bead on your rosary.
Add transcendence to your resume.
We need to learn to treasure
How we live our lives as teachers,
How we succeed, and it’s mostly
Moment by moment.
Moment by moment,
Student by student,
This is what matters.
Teaching’s important.
No one can stop us.
The non-trad who stayed up all night
with a sick kid and a laptop.
The five-year-old cutie with red hair
and freckles, and more issues than freckles.
The hormone-driven, pimple-ridden,
horny jerk who somehow found the nerve
to say “I loved that essay question.”
Shot by shot, our movie of the week,
In which we’re the inspiring teachers,
shows our focus, our composition,
the structure of our concern, proceed
Student by student.
Moment by moment,
Student by student,
This is what matters.
Teaching’s important.
No one can stop us.
We have to feed our families.
We hope to retire before death.
We wonder if Canada would be better.
(If Canada would even let us in.)
But that moment when the soft whitecompact fluorescent light bulb comes on,
when someone learns something, we know,
as surely as we know how hard we work,
this is what matters.
Moment by moment,
Student by student,
This is what matters.
Teaching’s important.
No one can stop us.
Firefighters risk their lives
And lead parades with bagpipes.
Some activists lie down in front of tanks.
My cousin Rob stared down,
Survived, unspeakable things in Iraq.
All around us are dramatic
Examples of heroism and sacrifice.
Have you ever seen a statue
Of a teacher? Me neither.
But we know, we all know
Teaching’s important.
Moment by moment,
Student by student,
This is what matters.
Teaching’s important.
No one can stop us.
No government,
No governor,
No budget cut,
No bad idea
Can keep a really determined teacher
From jumping right into the mosh pit,
From coming on down to the altar,
From pulling up her own bootstraps,
From cutting down on the average
Number of disconnects
Between what he knows in his head
And what he does with his time.
No one can stop us from teaching.
No one can stop us from loving what we do.
No one can touch what we know in our hearts—
However much they meddle and undermine
and underfund and criticize, we know, if they don’t, that
no one can stop us.
Moment by moment,
Student by student,
This is what matters.
Teaching’s important.
No one can stop us.
THE VOICE OF THE LEGISLATOR
To those who currently do more with less,
Consider doing even more with even less.
For those requesting more, remember that
We’re giving less and less to those who ask.
Those golden days of doing less with more
Are gone. Don’t ask o where o where o where.
It’s like your family. All the good vacations
Got took before you could even walk. Unconscious
In your baby haze, you never knew
That Polaroid of everyone at the zoo
Captured the last moment in time and space
All the feelings inside matched the look on each face.
Grow up. You weren’t abused. No matter how bad
Things look, there’s always room to make more bad.
From the minutes of the April 10, 2003, meeting of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents:
Report of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
- National Poetry Month
In recognition both of National Poetry Month and of the outstanding creative activity in which UW System faculty engage, Senior Vice President Marrett introduced poet Marnie Bullock Dresser, Professor of English at UW-Richland. Professor Dresser read several poems, including one she wrote especially for the Regents entitled “The