Poet Resigns Post at UC San Diego Over Resume Lie

Award-winning poet Quincy Troupe, who stepped down as California poet laureate after it was revealed that he lied about having a bachelor’s degree, announced Tuesday that he is resigning his $140,900-a-year post as a literature professor at UC San Diego for the same reason.

The surprise resignation, which is effective at the end of the academic year in June, immediately caused concern among students and faculty that the creative writing program at the science-dominated campus could suffer without the presence of its superstar.

“Quincy will be fine, but the rest of us could be undermined,” said writing professor Eileen Myles, who added that she was outraged that the university administration did not try to keep Troupe from resigning. The literature faculty had already sent a letter of support for Troupe to Chancellor Robert Dynes.

“He’s an artist,” Myles said. “He wasn’t here because of his bachelor’s degree. He would have been hired without a bachelor’s degree. I’m ashamed of the university.”

Troupe, 63, said he plans to move to New York and continue writing and working on the film adaptation of his Miles Davis reminiscence “Miles and Me.”

“I regret what has happened,” Troupe told reporters. “I’m moving on with my work. I’m moving into the sunrise, not the sunset. I have a lot of work to do.”

At a broad-shouldered 6 feet 2 and 235 pounds -- and partial to wearing black and his hair in dreadlocks -- Troupe cut a dramatic figure on campus as he rushed from class to class.

He brought change to San Diego’s staid cultural scene by creating an annual gathering of big-name writers and musicians at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The event is called “Artists on the Cutting Edge: Cross Fertilization.”

The university administration had been pondering what punishment, if any, to mete out to Troupe for having claimed on his job application in 1991 to have a degree from Grambling State University. The lie came to light during a routine background check done after Gov. Gray Davis picked Troupe as poet laureate in June.

Vice Chancellor Richard Attiyeh said Troupe had not been asked to resign. Asked if he could have remained on the faculty, Attiyeh said, “I think the answer to that is, basically, yes.”

In a written statement, Dynes said that “although I understand and agree with Quincy’s decision to step down, he will be greatly missed as a colleague and friend.”

At UC San Diego, Troupe has been a professor of American and Caribbean literature and creative writing. He also has taught at UCLA, USC and Columbia University.

Known for melding rap, jazz and be-bop rhythms into his poetry, Troupe has published 13 books, including six volumes of poetry. He has won two American Book Awards, a Peabody Award and twice won the Taos Poetry Circus, considered the Super Bowl of poetry showdowns known as “slams.”

Troupe’s poetry is marked by a furious rush of images, sometimes jarring, often arising from personal experience. In “Poem Reaching For Something,” the poet describes the chaos and energy of the expressive impulse:

we walk through a calligraphy of hats slicing off foreheads

ace-deuce cocked, they slant, razor sharp, clean through imagination,

our spirits knee-deep in what we have forgotten entrancing

our bodies now to dance, like enraptured water lilies

the rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks

eyeballs rippling through breezes

riffing choirs of trees, where a trillion slivers of sunlight dance across

filigreeing leaves, a zillion voices of bamboo reeds, green with summer

saxophone bursts, wrap themselves, like transparent prisms of dew drops

around images, laced with pearls & rhinestones, dreams

& perhaps it is through this decoding of syllables that we

learn speech.

At his news conference, Troupe said he regretted his “lapse in judgment” and causing embarrassment for the university and his family, particularly his 85-year-old mother.

But he said he is eager to return to New York where his wife owns an art studio and where he was affiliated with a movement of cafe poets who brought new themes and a blue-collar, populist view to their poetry.

“Let’s face it, as a writer ... I’ve always wanted to have unlimited time to devote to writing,” said Troupe, his voice betraying a trace of emotion. “This is that opportunity.”