There is a good deal of flap these days about how children learn, what they ought to be offered in school, and the resultant "results" we might see in the areas of test scores on the short term and quality of life (employment-driven in large part).
As a school board member, I deal with these ideas and willingly engage in the pursuit of better school environment, culture, experience for our students. It has been said, put forth, that we must concentrate our students' school curriculum on STEM subjects. Allegedly, we must do this to increase their post-educational chances in a competitive work world. What will be the "jobs" they might find with or without a focus on STEM? Are we preparing these students for the future where jobs they might land are not at all the jobs of this era, and perhaps jobs that do not even exist right now? For the record, this is an old saw. My parents chattered on about this when I was in school. My grandparents too. Take typing, take cooking, take public speaking. Take chemistry or mathematics. Take psychology because there are more unbalanced people in the world and that number is growing because of the evils of rock and roll.
I heard it all, argued endlessly with my father over the idea that learning to learn and being curious were more important than algebra. (Seriously it IS more important) We went back and forth constantly over how grades came about and fought about whether or not they were important markers for progress and success. It was a battle in which neither of us could declare solid victory. But what I learned from all of it was this:
Be a learner and be interested (curious); apply what you think, what you take to be valid for you based on observation and experience; make a difference for yourself and others with your ideas; be open to the world and all the things in it; be self-assured in the areas of your own accomplishment but don't be arrogant about anything.
I can happily report that these "learnings" have stood me in good stead so far. But here I am, done with child-raising and fussing over my own children's educational lives, and involved yet again with the whole, never-ending questions and attitudes. Nothing much has changed other than the current sagging state of economics (not a change exactly but a resurgence of an old problem) and burgeoning world population. Subject matter discussions still rage on with the same divide in place. What students ought to learn/study vs HOW students might learn/study. We are clearly still in the ditch here. Add to that a trend toward privatization of education in the looming and oh so real incarnation of charter schools, for-profit charter schools. It is all so confusing for people. What to do that will do the best for children, for the future of our country in a competitive world culture.
I propose the same, but refined argument I posed to my father over fifty years ago. STEM: Search, Think, Evaluate, Merge (merging method with subject matter so that a student can command and expand). I am saying that we need to focus our attention and efforts on improving, not demolishing. Why put vast cash into making new what simply needs to be reconstructed with different (more reasonable) goals in mind? We are still using the 1893 model. Want to drive around in THAT vehicle? I think not. But we are doing just that: teaching (attempting to teach) using the model that one ought to teach all students the same material in the same way. No wonder a visual learner cannot "see" the material being spoken "to" (read: AT) him or her? No wonder the hands-on, kinesthetic, learner can't get a "feel" for the material appearing on the power point in the front of the room. In 2002 I took a basic computer class (required by my university) in which we never touched a computer. Really? you ask. REALLY. Imagine taking a film class with no film viewing whatsoever. Or how about a machine tooling class with nary machine or a tool in the room. No wonder the audio learner cannot function in a class where everyone is totally quiet and no discussions ensue. No wonder we are failing our students.
I believe we need to look at not just subject matter (yes, we can still have algebra and physics) but at how students learn and how to put in place an empowerment of the learners, all of the learners, not just the "brightest" or the "struggling." We need to reevaluate how we teach and how we evaluate. We need to stop "talking about" and start doing. We need STEM (see above re-defining of the term).
[ giving you some time to let this sink into your mind..... tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.... ]
OK, you have your position on this topic clear now? Let's discuss. Oh, and I'm waiting for someone to bring up the hidden topic here: Is our learning so utilitarian that we only care about the jobs it will bring? How can that work when the jobs on the horizon may be jobs that don't exist now?
I ask you: what about learning to KNOW? Is knowledge a luxury we just cannot afford?
Friday, October 5, 2012
Sunday, September 30, 2012
The Aubade, or breaking up is hard to do
I enjoy writing and reading aubades. For purposes of instruction (for those of you who may have read these and not known what the form is) an aubade is typically a morning poem or, more specifically, a poem of parting lovers. It is usually reflective of the speaker's feelings of loss or dejection. It also somewhat celebrates the lovers' connections to one another. It can be licit or illicit love that is discussed, celebrated, mourned.
I have an affinity for the poems of morning (odd since I don't really "do" morning) and these love poems are right up my alley.
Aubades are usually somewhat short ( a few stanzas or a couple of stanzas in some cases) as if to mirror the brief moment of departure. Let me recommend a few excellent ones:
Late Aubade by Richard Wilbur
Aubade by Philip Larkin
Shadows by Judi Van Gorder
Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm by Carl Philips
But I want to turn attention to an excellent and somewhat unusual aubade by Richard Wilbur, For C. which was published in his 2000 collection, Mayflies (Harcourt)
I have an affinity for the poems of morning (odd since I don't really "do" morning) and these love poems are right up my alley.
Aubades are usually somewhat short ( a few stanzas or a couple of stanzas in some cases) as if to mirror the brief moment of departure. Let me recommend a few excellent ones:
Late Aubade by Richard Wilbur
Aubade by Philip Larkin
Shadows by Judi Van Gorder
Aubade: Some Peaches, After Storm by Carl Philips
But I want to turn attention to an excellent and somewhat unusual aubade by Richard Wilbur, For C. which was published in his 2000 collection, Mayflies (Harcourt)
For C. (From Mayflies, Harcourt 2000)
This poem, comprised of 5 6-line stanzas, each of which is a quatrain and a rhymed couplet, is at its soul an aubade. It begins in the third person singular (she/he) describing a departure of lovers. She leaves him standing at a window and departs in a taxi. At face value, nothing too sorrowful is happening here, until the reader gets to the final line of the stanza, the final phrase of the stanza: forever west. Now the reader is set up for what is to come as Wilbur unfolds the laundry of the poem, the hard luck and hard decisions. Of course Wilbur isn’t going to let us off hte hook for five lines before setting forth his message. A close reading of the poem shows in the first line that there is some conflict. His use of the word clash to describe the closing of the elevator and then the word sinking in the next line both prepare us and hint at the fact that there is trouble or discord or at the least unhappiness brewing.
In stanza two, the poet moves to a bit of a somewhat general commentary on what happens when people part, but not without getting personal. He refers to saying goodbye as being on such a grand scale and yet there is the pinpoint intimacy of lovers who had only the duration of a dance. This stanza is luscious in that it is evocative and plaintive, suggesting the lovers who for whatever reasons are doomed to this one dance, would like more. Again, Wilbur chooses his words carefully to get to a somber tone. Using the word darkling is an interesting choice. In using this, he presages a tenebrific life for the lovers who must leave the one dance with knowledge of a life forgone (doomed not to be). The reader feels what they feel, sympathizing a bit with their plight even if not agreeing with the illicit nature of their desires for one another.
The next stanza is purposefully enjambed to connect the lovers to the universe, which Wilbur does with great skill in the detail of the Perseids and their flash, and more specifically in their crumble. The poet moves quickly from the light of the Perseids to the darksome fate of the lovers whose being together unravels as they know it must. This burn and crash symbolism is not an overt judgement on the lovers, but an observation of their plight, in true aubade style.
Next there is a movement to a departure dock, and readers are weighted with specifics of farewelling, i.e. grief and baggage. In using this imagery, Wilbur embodies the sorrow, the heaviness of heart that is the aubade at its foundation. He ends the stanza with the crux of the poem: what they must leave behind is a difficult love, one that flashed bright as the Perseids. (The amorous rough and tumble of their wake) I am reminded of Wilbur’s The Writer, in which the speaker of the poem (father) wishes his daughter a lucky passage, then later wishes it harder. Life and love are hard passages. Wilbur knows this and we do too.
Wilbur shifts in stanza four to the deeply personal we. There is a shift here too in he tone of the poem. The speaker of the poem is off on a comparison between the doomed lovers and his own relationship. The poet does this in a seemingly mocking tone, stating that he and his beloved cannot share in bittersweetness, regret, in large despair. He then takes it to the grounded state of his own love: of constant spirits. They are the entrusted ones for long love, pure and righteous love. He praises the mundane but steady commitment of enduring and decorous and accepted love, then ups the ante by purporting that this staid and tame romance is an art, and is sostenuto, lasting long beyond the regular measure.
The beauty of an aubade, certainly what is accomplished in this one, is that a poet can explore not only his/her own views of love, the personal, but also can foray into the opposites, the perhaps unlucky passages of others’ loves. What this aubade does that some (many) do not do is to combine the two looks. It also accomplishes a movement from the universal (unnamed lovers in various circumstances) to the personal. Most poems dare not go there. Wilbur not only dares, but invites.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
The Interview
I am prepared. I have studied my questions very carefully. I know what it is I want to know and know therefore what to ask.
The above seems to be a standard approach to any kind of interview. I know what it is I want to know and know therefore what to ask. If it were that simple.
On Wednesday, October 3rd, I will ask Richard Wilbur five questions. I know what I want to know. I am prepared.
But the truth is, five questions will not be enough. Every time I read a Wilbur poem (even if it is a poem I have read a hundred times, like Love Calls Us to the Things of This World or A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness), I have more questions.
What that tells me is that the poems are THAT good. Who doesn't change over time? Poems, unlike corporations, are alive forever. They represent the inner selves of their creators. They represent and present themselves to readers/listeners. An interview, a series of questions, is only able to capture where the reader and the poems are in that moment. Next year, the reader will have a different view perhaps or be in a different frame of mind or situation as he/she encounters the poems. But I have promised to ask five questions and only five. I have no wish to exhaust the poet in any way. I do not want to press him to go beyond a comfortable session. I am willing to limit. What this has done for me is quite marvelous. It has forced me to focus. It has forced me to consider what is important to me in Wilbur's work of a lifetime. Imagine an interview that is a total REview. Unwieldy and awkward. Presumptuous. Rude perhaps. Five questions is plenty. IF they are really good questions. I know what I want to know.
Now imagine a focused conversation. Meeting Richard Wilbur has been on the top of my "bucket list" for a decade and a half. This interview is more than that. As a serious poet, I want to KNOW about him as a poet, not just iconically, but as a worker over words and ideas. I think of his poem, He Was when I think of his laboring over his poems. Unlike the speaker of the poem, I want to let myself see him as a real person. Despite a bit of admitted hero worship, I want to be aware of the reality of this man who writes the most beautiful poetry I have ever read. I believe that he has laid solid ground for so many poets and readers who have encountered his work: Having planted a young orchard with so great care (New and Collected Poems, 1988, He Was, p. 332, line 13).
I want to see his poems as perhaps he intended them to be seen and known. Oh I am not going to ask him what made him think of writing this poem or that poem. I know why we write, what gets to us that makes us unable to stop writing. I want instead to know how the world, filled with things and sensibly full at that, drives him to save it on paper. I want to ask about how he and my father both served in WWII and came home alive to make families and go on despite what they saw of war. I want to find out how my father, a dropout at eighth grade, decided to write a poem in 1992 when he revisited his foxhole and the place where he was captured, even though he never wrote another poem before or after. I hope to discover the genealogy of poetry that Wilbur and my father share.
Moreover, I want to listen to his voice as we talk, and have it in my head as I write about his poems or read them in the future. I want to be in the room with that big vocabulary and those big ideas about the world. I want, above all things, to be able to write about his work in a way that honors it and him.
I am prepared. I have studied my questions very carefully. I know what it is I want to know and know therefore what to ask.
The above seems to be a standard approach to any kind of interview. I know what it is I want to know and know therefore what to ask. If it were that simple.
On Wednesday, October 3rd, I will ask Richard Wilbur five questions. I know what I want to know. I am prepared.
But the truth is, five questions will not be enough. Every time I read a Wilbur poem (even if it is a poem I have read a hundred times, like Love Calls Us to the Things of This World or A World Without Objects is a Sensible Emptiness), I have more questions.
What that tells me is that the poems are THAT good. Who doesn't change over time? Poems, unlike corporations, are alive forever. They represent the inner selves of their creators. They represent and present themselves to readers/listeners. An interview, a series of questions, is only able to capture where the reader and the poems are in that moment. Next year, the reader will have a different view perhaps or be in a different frame of mind or situation as he/she encounters the poems. But I have promised to ask five questions and only five. I have no wish to exhaust the poet in any way. I do not want to press him to go beyond a comfortable session. I am willing to limit. What this has done for me is quite marvelous. It has forced me to focus. It has forced me to consider what is important to me in Wilbur's work of a lifetime. Imagine an interview that is a total REview. Unwieldy and awkward. Presumptuous. Rude perhaps. Five questions is plenty. IF they are really good questions. I know what I want to know.
Now imagine a focused conversation. Meeting Richard Wilbur has been on the top of my "bucket list" for a decade and a half. This interview is more than that. As a serious poet, I want to KNOW about him as a poet, not just iconically, but as a worker over words and ideas. I think of his poem, He Was when I think of his laboring over his poems. Unlike the speaker of the poem, I want to let myself see him as a real person. Despite a bit of admitted hero worship, I want to be aware of the reality of this man who writes the most beautiful poetry I have ever read. I believe that he has laid solid ground for so many poets and readers who have encountered his work: Having planted a young orchard with so great care (New and Collected Poems, 1988, He Was, p. 332, line 13).
I want to see his poems as perhaps he intended them to be seen and known. Oh I am not going to ask him what made him think of writing this poem or that poem. I know why we write, what gets to us that makes us unable to stop writing. I want instead to know how the world, filled with things and sensibly full at that, drives him to save it on paper. I want to ask about how he and my father both served in WWII and came home alive to make families and go on despite what they saw of war. I want to find out how my father, a dropout at eighth grade, decided to write a poem in 1992 when he revisited his foxhole and the place where he was captured, even though he never wrote another poem before or after. I hope to discover the genealogy of poetry that Wilbur and my father share.
Moreover, I want to listen to his voice as we talk, and have it in my head as I write about his poems or read them in the future. I want to be in the room with that big vocabulary and those big ideas about the world. I want, above all things, to be able to write about his work in a way that honors it and him.
I am prepared. I have studied my questions very carefully. I know what it is I want to know and know therefore what to ask.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Welcome to a Beheaded Thursday
Have you ever awakened to the feeling of being disconnected to everything around you? It's like the head you laid on the pillow the night before has been severed and remains in the dream state while the body gets up, dresses itself and moves on to the day. Welcome to a beheaded Thursday.
Actually, I'd rather have the head part going onward and leave the body in sleep. The body needs so much tending: feeding, washing, dressing, brushing teeth, all that necessary "stuff" of morning. For me, today was one of those "shot out of a canon" mornings. I had forgotten to pick up the farm share yesterday afternoon, mostly because the head was on duty and in the world of poetry. So, my hubby, who normally gets up early woke me to remedy my faux pas. I threw on clothing (do I like what I'm wearing right now? NO) and drove to pick up the goodies from the farmer who is by fall and winter a teacher. I think that redeems my boo-boo from yesterday. But the point here is that the body was up shockingly early and the head was not ready for prime time. The head, you see, was working late which required the body to hang around the office.
I'm prepping for the big interview with poet Richard Wilbur, which is one day less than a week from now. The head is revved up with possible questions and a desire to read more of Wilbur's poems before the interview, just to be better prepared and to be completely IN the work. The body, however, got worn out in a hurry and pushed itself beyond the normal late night limits of a body and then had to jerk itself up and out way too early. What happens when I have these late night sessions is that the body needs to rest more the next day and the head needs to be a work while this is going on. This morning the head stayed home while the body drove off into the sunshine for veggies and a chicken. Beheaded Thursday indeed.
I am happy to report however, that the head is awake now and replete with dreamed interest and materials. This happens. Dreaming, I can vouch, is a helpful state for writers. Much happens in the head during REM sleep. I am lucky that the part of my brain which works as a ghost-writer has a photographic memory. I awakened with some great ideas for the interview and a sense of things being pretty well jelled, save for the fifth question to ask Wilbur (I said I'd limit the interview to five questions).
A fascinating thing about the beheaded state is that Fate sometimes intervenes and brings a serendipity along to help. This happened today and took the persona of my 20 year old grandson, Christopher who just happened to spend part of last evening in discussion with his college mates over a Wilbur poem, Still, Citizen Sparrow as well as Wallace Stevens' anecdote of the jar poem. Christopher and I ended up in a brief chat on FB a bit ago about these two poems and poets, with my asserting that Wilbur and his poem far outdo Stevens and his. (No disagreement there from Brilliant Grandson). The resultant serendipity: I asked Christopher if he had a question he'd like me to ask Wilbur next Wednesday, a question HE might ask if he were there with me. Fate, in the person of my grandson, has now provided me with the fifth question. I had four solid ones before this morning and now I am ready. The question he posed fits perfectly as a segue from one of my questions. AHA!
The whole grandson in the mix part of the upcoming interview is a wonderful thing. First of all, it reinforces for me that Wilbur is not passé as some in my grad school program were wont to suggest. (Aaaargh, meter: just making it OLD was the hue and cry)
More important than that, it shows that generations after generations are still asking wonderful questions of poets and poems.
Even more important than both of those things is the relationship I have in poetry realms with Brilliant Grandson. He may not write poetry (YET), but he loves reading and thinking about it. It's a start.
The body is now demanding breakfast. It's 1039 AM so I guess I ought to meet the demands. The head, however, is grumbling about how much there is to think about before next Wednesday.
Beheaded Thursday indeed!
Actually, I'd rather have the head part going onward and leave the body in sleep. The body needs so much tending: feeding, washing, dressing, brushing teeth, all that necessary "stuff" of morning. For me, today was one of those "shot out of a canon" mornings. I had forgotten to pick up the farm share yesterday afternoon, mostly because the head was on duty and in the world of poetry. So, my hubby, who normally gets up early woke me to remedy my faux pas. I threw on clothing (do I like what I'm wearing right now? NO) and drove to pick up the goodies from the farmer who is by fall and winter a teacher. I think that redeems my boo-boo from yesterday. But the point here is that the body was up shockingly early and the head was not ready for prime time. The head, you see, was working late which required the body to hang around the office.
I'm prepping for the big interview with poet Richard Wilbur, which is one day less than a week from now. The head is revved up with possible questions and a desire to read more of Wilbur's poems before the interview, just to be better prepared and to be completely IN the work. The body, however, got worn out in a hurry and pushed itself beyond the normal late night limits of a body and then had to jerk itself up and out way too early. What happens when I have these late night sessions is that the body needs to rest more the next day and the head needs to be a work while this is going on. This morning the head stayed home while the body drove off into the sunshine for veggies and a chicken. Beheaded Thursday indeed.
I am happy to report however, that the head is awake now and replete with dreamed interest and materials. This happens. Dreaming, I can vouch, is a helpful state for writers. Much happens in the head during REM sleep. I am lucky that the part of my brain which works as a ghost-writer has a photographic memory. I awakened with some great ideas for the interview and a sense of things being pretty well jelled, save for the fifth question to ask Wilbur (I said I'd limit the interview to five questions).
A fascinating thing about the beheaded state is that Fate sometimes intervenes and brings a serendipity along to help. This happened today and took the persona of my 20 year old grandson, Christopher who just happened to spend part of last evening in discussion with his college mates over a Wilbur poem, Still, Citizen Sparrow as well as Wallace Stevens' anecdote of the jar poem. Christopher and I ended up in a brief chat on FB a bit ago about these two poems and poets, with my asserting that Wilbur and his poem far outdo Stevens and his. (No disagreement there from Brilliant Grandson). The resultant serendipity: I asked Christopher if he had a question he'd like me to ask Wilbur next Wednesday, a question HE might ask if he were there with me. Fate, in the person of my grandson, has now provided me with the fifth question. I had four solid ones before this morning and now I am ready. The question he posed fits perfectly as a segue from one of my questions. AHA!
The whole grandson in the mix part of the upcoming interview is a wonderful thing. First of all, it reinforces for me that Wilbur is not passé as some in my grad school program were wont to suggest. (Aaaargh, meter: just making it OLD was the hue and cry)
More important than that, it shows that generations after generations are still asking wonderful questions of poets and poems.
Even more important than both of those things is the relationship I have in poetry realms with Brilliant Grandson. He may not write poetry (YET), but he loves reading and thinking about it. It's a start.
The body is now demanding breakfast. It's 1039 AM so I guess I ought to meet the demands. The head, however, is grumbling about how much there is to think about before next Wednesday.
Beheaded Thursday indeed!
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The work ahead
Well, today will be a big day for me. I will phone Richard Wilbur to set up the appointment he has agreed to regarding my work on my study of his complete poems. He has agreed to answer five questions. Of course this presumes I have five excellent questions for him. I have been thinking long and hard what it is I want to ask him, what I want to know about his work. I could seriously spend the entire interview time asking questions about what I consider to be five of his best poems (I will list them later). But if I did that, I would miss getting to his view on poetry and on the world his poems inhabit. So I will spring forward into my questions, armed with those poems that might be reference points for the five things I will ask him.
I have loved the poems of Wilbur for a long time. They have a majesty and mastery of diction for one thing. I read a poem and immediately begin asking myself how he "did that." I want to know about his line breaks, his way into and through a poem, his sense of musicality, his ideas about revision. I want to be inside his head. My own head is spinning a bit at the idea that shortly I will be sitting one on one with the greatest American poet of our time. His "career" has spanned over seven decades if not longer (he is 92) and he's been US Poet Laureate, won not one, but two Pulitzers, has been massively published. He had a long and happy marriage to the girl of his dreams and they had a lovely family together. He has gone to war and come home again to write about it. For me, this rich and fruitful lifetime has given him and us as his readers a microcosm of the American experience. We only need to pick up a few poems to see our own place in the world he describes. It is this very thing that makes me want to share my own experience of his poems with others. Where do I think he stands in the world of American poetry? At the top of it all.
I therefore have embarked upon this larger-than-I-thought project, to read and annotate every poem (or nearly every poem) of the great man and write a "biography" of the poems. Not a biography of Wilbur per se, but of his writing. I want it to become a conversation I have with readers and poets of this age. I want to inflame other readers with a love of the poems that so inflame me and inform my own writing every day. Will this be some dreary academic effort? By no means. I hope it will be a conduit of reflection over the work, a way "in" for others. So, the five questions. Hmmmm, the five questions. I have to focus on the five questions and stop being nervous about the meeting. I can do this.
Oh, so you might be asking yourself which five of his poems I consider his best. Here they are, not in any particular order save the first, which I consider to be as close to a perfect poem as one might get.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The Writer
First Snow in Alsace
To An American Poet Just Dead
The House
I must say that, with except for the first poem on the list, I might almost exchange any of the next four with four others. I choose these because they have done something visceral to me as I read them. The last on this list has especially affected me. It is a poem that alludes lovingly to Wilbur's wife, now deceased. It suggests a loneliness and a longing to be reunited with her, while realizing now is not the moment. It is poignant, but not at all maudlin. That's the thing about Wilbur: he can DO that with such grace and deliberateness that we do not get annoyed and call him "confessional." We simply sigh and understand him. We who are poets sigh, understand him, and want to write LIKE him.
As I sit here writing this, my eyes wander to the battered copy of his New and Collected Poems, replete with the word COYOTE stamped on it from my undergraduate university bookstore. I itch to get back into the poems. Today, however, I will read and annotate poems from his last two books, Mayflies (2000) and Anterooms (2010). I'm also keen on knowing if he is sitting at his own desk today, writing something new.
I have loved the poems of Wilbur for a long time. They have a majesty and mastery of diction for one thing. I read a poem and immediately begin asking myself how he "did that." I want to know about his line breaks, his way into and through a poem, his sense of musicality, his ideas about revision. I want to be inside his head. My own head is spinning a bit at the idea that shortly I will be sitting one on one with the greatest American poet of our time. His "career" has spanned over seven decades if not longer (he is 92) and he's been US Poet Laureate, won not one, but two Pulitzers, has been massively published. He had a long and happy marriage to the girl of his dreams and they had a lovely family together. He has gone to war and come home again to write about it. For me, this rich and fruitful lifetime has given him and us as his readers a microcosm of the American experience. We only need to pick up a few poems to see our own place in the world he describes. It is this very thing that makes me want to share my own experience of his poems with others. Where do I think he stands in the world of American poetry? At the top of it all.
I therefore have embarked upon this larger-than-I-thought project, to read and annotate every poem (or nearly every poem) of the great man and write a "biography" of the poems. Not a biography of Wilbur per se, but of his writing. I want it to become a conversation I have with readers and poets of this age. I want to inflame other readers with a love of the poems that so inflame me and inform my own writing every day. Will this be some dreary academic effort? By no means. I hope it will be a conduit of reflection over the work, a way "in" for others. So, the five questions. Hmmmm, the five questions. I have to focus on the five questions and stop being nervous about the meeting. I can do this.
Oh, so you might be asking yourself which five of his poems I consider his best. Here they are, not in any particular order save the first, which I consider to be as close to a perfect poem as one might get.
Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
The Writer
First Snow in Alsace
To An American Poet Just Dead
The House
I must say that, with except for the first poem on the list, I might almost exchange any of the next four with four others. I choose these because they have done something visceral to me as I read them. The last on this list has especially affected me. It is a poem that alludes lovingly to Wilbur's wife, now deceased. It suggests a loneliness and a longing to be reunited with her, while realizing now is not the moment. It is poignant, but not at all maudlin. That's the thing about Wilbur: he can DO that with such grace and deliberateness that we do not get annoyed and call him "confessional." We simply sigh and understand him. We who are poets sigh, understand him, and want to write LIKE him.
As I sit here writing this, my eyes wander to the battered copy of his New and Collected Poems, replete with the word COYOTE stamped on it from my undergraduate university bookstore. I itch to get back into the poems. Today, however, I will read and annotate poems from his last two books, Mayflies (2000) and Anterooms (2010). I'm also keen on knowing if he is sitting at his own desk today, writing something new.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Buying a Degree? I think not.
This post is in response to the blog by Dawn Potter which I read today.
Dawn includes a comment about poets who "buy a degree for the sake of a job..." Overall, her blog post is filled with interesting points about the tough job of writing. But... buying a degree??? I have a problem with this.
The statement implies that those poets who get degrees in the genre buy them, and that these degrees are gained sans hard work. Furthermore it implies that somehow these "degreed" poets are not serious poets. My MFA in Poetry was HARD ACADEMIC WORK, filled with the rigor required of any degree work. This was in addition to the creative impulses and endeavors attached to an art. In no way is the blog post's generalizing statement about buying degrees accurate. It is also pretty demeaning of those who do the difficult work of an MFA. It also sets up a "them vs us" situation between poets who have degrees and those who do not have degrees which is not at all helpful.
I do agree that academia has attempted over many decades to subsume poetry, to make it the property of the academy. Dana Gioia got it right in his essay, Can Poetry Matter, which speaks to that problem specifically. The essay rightfully accused academia of trying to own poetry and keep it unavailable for the populous. The essay got him metaphorically and actually booed for a long time. BUT, it brought to the fore an attention to the notion of what and who makes poetry that is lasting— a worthy sacrifice for him which has been somewhat costly over time. His blackballing by many institutions as to becoming a part of the "canon" was and is worth it to him. He is a wonder of a poet and successful in the realms of poetry OUTSIDE the university (and inside in some cases). What cannot be denied is that he took a path to poetry AWAY from academia. He was a successful businessman who knew poetry was his "real life." So he wrote. Still he writes. Check out his newest collection, Pity the Beautiful, to see some fine poetry. Or look at his libretto for Nosferatu to see stunning work. I recommend Nosferatu's Serenade.
Seems to me the point here is to keep doors open wide for poets who do not choose the academic path. We must not let universities or colleges presume ownership of the genre and its successes. But it is a choice each poet who is serious about getting her/his work read and appreciated must make. To degree or not to degree...
Poets may go down a path of singular effort in solitude, making whatever inroads they can to get the work out there OR they may choose a more academic path getting an MFA. No matter the path, it is still about the work itself when all is said and done, HARD work. No matter the path, it is LIFELONG work. My point here is that it is a new day and many poets do NOT go to the degree as their path, finding acceptance and success in that choice. Many others choose the degree path and still struggle to find acceptance and success. Struggle is struggle. We all do what we can to get the work out there and be successful in our chosen art.
My MFA may have opened up a few doors, but I still struggle to get the best work written, to get it to the right places, and to get my reputation as a POET to be based upon the work, not upon whether or where I earned my degree (EARNED being the operative word here). I work with the same rigor as any other poet who focuses on the work and on a continual learning process in the art.
It is of course true that a degree can lead to a job. Most poets do not have a salary behind the scenes for them (a working spouse, a benefactor, legacy or inheritance) and so must work to put food on the table. A job helps do that. In some ways, the "job" is a detriment to the writing as was my college teaching job which took so much of my time it was difficult to find writing time and even more difficult not to let the stress of that job interfere with being creative. At any rate, the bottom line seems to be that creativity, and poetry in specific, needs to be seen as part of the aesthetic, not a means to another end. To say that degreed poets buy their way in is an unhappy thing at best, an insult at worst.
It is noteworthy here perhaps to comment on other degrees which might lead to jobs. Are students now at some university studying engineering or chemistry, buying their degrees? Is Dawn Potter's son who just started college doing that? Or are they and is he preparing for life work? If those degrees lead to jobs and not to poems, are they more or less successful? If all degrees (higher education) were FREE, would Potter be claiming that poets' degrees were somehow more acceptable even if they led to jobs?
I might add that (IN MY EXPERIENCE) some naysayers who snark at MFAs are exhibiting jealousy at not having the degree themselves. I am not saying, nor am I implying, that Dawn Potter is one of these. But I have met them. They sneer and snarl about poets with MFAs. When I ask if these poets have ever considered getting an MFA, I am most always met with "I can't afford it, I can't take time off to do it, or some reason other than they think the degree is not worthwhile. So they grumble and dismiss the degrees of others. This kind of them vs us mentality is not at all helpful in promoting poetry. By the way, why is it that other genres do not seem to fight one another for authenticity, only poets? I have NEVER heard a novelist complain that another novelist with a degree is less of a novelist. Hmmm. OK, maybe journalists do this... maybe.
As for the process, there are many paths to writing. Many. These sometimes include generative exercises. Do these in and of themselves produce exceptional poems? Not so much. But every crack in the door is an opening to writing. No one way is "approved" or "best," and we each have our own processes. If mucking out a barn does that, so be it. If giving oneself a prompt to begin the day's writing does it, so be that too. My process includes reading something great to immerse myself in the words and images and asking myself "how did _____ DO that?" I read voraciously, and not just other poets' work. Science, politics, history, cultural essays, etc. We live in a big world, and it is all material from which something might be gleaned or an idea sparked.
Potter's essay today refers negatively to those exercises and workshops where the instructor refers to the process as "fun and easy." Should poetry be called "easy" by anyone? NO! It is serious work. But can one enjoy the process? YES. I find it "fun" [read as enjoyable and fulfilling, not as entertaining] to sit down to a blank page every day and write. Of course what I see as enjoyable may not be another's view. I know folks who find doing complex math problems "fun" but this is not my cup o' tea. Is their mathematical practice to be denigrated because they enjoy it? I hope not.
Must a thing be painful for it to be acceptable? Definitely not. I did not have horrid pain in childbirth because I paid for classes to learn techniques to moderate the pain, and yet I still bore healthy children who are great adult people now. Is my experience less "authentic" because I did not suffer? Are my children less acceptable because there was not suffering to get them here? Childbirth was a joy for me. It was still HARD WORK for which I prepared well, thus lessening the pain and suffering of the act. Should I be accused of "buying my children" because I paid for classes in childbirth? Nope. Of course not.
What challenges me every day is to find the time to write and to do my best to find the right words, images, juxtapositions, etc which will make a poem convey something meaningful. Those who have degrees still must do this work, continuing on the path of educating themselves in their chosen art. Art is not stagnant. We all must keep learning and doing ON OUR OWN even if we have those pesky degrees. So now, off to write, and when I do so, it will be with a wealth of instinct AND knowledge. I will not write the poems on the reverse side of my degree, but I will write with gratitude for the experience gained while earning it.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Cleaning my office
Let's face it, I am a stacker. I have stacks of books and notebooks, along with a huge stack (a few stacks) of printed poems and workshop handouts and assorted other "stuff" I might need some day. Every few weeks I vow to get the whole thing organized. I do a fair amount of organizing and then get sidelined by my own writing. I sit down at the computer or find a notebook that has some appealing lines or phrases in it and I am done with the cleaning. I don't even know what to think about myself in terms of this never-ending tide of stacks and clutter. It is not that I am heading for one of those hoarding shows on TV. No. It is more that I can't seem to get myself into a system. I have space for everything (mostly) and yet I find myself with a desk that gets piled upon and several stacks of books and projects that I might work on at any given moment. I have an office that is ample and with a supply closet that is unheard of space-wise in a Victorian house. I ought to be able to BE as organized as I'd like to be. Ha!
I am busy. That is one of the problems. And I am a multi-tasker. BIG part of the problem. If only I could just work on one thing, be done with it, send it out, and begin on the next thing. Sounds so good, doesn't it? But my brain is so busy that I pop back and forth in my interests. Thus the multiple projects underway at any given moment. The great news here is, of course, that I am never bored. In fact, I frequently exhaust myself from all the work in progress.
Here is a little sample of what is on tap for me right now:
1. Richard Wilbur Project:
An in-depth study of his poetry since 1947, annotated with commentary as to culture and society
2. Millay Project:
A collection of original poems written in response to Millay's poems along with
persona poems written (hopefully faithfully) from INSIDE Millay's life
3. Revision of poems written in the past two years which for some reason have not been picked up for publication
4. Submit Psalms From the Commons (a collection of psalm-poems that invoke everyday life. Where to send????
5. Finish The Boyfriend Project manuscript (fine-tune) and submit. Where to send????
These five major things are not even part of my tenure as Poet Laureate. I have a plethora of work to do there as well.
All of the above are exciting projects, keeping my attention and interest.
But the list and the load are keeping my office a jumble. On Sept 6th I am headed off for a long weekend out to sea (Star Island, AO). After that, I will definitely set aside a few days to finish cleaning this office. I think actually that if it is REALLY organized, all of the above will be easier. The big deal part of this is the bookshelves. I need to get a grip there. I have decided to take all of the books off and restructure. I once alphabetized. A nightmare. Every time I got a new book, I had to shimmy the books along to make room. It was fine unless the book was at the start of the alphabet. ALL books then had to move over by one. UGH. So now what I will do is go by gender. I have more books by male authors (go figure). I may end up with an entire bookcase of men. I will also remove any and all books "about," including biography. These definitely need a spot of their own.
I have been shredding like mad. Each day I shred old poem copies (do I need ten of each?) and receipts and errant mail with my address on it. I believe in staving off identity theft wherever possible. We have a good shredder. It is in my office, so all family shredding happens in here too.
I have also been putting things in file folders. I have so many poetry handouts for use in workshops and mentoring. I need these so I am not creating anew each time. But it is time to have them REALLY organized. I have beautiful file folders and a nice file cabinet. I also have a wire folder basket that sits near my desk for easy access. Old stuff in the file cabinet, newer (in use) stuff in the wire basket. It's a process.
It has occurred to me to hire a professional organizer. I toy with that every time I attempt a major overhaul of the space. But how would I know where she put everything? How would she know what I cannot live without? Grrr. Obviously this is a DIY deal.
I recently spent a couple afternoons sitting on the floor of my office taking on the paper stacks. I am happy to report these are now organized and in file folders. Next step is organizing the file cabinet and wire basket to do what they are here to do for me. My desktop is clean and organized. Mostly. I am on my way. After Star, I will get the rest done. I may invite one of my poet friends over to do the bookcases with me. What a day that would be. We'd have to consume a LOT of wine I think. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. OK, who will I invite? Who might actually say yes?
I am busy. That is one of the problems. And I am a multi-tasker. BIG part of the problem. If only I could just work on one thing, be done with it, send it out, and begin on the next thing. Sounds so good, doesn't it? But my brain is so busy that I pop back and forth in my interests. Thus the multiple projects underway at any given moment. The great news here is, of course, that I am never bored. In fact, I frequently exhaust myself from all the work in progress.
Here is a little sample of what is on tap for me right now:
1. Richard Wilbur Project:
An in-depth study of his poetry since 1947, annotated with commentary as to culture and society
2. Millay Project:
A collection of original poems written in response to Millay's poems along with
persona poems written (hopefully faithfully) from INSIDE Millay's life
3. Revision of poems written in the past two years which for some reason have not been picked up for publication
4. Submit Psalms From the Commons (a collection of psalm-poems that invoke everyday life. Where to send????
5. Finish The Boyfriend Project manuscript (fine-tune) and submit. Where to send????
These five major things are not even part of my tenure as Poet Laureate. I have a plethora of work to do there as well.
All of the above are exciting projects, keeping my attention and interest.
But the list and the load are keeping my office a jumble. On Sept 6th I am headed off for a long weekend out to sea (Star Island, AO). After that, I will definitely set aside a few days to finish cleaning this office. I think actually that if it is REALLY organized, all of the above will be easier. The big deal part of this is the bookshelves. I need to get a grip there. I have decided to take all of the books off and restructure. I once alphabetized. A nightmare. Every time I got a new book, I had to shimmy the books along to make room. It was fine unless the book was at the start of the alphabet. ALL books then had to move over by one. UGH. So now what I will do is go by gender. I have more books by male authors (go figure). I may end up with an entire bookcase of men. I will also remove any and all books "about," including biography. These definitely need a spot of their own.
I have been shredding like mad. Each day I shred old poem copies (do I need ten of each?) and receipts and errant mail with my address on it. I believe in staving off identity theft wherever possible. We have a good shredder. It is in my office, so all family shredding happens in here too.
I have also been putting things in file folders. I have so many poetry handouts for use in workshops and mentoring. I need these so I am not creating anew each time. But it is time to have them REALLY organized. I have beautiful file folders and a nice file cabinet. I also have a wire folder basket that sits near my desk for easy access. Old stuff in the file cabinet, newer (in use) stuff in the wire basket. It's a process.
It has occurred to me to hire a professional organizer. I toy with that every time I attempt a major overhaul of the space. But how would I know where she put everything? How would she know what I cannot live without? Grrr. Obviously this is a DIY deal.
I recently spent a couple afternoons sitting on the floor of my office taking on the paper stacks. I am happy to report these are now organized and in file folders. Next step is organizing the file cabinet and wire basket to do what they are here to do for me. My desktop is clean and organized. Mostly. I am on my way. After Star, I will get the rest done. I may invite one of my poet friends over to do the bookcases with me. What a day that would be. We'd have to consume a LOT of wine I think. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. OK, who will I invite? Who might actually say yes?
Friday, August 24, 2012
Tricks of the Trade, or just "tricks"
We writers have our favorite strategies, our conventions, our "tricks of the trade" so to speak. For some of us it is a particular way we begin or end our writing. For others, it may be a favorite phrase or word. For still others, it is syntactical techniques that make our writing "ours" and unique.
Out of these strategies was born, at some point, the "five paragraph essay." It was certainly a hallmark for organizations like Toastmasters, who used the format to give its members a safe way to approach a speech. It goes like this: tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell it to them, then tell them what you told them that you said you'd tell them. Ah, my eyes glaze over.
This particular "strategy" gets tricky when it filters down into and pervades school systems. The typical student-written five paragraph essay follows a toastmasters-style format, the result of which creates an atmosphere in which students write this way all the way through from 6th grade into high school, mistakenly thinking this is how everyone writes who writes. Gone is the creative impulse, the subtle shifts in approach that make reading so pleasurable. Teachers of English/Language Arts are frustrated (the good ones I mean to say) with the lack of creativity this "formulaic" kind of writing fosters. Many of them, and many school systems are pushing back hard against this mind-numbing writing.
Writing, simply put, would not matter without readers. So many students, and perhaps their parents, have come to see writing as a means to an end: students have to do it (write, learn how to write) to meet a standard or get a grade or get a job. This mistaken idea about writing is putting the civilized world in a precarious position. We live in a post-modern society that exists almost devoid of nuance and metaphor. We revere pundits and sloganeers. We listen for just the right sound byte to support a given position.
I say that the "tricks" of writing to culture, instead of writing from inside culture, damage that culture. We, as poets, essayist, journalists, etc. need to take the long view, not the efficacious view. We need to model for those who would write. We certainly need to engage at the school level and demand that what is taught is NOT the five paragraph essay, but a playful and creative approach filled with imagery, nuance, curiosity. We need to offer ourselves as models, get into classrooms and support those teachers who want their students thinking for themselves, in and out of the box. We need to shine a light on great writing, ours and others'. What kinds of exemplars are used in the schools of your area? I have been asking [as a school board member] to see the writing standards and exemplars for our district. I finally, after months of asking, got these. I took one look (and I did not have to look far) and saw that the exemplars of writing put forth were AWFUL. When one looks at an "essay" that has over a dozen misspellings in the first long paragraph, it is AWFUL writing. To say (as this report did) that this writing "met minimum standards" is dangerously worse. Somewhere, somehow, we have set the bar so low that we accept terrible writing as minimum. It is like saying "well the student arrived at school and stayed all day, so we're good because he/she met the minimum standard." Seriously? It is so with writing. We must set the bar high enough to tantalize student writers. We must let them know that creativity, within guidelines and standards, is key. We have a remarkable facility for language and usage. Let's employ these skills toward a new way of teaching writing. Let's give students in all settings, public or private, the tools they need to be their true creative selves. Being creative is not a means to an end, it is the end itself.
Let us not play tricks on our students, in school or in private workshops. We don't need to give "strokes" for any piece of writing we see. If we can be constructive in our criticisms and offer real strategies that live on the page as vibrant and nuanced and unique, we will foster that kind of critical thinking in all areas. Of course this begs the question of how much and what kind of criticism we give. It is fine to praise the effort, but without a way forward through revision and a tool box of strategies used daily by those of us who write now, it is empty praise and not at all helpful. In large part, it has to do with how we FRAME the message. We know the pitfalls in writing. We circle the edges of those daily. But we have developed ways to monitor our own writing, have learned to enlist the help of our writing peers, and have come up with methods for revision. We ought to share those strategies with those who will stand on our shoulders in the future. It is largely up to us who live with our writing every day to set the example by doing, and by sharing and mentoring. We have passion for writing. Let that infect all who look to us for how it's done.
Out of these strategies was born, at some point, the "five paragraph essay." It was certainly a hallmark for organizations like Toastmasters, who used the format to give its members a safe way to approach a speech. It goes like this: tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell it to them, then tell them what you told them that you said you'd tell them. Ah, my eyes glaze over.
This particular "strategy" gets tricky when it filters down into and pervades school systems. The typical student-written five paragraph essay follows a toastmasters-style format, the result of which creates an atmosphere in which students write this way all the way through from 6th grade into high school, mistakenly thinking this is how everyone writes who writes. Gone is the creative impulse, the subtle shifts in approach that make reading so pleasurable. Teachers of English/Language Arts are frustrated (the good ones I mean to say) with the lack of creativity this "formulaic" kind of writing fosters. Many of them, and many school systems are pushing back hard against this mind-numbing writing.
Writing, simply put, would not matter without readers. So many students, and perhaps their parents, have come to see writing as a means to an end: students have to do it (write, learn how to write) to meet a standard or get a grade or get a job. This mistaken idea about writing is putting the civilized world in a precarious position. We live in a post-modern society that exists almost devoid of nuance and metaphor. We revere pundits and sloganeers. We listen for just the right sound byte to support a given position.
I say that the "tricks" of writing to culture, instead of writing from inside culture, damage that culture. We, as poets, essayist, journalists, etc. need to take the long view, not the efficacious view. We need to model for those who would write. We certainly need to engage at the school level and demand that what is taught is NOT the five paragraph essay, but a playful and creative approach filled with imagery, nuance, curiosity. We need to offer ourselves as models, get into classrooms and support those teachers who want their students thinking for themselves, in and out of the box. We need to shine a light on great writing, ours and others'. What kinds of exemplars are used in the schools of your area? I have been asking [as a school board member] to see the writing standards and exemplars for our district. I finally, after months of asking, got these. I took one look (and I did not have to look far) and saw that the exemplars of writing put forth were AWFUL. When one looks at an "essay" that has over a dozen misspellings in the first long paragraph, it is AWFUL writing. To say (as this report did) that this writing "met minimum standards" is dangerously worse. Somewhere, somehow, we have set the bar so low that we accept terrible writing as minimum. It is like saying "well the student arrived at school and stayed all day, so we're good because he/she met the minimum standard." Seriously? It is so with writing. We must set the bar high enough to tantalize student writers. We must let them know that creativity, within guidelines and standards, is key. We have a remarkable facility for language and usage. Let's employ these skills toward a new way of teaching writing. Let's give students in all settings, public or private, the tools they need to be their true creative selves. Being creative is not a means to an end, it is the end itself.
Let us not play tricks on our students, in school or in private workshops. We don't need to give "strokes" for any piece of writing we see. If we can be constructive in our criticisms and offer real strategies that live on the page as vibrant and nuanced and unique, we will foster that kind of critical thinking in all areas. Of course this begs the question of how much and what kind of criticism we give. It is fine to praise the effort, but without a way forward through revision and a tool box of strategies used daily by those of us who write now, it is empty praise and not at all helpful. In large part, it has to do with how we FRAME the message. We know the pitfalls in writing. We circle the edges of those daily. But we have developed ways to monitor our own writing, have learned to enlist the help of our writing peers, and have come up with methods for revision. We ought to share those strategies with those who will stand on our shoulders in the future. It is largely up to us who live with our writing every day to set the example by doing, and by sharing and mentoring. We have passion for writing. Let that infect all who look to us for how it's done.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Seamus Heaney is poet of the day for me today, but he is not alone
I'm up early, although I certainly don't believe in this practice. I have tidied my desk and sharpened a few pencils (highlighter pencils) and all my electronics are charged and ready for today's use. I have now turned on my music and am listening to "Deep Purple" by Nino Temple and April Stevens. All set. (breakfast once my stomach is awake)
In my straightening out of desk, I came upon my copy of Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems, 1966-1987, buried under some papers. I laugh as I recall that I once decided that I ought to always read poems from this volume alongside Richard Wilbur's New and Collected and Anthony Hecht's Collected Earlier Poems. These poets are my holy trinity of poets. I know, I know, where are the women poets? I have female poet heroes too, of course (Elizabeth Bishop, Kay Boyle, ESV Millay, Marianne Moore, et all) but these particular male poets share the aesthetic that has formed, and continues to form me as a poet. Blame it on "the canon" that I was exposed to the poetry of my triumvirate before I got tuned in to the women poets. Nevertheless it is true that when I need a big awakening in what poetry IS, I go to these three and their poems to "revise" me. I see how important it is to be well-read. I see how important diction is to embodiment in a poem. I'll quote here from each of my "guys" to show you what I mean about diction and how careful use of concrete details can make a poem SHINE on the page:
Wilbur (from First Snow in Alsace)
The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.
Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.
Heaney (from Digging)
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun
...
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Hecht (from The Grapes)
I stood beside a table near a window,
Gazing down at a crystal bowl of grapes
In ice-water. They were green grapes, or, rather,
They were a sort of pure, unblemished jade,
Like turbulent ocean water, with misted skins,
Their own pale, smoky sweat, or tiny frost.
...
And all those little bags of glassiness,
Those clustered planets, leaned their eastern cheeks
Into the sunlight, each one showing a soft
Meridian swelling where the thinning light
Mysteriously tapered into shadow,
...
And watching I could almost see the light
Edge slowly over their simple surfaces,
And feel the sunlight moving on my skin
Like a warm glacier. And I seemed to know
In my blood the the meaning of sidereal time
And know my little life had somehow crested.
Well, it can hardly get better than this. These lines make me weak in the knees, make me want to write, make me want to give each of these poets a huge hug. [Two of the three are still living, so that's a possibility I suppose.] At any rate, I am determined to keep these three volumes ON my desk in case of a fire. I would certainly grab these if I were told I could only have three books for the rest of my life. Marooned on a desert island? Yep. These three in my rucksack. I never tire of the poems in these books. I learn something new every time I read the poems. EVERY time.
I won't taint YOUR experience of the above lines by analysis of them. But suffice it to say, I want you to digest them in a way that is meaningful and helpful to your own writing or reading of poetry. In my Wilbur study, I may make a comment on Heaney's or Hecht's poems from time to time, placing Wilbur's poems in the company of poems from the other two. They exist for me in a triangle, perfectly supporting one another, balanced, solid.
For today, it is Heaney. I will take notice of how he does what he does in the following [recommended] poems: Bye-Child, Follower, Bone Dreams, From the Frontier of Writing, and The Guttural Muse. I will read each poem several times, at intervals throughout the day. I find this to be a great way to let the poems IN to my unconscious mind.
NOTE: I also will read Dana Gioia's Nosferatu's Serenade, as I am committing that poem to memory which requires repetition on a daily basis.
It makes me smile to know that I have these poets available to me as teachers, by way of their poems. It is comforting to know that I don't have to travel to find help when I am bogged down in my own work and feeling like I am writing the same poem over and over (am I?) or when my diction seems to fall flat. I can read Bye-Child and find permission to write the unspeakable, have the freedom available to me as a poet to take a stand and do it in stunning language and image. I have skills with language, but often fail to give myself permission. Heaney and the others give me not only permission, but also urge me.
In my straightening out of desk, I came upon my copy of Seamus Heaney's Selected Poems, 1966-1987, buried under some papers. I laugh as I recall that I once decided that I ought to always read poems from this volume alongside Richard Wilbur's New and Collected and Anthony Hecht's Collected Earlier Poems. These poets are my holy trinity of poets. I know, I know, where are the women poets? I have female poet heroes too, of course (Elizabeth Bishop, Kay Boyle, ESV Millay, Marianne Moore, et all) but these particular male poets share the aesthetic that has formed, and continues to form me as a poet. Blame it on "the canon" that I was exposed to the poetry of my triumvirate before I got tuned in to the women poets. Nevertheless it is true that when I need a big awakening in what poetry IS, I go to these three and their poems to "revise" me. I see how important it is to be well-read. I see how important diction is to embodiment in a poem. I'll quote here from each of my "guys" to show you what I mean about diction and how careful use of concrete details can make a poem SHINE on the page:
Wilbur (from First Snow in Alsace)
The snow came down last night like moths
Burned on the moon; it fell till dawn,
Covered the town with simple cloths.
Absolute snow lies rumpled on
What shellbursts scattered and deranged,
Entangled railings, crevassed lawn.
Heaney (from Digging)
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun
...
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.
Hecht (from The Grapes)
I stood beside a table near a window,
Gazing down at a crystal bowl of grapes
In ice-water. They were green grapes, or, rather,
They were a sort of pure, unblemished jade,
Like turbulent ocean water, with misted skins,
Their own pale, smoky sweat, or tiny frost.
...
And all those little bags of glassiness,
Those clustered planets, leaned their eastern cheeks
Into the sunlight, each one showing a soft
Meridian swelling where the thinning light
Mysteriously tapered into shadow,
...
And watching I could almost see the light
Edge slowly over their simple surfaces,
And feel the sunlight moving on my skin
Like a warm glacier. And I seemed to know
In my blood the the meaning of sidereal time
And know my little life had somehow crested.
Well, it can hardly get better than this. These lines make me weak in the knees, make me want to write, make me want to give each of these poets a huge hug. [Two of the three are still living, so that's a possibility I suppose.] At any rate, I am determined to keep these three volumes ON my desk in case of a fire. I would certainly grab these if I were told I could only have three books for the rest of my life. Marooned on a desert island? Yep. These three in my rucksack. I never tire of the poems in these books. I learn something new every time I read the poems. EVERY time.
I won't taint YOUR experience of the above lines by analysis of them. But suffice it to say, I want you to digest them in a way that is meaningful and helpful to your own writing or reading of poetry. In my Wilbur study, I may make a comment on Heaney's or Hecht's poems from time to time, placing Wilbur's poems in the company of poems from the other two. They exist for me in a triangle, perfectly supporting one another, balanced, solid.
For today, it is Heaney. I will take notice of how he does what he does in the following [recommended] poems: Bye-Child, Follower, Bone Dreams, From the Frontier of Writing, and The Guttural Muse. I will read each poem several times, at intervals throughout the day. I find this to be a great way to let the poems IN to my unconscious mind.
NOTE: I also will read Dana Gioia's Nosferatu's Serenade, as I am committing that poem to memory which requires repetition on a daily basis.
It makes me smile to know that I have these poets available to me as teachers, by way of their poems. It is comforting to know that I don't have to travel to find help when I am bogged down in my own work and feeling like I am writing the same poem over and over (am I?) or when my diction seems to fall flat. I can read Bye-Child and find permission to write the unspeakable, have the freedom available to me as a poet to take a stand and do it in stunning language and image. I have skills with language, but often fail to give myself permission. Heaney and the others give me not only permission, but also urge me.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Dream Job(s)
I am unemployed. Well, I an "unsalaried" at the moment. I work harder than I ever worked when I was employed by someone else. I don't keep regular hours, often working into the dark while the rest of my family sleeps. Sometimes however I need to go photograph the boats in the harbor or meet someone for lunch downtown. Sometimes I write in front of the TV if the Red Sox are on or the Patriots. I am inspired by sports (more on that at another time). Sometimes I just need to sit on the porch. Mostly I am at the desk daily.
My workplace is my office, a few steps from my bedroom in a nice little victorian house on the coast of Maine. At any given moment, my CFO may come in and ask me what I bought at Amazon, or how much of the Staples receipt is for business and how much is for home. He often reminds me that I ought to consider eating something. I don't have dress-down Fridays at work. I work in my pajamas most days, so to "dress down" would be quite the sight — even for me, my sole employee.
This sounds like a dream job. And it is. But it pays very poorly. In fact, it hardly pays at all. The IRS is on point constantly trying to say this writing business is a "hobby." Stamp collecting, coin collecting: those are hobbies. What I do is WORK. I send out my writing in hopes of publication. I have been fortunate to have many poems accepted and published. I have 4 books under my publishing belt. I am Poet Laureate of my city. Success! you say. Of course. But where is the cash, the scratch, the green, the dough? The truth is that poets are EXPECTED (in the world of publishing) to give away their work, to be happy to have the poem in a reputable journal, to get excited about the one or two contributors' copies that arrive, poem on page such-and-so. Don't get me wrong, it is fine to see one's poem(s) in print. It is great to have the "publishing credits" and get nice comments from other poets when they pick up a copy and see the poems there. But none of us could live on contributors' copies.
What do we do then? We often take teaching jobs. I did this, fresh out of my MFA program. I was hired to teach Freshman and Sophomore Comp at a community college, Victor Valley College to be precise. I did this very well. Although at times mind-numbing, the class provided me with the chance to be fully engaged with students. I loved them and their interesting lives which poured forth into their papers. I fought to get them to be more creative in their writing by inserting as much poetry as possible into our assigned work. I raved about the things poetry can do to make life worth living. I got through to them and many of them became joyful in their writing. I had one class of 12 students who just shone! I loved that class and it was mutual. Still, it was a drag on my own creativity. What time was there to write? I wanted to teach creative writing rather than comp. I went to my department chair and asked to be allowed (yes, ALLOWED) to teach what was my degree: writing, creative writing. She informed me that those classes were "plums" reserved for full-time faculty (I was an adjunct). I asked if it wouldn't be better for the students to be taught by someone 1. with a degree in writing and 2. who actually is a working, published writer. Her response shocked me."It's not about the students." Well, wow. I pointed out to her (in vain) that not ONE of those "plum" faculty members wrote a word, published, or had a degree in creative writing. No problem for her or the college. It was NOT about the students (beyond their tuition and fees). This was the slippery slope to no more typical teaching for me. I quickly lost heart.
Fortunately for me, I am noting if not creative. I realized that 1. I needed more time for my writing, and 2. I could teach privately. I scrabbled together a plan and that is the path I travel these days. I conduct workshops for interested writers who want to know what I have learned and discovered about writing. I am putting my degree to good use. HOWEVER... the pay stinks. If I could do a workshop a week, I might be able to make a decent living. But let's face it... it's workshops twice a year, at best three times a year if I am lucky. In this economy I am grateful for that. And my books sell well enough to make me happy that they are out there for people to read and enjoy. The shining star is the plenty of time to write aspect of my "employment" situation. My dream job? Not quite. But very satisfying on a number of levels. I am not complaining (much). But my dream job IS out there. I know it is. How to make it happen is another matter.
I have had several notions of what a dream job might look like for me. The one that is the quirkiest and which makes my family laugh at me is to be a toll-taker in a toll booth on I-95. It would be so interesting to see all the people who come through, what they are doing as they drive, how they ae dressed — to imagine where they are going or from where they have come. OK, so not going to happen. I live on the coast, AWAY from I-95. Probably would not be too healthy either, breathing in all those fumes. So... what to do and where to go for the dream job that wouldn't end up killing me.
My real dream job is teaching in a low-residency MFA program like the one where I got my MFA, no wait! AT the one where I got my MFA: Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vt. Yes, I suppose I'd take a job in another program. I would. But my DREAM job is at VCFA. The facts and the problem: I am certainly qualified. I have a degree in CW, I have 4 published books, I have an intimate knowledge of the program and its workings. I am motivated, there are already on faculty a number of grads. Ha! That may be the problem. Due to accreditation (apparently) there is some kind of limit on how many former grads they can have on staff. Oh and there is some kind of hiring freeze (I've been told). Hmmmmm. Not good for me getting the dream job. But I may have a solution. I hope it is a solution. My proposal is that VCFA hire me as an ADJUNCT. I could be the girl in the dugout, waiting to be put into the game when one of the poetry faculty is absent for a semester on LOA (Leave of Absence). This happens, more than one might think. How they have handled this is to add to the student load of the other faculty members. Why not, instead, have me do it? I think this is a brilliant plan. I am working on this plan. Seriously, I want my dream job. The one without the gas fumes.
Until this becomes a reality (and I am working on it), I will apply to other MFA programs and stay here at my desk in my pajamas writing the best poems I can, sending them out and being grateful for the credits and the contributors' copies.
My workplace is my office, a few steps from my bedroom in a nice little victorian house on the coast of Maine. At any given moment, my CFO may come in and ask me what I bought at Amazon, or how much of the Staples receipt is for business and how much is for home. He often reminds me that I ought to consider eating something. I don't have dress-down Fridays at work. I work in my pajamas most days, so to "dress down" would be quite the sight — even for me, my sole employee.
This sounds like a dream job. And it is. But it pays very poorly. In fact, it hardly pays at all. The IRS is on point constantly trying to say this writing business is a "hobby." Stamp collecting, coin collecting: those are hobbies. What I do is WORK. I send out my writing in hopes of publication. I have been fortunate to have many poems accepted and published. I have 4 books under my publishing belt. I am Poet Laureate of my city. Success! you say. Of course. But where is the cash, the scratch, the green, the dough? The truth is that poets are EXPECTED (in the world of publishing) to give away their work, to be happy to have the poem in a reputable journal, to get excited about the one or two contributors' copies that arrive, poem on page such-and-so. Don't get me wrong, it is fine to see one's poem(s) in print. It is great to have the "publishing credits" and get nice comments from other poets when they pick up a copy and see the poems there. But none of us could live on contributors' copies.
What do we do then? We often take teaching jobs. I did this, fresh out of my MFA program. I was hired to teach Freshman and Sophomore Comp at a community college, Victor Valley College to be precise. I did this very well. Although at times mind-numbing, the class provided me with the chance to be fully engaged with students. I loved them and their interesting lives which poured forth into their papers. I fought to get them to be more creative in their writing by inserting as much poetry as possible into our assigned work. I raved about the things poetry can do to make life worth living. I got through to them and many of them became joyful in their writing. I had one class of 12 students who just shone! I loved that class and it was mutual. Still, it was a drag on my own creativity. What time was there to write? I wanted to teach creative writing rather than comp. I went to my department chair and asked to be allowed (yes, ALLOWED) to teach what was my degree: writing, creative writing. She informed me that those classes were "plums" reserved for full-time faculty (I was an adjunct). I asked if it wouldn't be better for the students to be taught by someone 1. with a degree in writing and 2. who actually is a working, published writer. Her response shocked me."It's not about the students." Well, wow. I pointed out to her (in vain) that not ONE of those "plum" faculty members wrote a word, published, or had a degree in creative writing. No problem for her or the college. It was NOT about the students (beyond their tuition and fees). This was the slippery slope to no more typical teaching for me. I quickly lost heart.
Fortunately for me, I am noting if not creative. I realized that 1. I needed more time for my writing, and 2. I could teach privately. I scrabbled together a plan and that is the path I travel these days. I conduct workshops for interested writers who want to know what I have learned and discovered about writing. I am putting my degree to good use. HOWEVER... the pay stinks. If I could do a workshop a week, I might be able to make a decent living. But let's face it... it's workshops twice a year, at best three times a year if I am lucky. In this economy I am grateful for that. And my books sell well enough to make me happy that they are out there for people to read and enjoy. The shining star is the plenty of time to write aspect of my "employment" situation. My dream job? Not quite. But very satisfying on a number of levels. I am not complaining (much). But my dream job IS out there. I know it is. How to make it happen is another matter.
I have had several notions of what a dream job might look like for me. The one that is the quirkiest and which makes my family laugh at me is to be a toll-taker in a toll booth on I-95. It would be so interesting to see all the people who come through, what they are doing as they drive, how they ae dressed — to imagine where they are going or from where they have come. OK, so not going to happen. I live on the coast, AWAY from I-95. Probably would not be too healthy either, breathing in all those fumes. So... what to do and where to go for the dream job that wouldn't end up killing me.
My real dream job is teaching in a low-residency MFA program like the one where I got my MFA, no wait! AT the one where I got my MFA: Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vt. Yes, I suppose I'd take a job in another program. I would. But my DREAM job is at VCFA. The facts and the problem: I am certainly qualified. I have a degree in CW, I have 4 published books, I have an intimate knowledge of the program and its workings. I am motivated, there are already on faculty a number of grads. Ha! That may be the problem. Due to accreditation (apparently) there is some kind of limit on how many former grads they can have on staff. Oh and there is some kind of hiring freeze (I've been told). Hmmmmm. Not good for me getting the dream job. But I may have a solution. I hope it is a solution. My proposal is that VCFA hire me as an ADJUNCT. I could be the girl in the dugout, waiting to be put into the game when one of the poetry faculty is absent for a semester on LOA (Leave of Absence). This happens, more than one might think. How they have handled this is to add to the student load of the other faculty members. Why not, instead, have me do it? I think this is a brilliant plan. I am working on this plan. Seriously, I want my dream job. The one without the gas fumes.
Until this becomes a reality (and I am working on it), I will apply to other MFA programs and stay here at my desk in my pajamas writing the best poems I can, sending them out and being grateful for the credits and the contributors' copies.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Computer "killed" by Adobe flash Player virus, then resurrected by Apple genius, after buying whole new laptop
Do NOT get me started on my computer woes. I am thinking very bad thoughts about the evil person who messed with Adobe Flash player and caused my hard drive to become what everyone (most everyone) thought was a fatal disease.
[Well, I think I have to discuss this. Be patient with me. After all, this does have to do with my writing life. I will begin by saying how dependent I have obviously gotten on technology. I am actually thinking though of paper and pen writing everything JUST IN CASE. Oh well, not going to do that as long as there are technicians smarter than I am.]
This WOE of course began late Friday night. I managed to rescue my data (most of it) by erasing my computer and reinstalling from the backup on my Time Capsule. PEOPLE! You have to have back-up! I was also forward thinking enough at 3 AM to go online and schedule an appointment for Saturday at the Apple Store. I drove to Portland the next day and spent several hours there while they diagnosed the problem. They needed to keep on with that to see if the thing could be repaired/restored to its full functionality (I had no use of Safari or iWeb), so I had to leave the laptop there overnight. They'd call. Here is where I starting hoping to bring down a plague on the "genius" who infected Adobe, officially calling him Virus Guy from this point onward — among other colorful names.
MEANWHILE, I decided to buy a new laptop. I did this after consultation with husband (CFO of family finances) and he said go ahead. Lovely that he GETS that my writing life depends upon no gaps in computer use and accessibility. So I did this, drove 1.75 hours back home, exhausted from almost total lack of sleep the night before.
By evening the Apple guy had called to say that it was no go on the infected machine and they would ship back to me on Monday, with all ok other than no access to internet or editing site. So I could take off the rest of my data (I'd put my writing files on a jump drive before taking the laptop to Apple). Grrr, I thought, but ok since I have my new laptop. I am at this point busily working out how to make myself functional on new machine. I sleep fitfully and head off to church etc Sunday morning.
By lunchtime, a call from Apple telling me another genius there (they really ARE geniuses) had taken on the project of recovery for my laptop and succeeded! I am by now doing the happy dance UNTIL I remember that I just bought a whole new laptop!
OK, now they are shipping me a fully functioning laptop, no longer infected, and with new OS installed. (I am still steamed at Virus Guy of course for my sleeplessness and frustration and HOURS wasted.) Dilemma: I now have TWO fully-functional laptops. Everyone in this household is "laptopped." So, the plan as I see it is to connect both computers USB to USB and transfer rest of "stuff" I still need from now healthy laptop to new laptop. Then I will sell the one I am not going to be using. Do I put it on ebay? Do I advertise to the faculty in our local school district? Do I sell it within my own family? Do I ask my daughters if they know of someone who'd like a GREAT deal on a wonderful computer? What to do...
Any bright ideas out there, other than hunting down Virus Guy and wreaking havoc on him? This is a lovely thought, by the way. [forming hunting party, thinking of bows and arrows as weapons of choice]
[Well, I think I have to discuss this. Be patient with me. After all, this does have to do with my writing life. I will begin by saying how dependent I have obviously gotten on technology. I am actually thinking though of paper and pen writing everything JUST IN CASE. Oh well, not going to do that as long as there are technicians smarter than I am.]
This WOE of course began late Friday night. I managed to rescue my data (most of it) by erasing my computer and reinstalling from the backup on my Time Capsule. PEOPLE! You have to have back-up! I was also forward thinking enough at 3 AM to go online and schedule an appointment for Saturday at the Apple Store. I drove to Portland the next day and spent several hours there while they diagnosed the problem. They needed to keep on with that to see if the thing could be repaired/restored to its full functionality (I had no use of Safari or iWeb), so I had to leave the laptop there overnight. They'd call. Here is where I starting hoping to bring down a plague on the "genius" who infected Adobe, officially calling him Virus Guy from this point onward — among other colorful names.
MEANWHILE, I decided to buy a new laptop. I did this after consultation with husband (CFO of family finances) and he said go ahead. Lovely that he GETS that my writing life depends upon no gaps in computer use and accessibility. So I did this, drove 1.75 hours back home, exhausted from almost total lack of sleep the night before.
By evening the Apple guy had called to say that it was no go on the infected machine and they would ship back to me on Monday, with all ok other than no access to internet or editing site. So I could take off the rest of my data (I'd put my writing files on a jump drive before taking the laptop to Apple). Grrr, I thought, but ok since I have my new laptop. I am at this point busily working out how to make myself functional on new machine. I sleep fitfully and head off to church etc Sunday morning.
By lunchtime, a call from Apple telling me another genius there (they really ARE geniuses) had taken on the project of recovery for my laptop and succeeded! I am by now doing the happy dance UNTIL I remember that I just bought a whole new laptop!
OK, now they are shipping me a fully functioning laptop, no longer infected, and with new OS installed. (I am still steamed at Virus Guy of course for my sleeplessness and frustration and HOURS wasted.) Dilemma: I now have TWO fully-functional laptops. Everyone in this household is "laptopped." So, the plan as I see it is to connect both computers USB to USB and transfer rest of "stuff" I still need from now healthy laptop to new laptop. Then I will sell the one I am not going to be using. Do I put it on ebay? Do I advertise to the faculty in our local school district? Do I sell it within my own family? Do I ask my daughters if they know of someone who'd like a GREAT deal on a wonderful computer? What to do...
Any bright ideas out there, other than hunting down Virus Guy and wreaking havoc on him? This is a lovely thought, by the way. [forming hunting party, thinking of bows and arrows as weapons of choice]
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Sunday
It's Sunday and I haven't written a word (OK now I have written 14).
I had every intention of working on a poem today, but it just felt so good to think about writing rather than doing it. Sometimes it is the "down time" where one finds the best ideas, and those ideas spring forward to become the next poems. This is happening for me today. I took a long nap, during which I had vivid dreams about pebbles, stones, rocks, cliffs. I was flying on the back of a huge bluish bird that seemed prehistoric. I felt my hair streaming out behind me and didn't need to hang on to the bird to stay on her back. We seemed to be one. My feet were bare, and when I looked down at them, my toes were talons. I could tell what the bird was thinking and she knew my thoughts too. We rode the thermals for a long time until she set me down by a pond in a clearing. She looked directly at me and opened her beak. No sound came from her. She sat with me until I fell asleep. When I awakened she was gone. I was not afraid to be alone.
My job now is to put the images I saw as we flew into something that will have meaning for my readers. I am excited. I am jazzed. I am ready.
But at this moment there is dinner to prepare: a nice prima vera pasta with mushrooms, tomatoes, basil, olive oil, fresh basil and goat cheese. Mmmmm. My hubby and I will make this dish together and eat alone. Our grand boys are both at work. We will eat in the dining room, not in front of the TV.
Later, I will set to work on my poem. I can feel the wind in my hair as I write this.
I had every intention of working on a poem today, but it just felt so good to think about writing rather than doing it. Sometimes it is the "down time" where one finds the best ideas, and those ideas spring forward to become the next poems. This is happening for me today. I took a long nap, during which I had vivid dreams about pebbles, stones, rocks, cliffs. I was flying on the back of a huge bluish bird that seemed prehistoric. I felt my hair streaming out behind me and didn't need to hang on to the bird to stay on her back. We seemed to be one. My feet were bare, and when I looked down at them, my toes were talons. I could tell what the bird was thinking and she knew my thoughts too. We rode the thermals for a long time until she set me down by a pond in a clearing. She looked directly at me and opened her beak. No sound came from her. She sat with me until I fell asleep. When I awakened she was gone. I was not afraid to be alone.
My job now is to put the images I saw as we flew into something that will have meaning for my readers. I am excited. I am jazzed. I am ready.
But at this moment there is dinner to prepare: a nice prima vera pasta with mushrooms, tomatoes, basil, olive oil, fresh basil and goat cheese. Mmmmm. My hubby and I will make this dish together and eat alone. Our grand boys are both at work. We will eat in the dining room, not in front of the TV.
Later, I will set to work on my poem. I can feel the wind in my hair as I write this.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Writers in the Schools — Mentoring and Modeling
A poet laureate may simply sit on his/her laurels and bask. Some of our US laureates and many local laureates have indeed done this. Louise Gluck comes to mind. When she was named US PL, she was up front about doing only the requisite tasks attached to the honor. This does not make her a poor PL. It was her choice as to how to approach and fulfill the office. Of course I must admit here that it irked me. I thought that she was cheating the public, being selfish, etc. This was MY reaction. We have certainly had Poets Laureate who were very active and made poetry more alive for the citizenry (Robert Pinsky, Billy Collins, etc) and we've had others, like Gluck, who took the money and sat.
I was named Poet Laureate of Rockland, Maine in April, will serve a minimum of 2 years. I am pleased at being given the honor of course, but more so for the chance to use my work, my voice to proclaim poetry city-wide and beyond. I definitely am not Gluck-ish. I want to promote poetry and give it its proper due along with other arts in our city. With this in mind, I started in May with a public reading of a poem at the wreath-laying ceremony before the parade on Memorial Day. I chose The New England Dead by Isaac McLellan. Its old-fashioned feel and its lovely lines were perfect for the occasion. It is an emotional poem, but not sappy. It rhymes, which is good for public occasions like this. People liked hearing a poem being read, connected with it. Several expressed happiness at having a poet laureate in the city. I was happy too.
I followed that event with a June 10th reading of an original poem, Under This Flag, at the flag day celebration at the local Elks lodge. Again, people were happy to hear a poem. They appreciated and commented, saying "oh I used to recite poems when I was young" or "I can't write poetry myself, but I enjoy hearing poems." It is one thing for poets to give public readings in libraries or bookstores, where the audience is there FOR the reading BECAUSE it is poetry, or because they know the poet and want to be supportive. It is quite another ball of yarn to insert poetry into public occasions. The audience is a different one. This is where the work is so satisfying, where poetry gets a bit blue-collar or civic. This is where so many true lovers of poetry come out of the woodwork and declare themselves.
Over my term as laureate, there will be many of these small but important appearances, bringing poetry wherever a poem might enhance an occasion or event. I will attend as many readings by other poets as I can in order to support them because I truly believe that poetry ought to be "out there" in the public arena, available to all. There is another event planned for early August which will bring poetry to the streets of town (shhhh, it's a surprise!) — and there will soon be a poetry box in the library... watch for it!
Now comes my big project: Writers in the Schools.
I have been thinking about this for a long time, wanting to get writers and kids connected, to get kids writing in such a way that doesn't seem entirely academic to them. I KNOW kids write. I WANT them to be proud of doing so and to have some solid mentoring in doing so. This program is all about mentoring, about working WITH kids and teachers to make writing one of the pleasures of being in school.
I am certain that poetry is an integral part of kids' lives, from the small child who enjoys making silly rhymes at play to the teen whose angst or joys find their ways into countless hand-written journals. But what happens to poetry (and other kinds of creative writing) when it gets "institutionalized" is that it stops being joyful and starts being "work." When I lived in California and went into schools as a poet, I noticed a resistance to "one more thing we will be assigned for a grade" and felt sad. Sad for the kids and sad for poetry. My mission therefore became promoting writing in such a way as to make it lovely and lively for kids again as it was for me growing up. We wrote poetry and we memorized poetry. We heard our parents reciting poetry at home. (Yes, I grew up in Maine and my parents recited poems in the normal course of family dinners and events). My grandparents had favorite verses they recited. My dad's whole family would sit around and compose funny verses at reunions or gatherings. I want to make poetry "normal" again. Where to begin? In the schools.
Of course there are many kinds of writing other than poetry. I feel it my duty to bring as much of that to the kids as possible, to expose them to variety and show them the possibilities of writing. I am fortunate myself to be in a community of writers who are passionate about the kinds of writing they do. I want to tap into that passion for the kids' sakes.
This week I met with a group of dedicated teachers from our two local high schools (Oceanside East and Oceanside West). We met for nearly 3 hours hashing out a plan. It felt SO good to hear their passion, to feel the excitement in the room as we talked about how such a program would work. They are gathering the needed steam at their end and I am gathering willing writers at mine. We will start in the fall with me presenting to the teacher workshop day and getting the information out to all faculty. This is important as the vision includes having writers come into all kinds of classrooms, not just English/Language Arts classrooms. This includes special ed, alt ed, gifted and talented. ALL KIDS.
I envision having a sports writer presenting to school athletes. Writing in the locker room? Maybe, or maybe not, but certainly kids ought to know that one can combine a love of football or soccer or track or volleyball with writing. I want to bring in a couple who write historical nonfiction. These folks are fantastic researchers. Loads of worthy help there. What about having a professional blogger come to talk about the many ways one can blog for fun and profit. A writer of dark fiction? Why not. What about writing to or about music? A former rocker who writes about being in a band could fill the bill there. Sure! Is there a place for writing about food? What is ekphrastic writing? Should we have writing in an art classroom? YES! What happens when we spend 5-7 minutes a day writing free, just writing to write? These are all topics the teachers and I discussed in terms of exposure to a wide variety of writing styles and motives. Then there is the cadre of poets to bring forward. I hardly need to say that I'm all over that part!
Of course this IS a school-based project... thus we need to keep in mind the parameters of school schedules, time restrictions, and standards to be measured (learning outcomes). No problem. That is for the teachers. My part is getting the faculty as a whole on board, getting them to ask for writers to come to their individual classrooms, getting them to do a little writing themselves to model for their students. AHA! Now that is a wrinkle! I hope that this will happen, I will work to get this to happen. I am happy to teach the teachers to write creatively along with their students. Yes, I said ALONG WITH the students. To prime that pump, I have already sent a writing prompt to the group who met with me this week. Let's just see what they do with that! Ha! Ha!
As for me, the task is compiling a list of writers and getting them paired with the needs of teachers. Fortunately, the core group of teachers with whom I met is on board with getting those needs identified for/with me. I gave them a survey to help with this, and there is a plan to make some kind of a grid with needs and need fulfillment connecting — sounds a little like Math to me, but oh well! (hmmm, what about technical writing?) What was common to all of us who met this week became clear: a love of kids and the desire to give them the gift of writing. It is a gift with no strings attached. It is an investment in time and imagination. I am happy that there is excitement about this gift-giving project, happy to have it gaining ground.
By the way, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that both school principals are excited about this project. They have encouraged their teachers to embrace it. I will get them writing too, by hook or by crook!
Hopefully, by October the first of the writers will be in the schools, writing with kids and helping them to discover their hidden talents and passions for writing. School accreditation is happening in September so we are being patient in getting started, but I am hopeful that the project will take hold quickly after that, My BIG hope is that the program will result in the high school having its own literary journal and/or school newspaper. THAT would be fantastic!
If you are a Midcoast Maine writer with a passion for what you do and a yen to share, find me by email (mainepoet@me.com or poet.laureate.rcklnd@me.com) or post here. I have something a little bit great for you to do! Think about the kinds of writing you do or the kinds or writing you love to read, and make suggestions. I will appreciate your input. I am looking for someone who writes for children. I am looking for someone who writes about science. I am looking for someone who writes magazine articles. Step right up and volunteer!
Stay tuned for updates on the progress of the project. I will blog along the way, share with you how things are working. I hope you will comment. PLEASE comment.
I was named Poet Laureate of Rockland, Maine in April, will serve a minimum of 2 years. I am pleased at being given the honor of course, but more so for the chance to use my work, my voice to proclaim poetry city-wide and beyond. I definitely am not Gluck-ish. I want to promote poetry and give it its proper due along with other arts in our city. With this in mind, I started in May with a public reading of a poem at the wreath-laying ceremony before the parade on Memorial Day. I chose The New England Dead by Isaac McLellan. Its old-fashioned feel and its lovely lines were perfect for the occasion. It is an emotional poem, but not sappy. It rhymes, which is good for public occasions like this. People liked hearing a poem being read, connected with it. Several expressed happiness at having a poet laureate in the city. I was happy too.
I followed that event with a June 10th reading of an original poem, Under This Flag, at the flag day celebration at the local Elks lodge. Again, people were happy to hear a poem. They appreciated and commented, saying "oh I used to recite poems when I was young" or "I can't write poetry myself, but I enjoy hearing poems." It is one thing for poets to give public readings in libraries or bookstores, where the audience is there FOR the reading BECAUSE it is poetry, or because they know the poet and want to be supportive. It is quite another ball of yarn to insert poetry into public occasions. The audience is a different one. This is where the work is so satisfying, where poetry gets a bit blue-collar or civic. This is where so many true lovers of poetry come out of the woodwork and declare themselves.
Over my term as laureate, there will be many of these small but important appearances, bringing poetry wherever a poem might enhance an occasion or event. I will attend as many readings by other poets as I can in order to support them because I truly believe that poetry ought to be "out there" in the public arena, available to all. There is another event planned for early August which will bring poetry to the streets of town (shhhh, it's a surprise!) — and there will soon be a poetry box in the library... watch for it!
Now comes my big project: Writers in the Schools.
I have been thinking about this for a long time, wanting to get writers and kids connected, to get kids writing in such a way that doesn't seem entirely academic to them. I KNOW kids write. I WANT them to be proud of doing so and to have some solid mentoring in doing so. This program is all about mentoring, about working WITH kids and teachers to make writing one of the pleasures of being in school.
I am certain that poetry is an integral part of kids' lives, from the small child who enjoys making silly rhymes at play to the teen whose angst or joys find their ways into countless hand-written journals. But what happens to poetry (and other kinds of creative writing) when it gets "institutionalized" is that it stops being joyful and starts being "work." When I lived in California and went into schools as a poet, I noticed a resistance to "one more thing we will be assigned for a grade" and felt sad. Sad for the kids and sad for poetry. My mission therefore became promoting writing in such a way as to make it lovely and lively for kids again as it was for me growing up. We wrote poetry and we memorized poetry. We heard our parents reciting poetry at home. (Yes, I grew up in Maine and my parents recited poems in the normal course of family dinners and events). My grandparents had favorite verses they recited. My dad's whole family would sit around and compose funny verses at reunions or gatherings. I want to make poetry "normal" again. Where to begin? In the schools.
Of course there are many kinds of writing other than poetry. I feel it my duty to bring as much of that to the kids as possible, to expose them to variety and show them the possibilities of writing. I am fortunate myself to be in a community of writers who are passionate about the kinds of writing they do. I want to tap into that passion for the kids' sakes.
This week I met with a group of dedicated teachers from our two local high schools (Oceanside East and Oceanside West). We met for nearly 3 hours hashing out a plan. It felt SO good to hear their passion, to feel the excitement in the room as we talked about how such a program would work. They are gathering the needed steam at their end and I am gathering willing writers at mine. We will start in the fall with me presenting to the teacher workshop day and getting the information out to all faculty. This is important as the vision includes having writers come into all kinds of classrooms, not just English/Language Arts classrooms. This includes special ed, alt ed, gifted and talented. ALL KIDS.
I envision having a sports writer presenting to school athletes. Writing in the locker room? Maybe, or maybe not, but certainly kids ought to know that one can combine a love of football or soccer or track or volleyball with writing. I want to bring in a couple who write historical nonfiction. These folks are fantastic researchers. Loads of worthy help there. What about having a professional blogger come to talk about the many ways one can blog for fun and profit. A writer of dark fiction? Why not. What about writing to or about music? A former rocker who writes about being in a band could fill the bill there. Sure! Is there a place for writing about food? What is ekphrastic writing? Should we have writing in an art classroom? YES! What happens when we spend 5-7 minutes a day writing free, just writing to write? These are all topics the teachers and I discussed in terms of exposure to a wide variety of writing styles and motives. Then there is the cadre of poets to bring forward. I hardly need to say that I'm all over that part!
Of course this IS a school-based project... thus we need to keep in mind the parameters of school schedules, time restrictions, and standards to be measured (learning outcomes). No problem. That is for the teachers. My part is getting the faculty as a whole on board, getting them to ask for writers to come to their individual classrooms, getting them to do a little writing themselves to model for their students. AHA! Now that is a wrinkle! I hope that this will happen, I will work to get this to happen. I am happy to teach the teachers to write creatively along with their students. Yes, I said ALONG WITH the students. To prime that pump, I have already sent a writing prompt to the group who met with me this week. Let's just see what they do with that! Ha! Ha!
As for me, the task is compiling a list of writers and getting them paired with the needs of teachers. Fortunately, the core group of teachers with whom I met is on board with getting those needs identified for/with me. I gave them a survey to help with this, and there is a plan to make some kind of a grid with needs and need fulfillment connecting — sounds a little like Math to me, but oh well! (hmmm, what about technical writing?) What was common to all of us who met this week became clear: a love of kids and the desire to give them the gift of writing. It is a gift with no strings attached. It is an investment in time and imagination. I am happy that there is excitement about this gift-giving project, happy to have it gaining ground.
By the way, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that both school principals are excited about this project. They have encouraged their teachers to embrace it. I will get them writing too, by hook or by crook!
Hopefully, by October the first of the writers will be in the schools, writing with kids and helping them to discover their hidden talents and passions for writing. School accreditation is happening in September so we are being patient in getting started, but I am hopeful that the project will take hold quickly after that, My BIG hope is that the program will result in the high school having its own literary journal and/or school newspaper. THAT would be fantastic!
If you are a Midcoast Maine writer with a passion for what you do and a yen to share, find me by email (mainepoet@me.com or poet.laureate.rcklnd@me.com) or post here. I have something a little bit great for you to do! Think about the kinds of writing you do or the kinds or writing you love to read, and make suggestions. I will appreciate your input. I am looking for someone who writes for children. I am looking for someone who writes about science. I am looking for someone who writes magazine articles. Step right up and volunteer!
Stay tuned for updates on the progress of the project. I will blog along the way, share with you how things are working. I hope you will comment. PLEASE comment.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Why I Keep Writing
My husband is not a poet. He is not a writer of any kind. He is a husband, father and grandfather, teacher, friend, golfer dude. He is great at all of these things.
He enjoys reading about politics and current events. He enjoys doing a daily spiritual reading. He previously has not read poetry as a favorite thing to do. But he has been reading my work. OK, so you're thinking "nice guy, supportive husband, awwww!" All true of course. But it is more than that. He has been READING my work. He's found favorite poems, knows what causes him to like them. He can wax specific about that. He is reading slowly and savoring what he reads, a couple poems at a time. Right now he is immersed in my 3rd book, I Write in the Greenhouse, which is divided into seasonal sections. He's just entered "Summer."Even though he has gone to readings where he's heard some of the poems, I've not asked him to read them. But he is reading them.
This is part of what keeps me writing.
www.carolbachofner.com
He enjoys reading about politics and current events. He enjoys doing a daily spiritual reading. He previously has not read poetry as a favorite thing to do. But he has been reading my work. OK, so you're thinking "nice guy, supportive husband, awwww!" All true of course. But it is more than that. He has been READING my work. He's found favorite poems, knows what causes him to like them. He can wax specific about that. He is reading slowly and savoring what he reads, a couple poems at a time. Right now he is immersed in my 3rd book, I Write in the Greenhouse, which is divided into seasonal sections. He's just entered "Summer."Even though he has gone to readings where he's heard some of the poems, I've not asked him to read them. But he is reading them.
This is part of what keeps me writing.
www.carolbachofner.com
"Late Aubade" by Richard Wilbur — a brief commentary
NOTE: an aubade is a poem written "at dawn" as a parting is expected between lovers or as a parting has just having taken place between lovers. It is somewhat a lament, somewhat a reflection, somewhat an honoring of the relationship. It can be a pleading to the lover not to leave.
NOTE: "A Late Aubade" — excerpts taken from the poem which appears in New and Collected Poems, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1988. The poem is found in its entirety on page 153 of this volume.
The aubade form is a special way of being for the poet as well as for the reader. It allows for the habitation of sorrow, regret, and loss — without artifice. There is a setting forth of what is along with what cannot be, with its deep regret. Instead of a maudlin "woe" at the loss (anticipated at the late night hour or at daybreak), it celebrates as it mourns.
... Think of all the time you are not
Wasting, and would not care to waste (13-14)
... of time, by woman's reckoning
You've saved, and so may spend on this,
You who had rather lie in bed and kiss. (17-19)
Although the aubade need not follow a specific end-rhyme, Wilbur chooses to use bracketed rhymes (eg. a, b, b, a)
The resultant rhythms mirror the encompassment of the beloveds with their tryst, their time together, their love. Wilbur's poem is a great example of the form. He uses to advantage his skill as a formalist in the poem, taking care to make build the experience of the poem as a platform for the build-up to let-down of a lovers' parting.
Another technique Wilbur uses very subtly is the short fourth line in each stanza. This emphasizes and calls attention to the brevity of the lovers' time together. The speaker of the poem is musingly aware of this short span experience and considers what else the lover might be doing rather than being in bed: reading in a library, planting flowers, walking the pooch, shopping, lunching through a screed [whining screech] of someone's loves, etc.
...rising in an elevator-cage
Toward Ladies Apparel. (lines 3-4)
You could be planting a raucous bed, (5) which refers to the literalness of gardening in wild unpruned overblown disordered color, but also refers obliquely to the wildness of their lovemaking. However, the speaker is well aware of the passage of time, the fleeting moments of their lovemaking, their luxuriating in the haze of it. He says if you must go and then moves to one more plea for more time in the final stanza.
The speaker pleads his case in line 12: Isn't this better? followed by the support phrase: Think of all the time you are not wasting and the praiseful and would not choose to waste. Is this arrogance on the part of the speaker, or is it confidence?
By the sixth stanza, we see the hinge, the door swinging open for the good-bye. The speaker is plaintive but with a bit of self-directed and contained bravado. It's almost noon, you say? followed by the rehearsed glibness of cliché (time flies) an allusion to Robert Herrick's poem. The reference is ironic of course because the Herrick poem is written to "virgins" which clearly the dallying lover is not.
Finally, Wilbur's aubade reverberates throughout with the counterpointing of public and private time, the bustle of public activity with the slowed private activity of the lovers who make or want to make time recede. Isn't this better asks the speaker in line 12, after which he provides us with the answer.
One more thought for you to consider, dear reader:
Is "Late" a metaphor not only for the onrushing hour of parting, but also a commentary by the poet as his own onrushing mortality as a lover?
All in all the poem makes me think. It opens questions for me, including "Can a poem be artful in mirroring loss without being sappy or saccharine?" I think it can, think it ought. I am of the opinion that this form, the aubade, is a great way to tackle partings, whether licit or illicit, and do so without being too self-conscious.
NOTE: "A Late Aubade" — excerpts taken from the poem which appears in New and Collected Poems, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1988. The poem is found in its entirety on page 153 of this volume.
The aubade form is a special way of being for the poet as well as for the reader. It allows for the habitation of sorrow, regret, and loss — without artifice. There is a setting forth of what is along with what cannot be, with its deep regret. Instead of a maudlin "woe" at the loss (anticipated at the late night hour or at daybreak), it celebrates as it mourns.
... Think of all the time you are not
Wasting, and would not care to waste (13-14)
... of time, by woman's reckoning
You've saved, and so may spend on this,
You who had rather lie in bed and kiss. (17-19)
Although the aubade need not follow a specific end-rhyme, Wilbur chooses to use bracketed rhymes (eg. a, b, b, a)
The resultant rhythms mirror the encompassment of the beloveds with their tryst, their time together, their love. Wilbur's poem is a great example of the form. He uses to advantage his skill as a formalist in the poem, taking care to make build the experience of the poem as a platform for the build-up to let-down of a lovers' parting.
It is helpful too, for a reader to examine the images Wilbur chooses. He does not make these decisions lightly, in fact each image is designed to highlight an aspect of the lovers' encounter and their eventual parting. For example, in line 25, he urges her to slip downstairs/ And bring us up some chilled white wine. Is he herein referring to her being in a slip? He certainly is not afraid of the image/comparison of her shape and her skin in the final line: Ruddy-skinned pears.
Another technique Wilbur uses very subtly is the short fourth line in each stanza. This emphasizes and calls attention to the brevity of the lovers' time together. The speaker of the poem is musingly aware of this short span experience and considers what else the lover might be doing rather than being in bed: reading in a library, planting flowers, walking the pooch, shopping, lunching through a screed [whining screech] of someone's loves, etc.
...rising in an elevator-cage
Toward Ladies Apparel. (lines 3-4)
You could be planting a raucous bed, (5) which refers to the literalness of gardening in wild unpruned overblown disordered color, but also refers obliquely to the wildness of their lovemaking. However, the speaker is well aware of the passage of time, the fleeting moments of their lovemaking, their luxuriating in the haze of it. He says if you must go and then moves to one more plea for more time in the final stanza.
The speaker pleads his case in line 12: Isn't this better? followed by the support phrase: Think of all the time you are not wasting and the praiseful and would not choose to waste. Is this arrogance on the part of the speaker, or is it confidence?
By the sixth stanza, we see the hinge, the door swinging open for the good-bye. The speaker is plaintive but with a bit of self-directed and contained bravado. It's almost noon, you say? followed by the rehearsed glibness of cliché (time flies) an allusion to Robert Herrick's poem. The reference is ironic of course because the Herrick poem is written to "virgins" which clearly the dallying lover is not.
Finally, Wilbur's aubade reverberates throughout with the counterpointing of public and private time, the bustle of public activity with the slowed private activity of the lovers who make or want to make time recede. Isn't this better asks the speaker in line 12, after which he provides us with the answer.
One more thought for you to consider, dear reader:
Is "Late" a metaphor not only for the onrushing hour of parting, but also a commentary by the poet as his own onrushing mortality as a lover?
All in all the poem makes me think. It opens questions for me, including "Can a poem be artful in mirroring loss without being sappy or saccharine?" I think it can, think it ought. I am of the opinion that this form, the aubade, is a great way to tackle partings, whether licit or illicit, and do so without being too self-conscious.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Dreamers
Dreamers. Now they may really have a chance to see what it is like to live out in the open, free citizens with all that means. I wonder why we have become so exclusionist when there is such a short memory on the parts of many whose ancestors came here for this very dream. It's much, I think, like the welfare recipient who is now the welfare clerk and persecutes the person who comes to the welfare office for help. Now that he/she has risen above welfare need, it is okay to scoff at or denigrate the person who stands where he/she stood only a bit ago.
I applaud the president for taking this on when it is so UNPOPULAR in the southwest part of our country. He has guts. We need guts. I am proud of him. These kids did not sneak into the country to try and take something away from someone. They were BROUGHT here. They have lived in secret and fear because of others' attitudes. They have done all the right things in terms of school, serving in the military, etc. And for this the Jan Brewers of the world would send them to a place they have never lived, never experienced. These young people are OURS and they have talents, ideas, skills, and dreams for making this country continue to grow and prosper. We need to honor them with citizenship and stop the fussing over skin color (the real issue).
Three cheers to you Mr. President. And happy Fathers Day. You show your daughters a great example of what it is to be human.
I applaud the president for taking this on when it is so UNPOPULAR in the southwest part of our country. He has guts. We need guts. I am proud of him. These kids did not sneak into the country to try and take something away from someone. They were BROUGHT here. They have lived in secret and fear because of others' attitudes. They have done all the right things in terms of school, serving in the military, etc. And for this the Jan Brewers of the world would send them to a place they have never lived, never experienced. These young people are OURS and they have talents, ideas, skills, and dreams for making this country continue to grow and prosper. We need to honor them with citizenship and stop the fussing over skin color (the real issue).
Three cheers to you Mr. President. And happy Fathers Day. You show your daughters a great example of what it is to be human.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Great Article... read and discuss
The Urgency of Native Stories in the New Century
by Susan Power on Thursday, April 12, 2012 at 9:41am ·
I share this wonderful essay by Native American author, Susan Power. Hope you will enjoy it and comment.
[Powers's Comment: A few of my friends expressed interest in reading comments I made on this topic at Iowa State University. This is a just a brief introduction to the reading I then gave from my new novel -- so these words skim the subject which my fiction hopefully fleshed-out. Thank you for your interest!]
I was so fortunate to be raised in diversity at a time when much of the country was rigidly segregated. Our home welcomed (and often housed) people of all different races and religions, in great part due to my mother's outgoing nature and political activism. So I was taught to honor the traditions and histories of fellow human beings, whatever their origins, educational level, or economic means, and expected to look beyond the end of my nose. I like to say, using writer's language, that this is a multiple point-of-view world, and what the best education can do for us, is teach us to “switch heads.” I do NOT mean replace our own specific backgrounds and belief systems, languages, with some new generic model that has been scrubbed clean of any reference to the past, any true foundation, the catastrophic soup of the so-called American Melting Pot, where we're expected to bleed away our old stories, turn our backs on our ancestors. No, I mean the ability to momentarily set aside the childish ego that insists there is one road, one religion, a single story meant to smother all the rest. To switch heads is to step in each others' shoes, look at the world from inside, outside, upside-down, ultimately creating a new kind of discourse where our stories, ideas, technologies and beliefs are in conversation with each other. A new kind of discourse where the dynamic has nothing to do with winning and losing, shouting louder than the next person, dominating, demolishing, silencing. I was raised hearing stories about my great-great-grandfather, Mahto Nunpa (Two Grizzly Bear) who was a highly respected Council Chief. A critical part of his success as a leader was his practice of careful listening. Opening the mind along with the ears, hearing without judgment, considering all angles. Wisdom isn't knowing more than someone else, having the cleverer brain. Wisdom is the flexibility that comes with maturity, the ability to set aside assumptions, agendas, and the need to be right. Wisdom is the willingness to be surprised.
I've spent a great deal of my life being educated, both in mainstream institutions of higher learning, and on reservations, in Native enclaves, through trips to other countries, and by reading the works of prophets and philosophers writing out of very different traditions. This is education at its best, being exposed to many voices. But I reject the role of the marginal person, the empty vessel needing to be filled by others, as if teaching is a one-way road. I don't come from a subculture, a dangling branch that hangs off the proud American tree. Our tribal roots drill deep and have yet to be plucked from this territory, this Turtle Island continent. Indigenous peoples all over the world have been schooled by the mainstream for hundreds of years, as if we didn't know how to look at the world with a proper set of eyes. This, despite evidence that we knew how to live in a place so that life was possible from one generation to the next, all varieties of life sustained – not taking the most expedient shortcuts to grab resources. So, a few of us are beginning to turn the tables and step forward with OUR stories, our own lessons, which we offer up as necessary additions to the Canon.
Vine Deloria's last book, published before his death, is titled The World We Used to Live In – Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men. This cousin of mine, a leading Native scholar, reminds us of the wondrous talents exhibited by our ancestors. He says, “There were two paths that led them to make sense of their world: empirical observation of the physical world and the continuing but sporadic intrusion of higher powers in their lives, manifested in unusual events and dreams....They understood that their task was to fit into the physical world in the most constructive manner and to establish relationships with the higher power, or powers, that created and sustained the universe.” He argues that this secular society which dominates all discourse essentially believes in nothing, acknowledging no greater good than what we can feel and touch. I lived a great deal of my adult life in this way, convinced that since I didn't have the profound experiences my mother did, those the mainstream would consider impossible, they must be imagined rather than lived, dream-stuff rather than “real.” It wasn't until I surrendered the hubris of my Harvard eyes, and opened in humble curiosity, that I began to see as my mother sees, hear as my mother hears. Remember, we send our children to college to be educated, and if they wish to become engineers or doctors, lawyers or scientists, they spend years learning the skills of their profession, serving long periods of apprenticeship before they're deemed ready to practice. So it is with what I call “Long Vision,” the ability to see in many dimensions, the ability to hear more than the chattering voice of the brain. It takes foundation and practice to open to these experiences. All knowledge isn't stuffed in the mind, but also issues forth from the heart and that secret place we call “spirit.”
Colonization and the missionaries' zeal to eradicate Indigenous life-ways, has separated too many of us from a skill-set that doesn't belong to those who are currently running this world, and running it into the ground. But that doesn't mean our stories and ceremonies and spiritual powers are lost to us. On the contrary, revitalization programs are growing across the country, as our ancestors tap us to recover what was hidden for a time.
I recently learned that a tipi lodge belonging to my great-great-grandfather, is part of the collections at the Oklahoma History Center. The lodge is exceptionally attractive, decorated with pictographs that record the history of my people. It was probably stolen in 1863 when our band was nearly exterminated by Federal troops looking to break the back of the Dakota Nation. Perhaps a soldier nabbed it as a souvenir. For decades Mahto Nunpa's buffalo skin lodge was stored in basements and attics, until eventually it was donated to the Oklahoma History Center’s collection. By this time the pictographs covering the hide had faded to near invisibility, mere outlines and sketches that were difficult to perceive with the naked eye. When the History Center moved to a facility with a controlled environment and the lodge was once again mounted on tipi poles and exposed to the light, there was an unexpected development – the pictographs began to emerge again, color returning as if newly painted, as if the original artist’s hand was telling the stories again for a new generation. Yes. It's time for our stories to live again, not as cultural curiosities interrogated by anthropologists, but as a blueprint for how to survive our crumbling world.
My new novel, Our Lady of a New World, took me seven years to complete. The process felt like an apprenticeship I served under the watchful eyes of elders. In order to find the truth of this fiction, the authentic voices, I had to expand as a person, develop greater compassion, courage, and patience. I had to set aside my expectations and plans, my agenda. At times I felt as though I had to coax these characters to offer up their stories, prove to them I wasn't here to exploit them for the purposes of advancing my career. Instead I was the Seeker, willing to do as much research as it took, as much meditation, revision, re-imagining as they deemed necessary before allowing me inside. Eventually they did. And the gift wasn't simply another finished book. No. They helped me alter my vision of what is possible.
Apologies for absence
So, blog followers! Have you wondered where I am? Have you wondered if I dropped off the blogger edge into an abyss?
Truth is that I have been SLAMMED since mid April with poetry month activities (a good thing) and then May was taken over by dental appointments that started with an emergency Sunday afternoon ROOT CANAL that is still happening (had phase 4 of 5 yesterday).
But there is good news in all of "the busy." On April 26th, I was named Poet Laureate of my city. I am thrilled to say the least and am up to my eyebrows in planning and doing. On Memorial Day, I had my first public appearance in service to the City of Rockland: read a wonderful poem by 19th Century Maine Poet, Isaac McLellan ("New England's Dead") at the wreath-laying ceremony in our downtown park. It was the first time a poem has been read there for Memorial Day. I hope this will be a regular thing. I've offered my poetic self for any and all city-wide events. I will read an original poem, Under This Flag, at the June 10th Flag Day celebration at the local Elks Lodge.
On June 12th, at 630 PM, I will be reading from my latest book, Native Moons, Native Days. The reading will be with two other wonderful women poets, Gayle Portnow (food, however peripheral) and Wendy Rapaport (On the Couch With the Good Enough Poet).
I have been busy attending readings of other poets and lending my support, as well as attending the Maine State Democratic Convention as a delegate, going to the Maine Poets Society May meeting, making every meeting of our school board's budget process, and in general have been straight out with something to do nearly every other night for 3 months. When do I get my summer vacation? Oh, yeah.... next week. We are flying West to grandson Nick's HS graduation. We are leaving the home fires in the very capable hands of Christopher and Justin, great young men who will stay behind to work their jobs and keep things going.
So, I have not disappeared. I have been SWAMPED. But I intend to get back on track with the blog now. I still have a LOT to say and share.
Well, time to get my poem ready for today's poetry group meeting at the library.
Truth is that I have been SLAMMED since mid April with poetry month activities (a good thing) and then May was taken over by dental appointments that started with an emergency Sunday afternoon ROOT CANAL that is still happening (had phase 4 of 5 yesterday).
But there is good news in all of "the busy." On April 26th, I was named Poet Laureate of my city. I am thrilled to say the least and am up to my eyebrows in planning and doing. On Memorial Day, I had my first public appearance in service to the City of Rockland: read a wonderful poem by 19th Century Maine Poet, Isaac McLellan ("New England's Dead") at the wreath-laying ceremony in our downtown park. It was the first time a poem has been read there for Memorial Day. I hope this will be a regular thing. I've offered my poetic self for any and all city-wide events. I will read an original poem, Under This Flag, at the June 10th Flag Day celebration at the local Elks Lodge.
On June 12th, at 630 PM, I will be reading from my latest book, Native Moons, Native Days. The reading will be with two other wonderful women poets, Gayle Portnow (food, however peripheral) and Wendy Rapaport (On the Couch With the Good Enough Poet).
I have been busy attending readings of other poets and lending my support, as well as attending the Maine State Democratic Convention as a delegate, going to the Maine Poets Society May meeting, making every meeting of our school board's budget process, and in general have been straight out with something to do nearly every other night for 3 months. When do I get my summer vacation? Oh, yeah.... next week. We are flying West to grandson Nick's HS graduation. We are leaving the home fires in the very capable hands of Christopher and Justin, great young men who will stay behind to work their jobs and keep things going.
So, I have not disappeared. I have been SWAMPED. But I intend to get back on track with the blog now. I still have a LOT to say and share.
Well, time to get my poem ready for today's poetry group meeting at the library.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Today is April 26th, a banner day of sorts. 1. it marks my final pregnancy adventure (my "baby" turns 38 today) 2. it marks the first day of no dental pain or procedures (oh am I happy about that!) 3. Poetry Month Rockland's Swarm of Poets.
Snails are out of their shells and dancing!
I have not blogged for a few days (see #2) but feel inclined to catch you up on the prompts. Nah! Let's just pick up at Day 26:
Seems like a good day to write something celebratory!
Write a poem of 10-24 lines celebrating something not usually celebrated, like cleaning day, bird feeder filling, belly button lint, packing away winter clothing.
Here are a few target words for you:
compass, cereal, margins,
produce, shy (as a verb), master
stupor, borrow, trace
This photo is a baby chickadee (Emile) that I rescued two springs ago when he fell from the nesting box and couldn't figure out how to fly. I put him back on top of the box and his parents came and fed him and taught him to soar!
Snails are out of their shells and dancing!
I have not blogged for a few days (see #2) but feel inclined to catch you up on the prompts. Nah! Let's just pick up at Day 26:
Seems like a good day to write something celebratory!Write a poem of 10-24 lines celebrating something not usually celebrated, like cleaning day, bird feeder filling, belly button lint, packing away winter clothing.
Here are a few target words for you:
compass, cereal, margins,
produce, shy (as a verb), master
stupor, borrow, trace
This photo is a baby chickadee (Emile) that I rescued two springs ago when he fell from the nesting box and couldn't figure out how to fly. I put him back on top of the box and his parents came and fed him and taught him to soar!
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