Jim Krusoe

Professor

“Poets used to have an actual classification number in the unemployment lines. They’d say to me, ‘Poet, huh? Sorry, buddy. No job openings today…’”

In the tradition of roustabout writers such as Twain, Kerouac, and London, Jim Krusoe admits proudly to having knocked around a bit. “I think there’s a virtue to staying hungry,” he says. “And if what you’re doing is slightly scary, whether it’s in poetry or whatever creative field you’ve chosen, it adds a kind of backbone and excitement to the fact that you have chosen to make your way in the arts.”

Jim chose to go to college in California “to get as far away from Cleveland as I possibly could.” He taught, wrote poetry, and traveled and finally began teaching full-time at SMC about four years ago. “And it’s really just the best, teaching here,” he says. “I’m nothing but proud of my students, especially in the night classes. I get such a great cross section in my writing classes,” he continues, “of people who are absolutely professional. I’m told, in fact, that they’re even better than graduate seminars because my students bring such vast experience in life to their writing efforts.”

Jim is currently the editor of Santa Monica Review, the SMC literary publication. “It’s a terrific magazine that combines the work of internationally known writers with works from those who need more exposure.” But his work with pure poetry is still nearest to his heart. “There are two reasons to read poetry,” he says. “One is that it uses words more precisely than any other form, so it teaches the real power of language. Second, poetry is the vehicle for feelings and emotions that have no other way to be expressed in popular culture. Poetry has always been the voice of the unheard,” he continues, “whether it’s the underclass or that which, ordinarily, can’t be put into words.”

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