Home. Where the Story Ends.

In 2025, I was invited to participate in Compass Roses: Maps by Artists at Opalka Gallery. The project invites people to create maps to interpret their city. My entry adapts the campus map of the shuttered College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, where I taught as a professor for almost 20 years. In marked places–a building, street, or spot–I tell stories from my time there. The original map is above. What follows is that map’s legend, along with audio, photos, and links.

Map Legend

1. Mandelbaum Hall (441 Western Ave)

My first office: the old dining room. I brought my own lamp and printer paper. Then they found it had its own parking lot and gave it to a vice president.

2. Unnamed Faculty Office Building (427 Western Ave)

Squirrels lived inside the walls. The day the college announced it was closing, a landlord left a note on my windshield, saying I couldn’t park there.

3. Dolan Hall (442 Western Ave)

Each September, when I picked up my first batch of mail, my department chair—a former nun—reminded me she wasn’t on the committee that hired me. She never skipped a year.

4. Albertus Hall (432 Western Ave)

Logging in over 12,000 hours of teaching here. If Malcolm Gladwell’s math checks out, I should’ve been a master by the end. I’m still not sure.

5. Events & Athletics Center (420 Western Ave)

Thursday nights, students read poems in the commuter lounge next to the Starbucks. The only time they ever looked nervous.

6. Saint Joseph Auditorium (985 Madison Ave)

Tried to book it once for a statewide high school poetry recitation final. This request was denied, since it conflicted with a dean’s favorite Zumba class.

7. Hubbard Interfaith Sanctuary (959 Madison Ave)

Named for a problematic bishop, yes. But still a favorite space—thanks mostly to Father Chris, who I called “Padre.”

8. Hudson Ave and Quail St

The heart of the “Student Ghetto.” My second office: a self-styled Russian pirate-run coffee shop, seized by New York state in 2017.

9. It’s in this Parking Lot

where I learned grad students had filed a grievance over being assigned “The Pope’s Penis,” a Sharon Olds poem. “We wouldn’t read a poem called ‘The Ayatollah’s Penis,’” one wrote.

10. On the Walk Home to 49 Dove Street

if a class went well, I floated home. If not, I cursed myself and every life choice that brought me here, from leaving our apartment in Park Slope in Brooklyn to the stupid shirt I wore.

11. Centennial Hall (930 Madison Ave)

Our final readings happened here. It took nearly 20 years to find a space where students could simply read their work aloud.

12. 105 South Main Ave

So much space in our first Albany apartment. I walked to work. My wife and I started thinking about having kids.

13. Lally School of Education (1009 Madison Ave)

One year, we spent convocation practicing on the new defibrillators, mounted in the walls like fire extinguishers. Another year, we blamed students’ lack of critical thinking on the death of cursive.

14. Campus Theatre (996A Madison Ave)

I finally booked this plum space for a poetry performance class in spring 2020. Then came COVID and the world went to shit.

15. 1002 Madison Ave

On this spot, I stood in the cold as the president read aloud the same email she’d sent the night before, the one that announced the college was closing.

16. It’s on this spot where,

two years after the Olds grievance, I learned I could keep my job. Well, sort of.

17. Human Resources (432 Western Ave)

May 16, 2024. I rang the bell to turn in my ID card and office keys. “And who are you?” she asked. She didn’t recognize me. After 19 years, I wasn’t surprised.

18. When I drive by the old campus these days,

memories flood in, uninvited. I spent a chunk of my adult life there. A whole career. The years blur together. I loved it. I cursed it at times. I miss the people. I miss the students. It was home.

Flyers from Frequency North: The Visiting Writers Reading Series at The College of Saint Rose

From 2005 to 2024, I helped put on more than 70 on-campus readings. Many were visiting writers from out of town. They would take the train or drive to Albany, visit a class in the afternoon, then read that night.

Saint Rose Campus: A Professor’s Poetic Memoir [Audio]

This is an auto-generated podcast using Google’s NotebookLM tool, which takes user-uploaded documents and files and automatically generates a podcast, title and all. For this I uploaded drafts of the map’s legend and notes.

I did this on a lark when I was looking for tools that could generate a speech-to-text version of the map legend.

Does that sound creepy? Yes. But then I listened to it, and it kind of works. Plus, I hate the sound of my voice.