Harriet

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

John S. O'Connor

Users of Word Magic, Makers of Poems

I’m always stealing ideas from other poets to bring to my classes. This summer I read a very interesting poem by Anna McDonald originally published in The Paris Review. The poem, called “Possible Titles for His Plaque” is a clever riff on the Homeric convention of using tags for characters. Just as Homer calls the Trojans “breakers of horses,” McDonald’s speaker talks in mock heroic phrases such as “eater of pork rinds” and “pisser off of porches.” It’s funny and a little disturbing.

For my purposes as a classroom teacher, though, the poem is perfect: it’s a tight form that all students can duplicate and it has great use as a model for students writing autobiography (what are possible titles for their own plaques?), for understanding a novel they are studying (think of Holden: wearer of a red cap, mourner of a younger brother, savior of imaginary children, cleanser of the word “fuck”, etc.) or a historical or literary character outside of class.

Here is what a student named Alison did with a character from a graphic novel:

DC Comics: Harley Quinn’s Rap Sheet

Guilt-filled felon

Abandoner of her PhD

Rider of pogo sticks

Operator of deadly weapons

Speaker in a Queens accent

Singer of rusty songs

Recipient of second chances

Failure at redemption

Loud chewer of bubble gum

Juggler of dynamite

Baker of cream pies

Receiver of get-well roses

Mistress of obnoxious laughter

Schemer of punchlines

Resident of a fun house

Patient in a mad house

Occasional wearer of pink dresses and rollerskates

Masquerader behind a bubbly innocence

Poster girl for Gotham City psychopaths

___________________________________________________________

And here’s Marie’s poem about a friend of hers:

Former Taco Bell Employee

former champion eater of cheesy gordita crunches

former all-time most disgruntled Taco Bell employee

faker of vegetarianism and dire heart conditions

owner of an extensive dream catcher collection

stealer of debate team trophies,

snatcher of children’s scooters from neighboring front lawns

possessor of biggest glasses, curliest hair

burner down of junior high bathrooms

photographer of roadkill

heckler of pre-teens and other defenseless schmucks

putter of trash in mailboxes

flip offer of the school principal

do-er of all things people despise.

John S. O'Connor

The Tree Inside My Head

Several years ago, around Halloween, I was informed of a sickening and racist story while leading a workshop at an affluent, mostly white, local high school. As part of a writing exercise on persona, I asked students what costumes they planned on wearing for Halloween. The class laughed nervously and all eyes turned to Robert. “What’s so funny?” I asked. Robert explained he had been suspended for two weeks the previous year for the costume he wore. “What could be so bad?” I asked.

“I went as a Mexican,” Robert said, with no apparent remorse.

“What does that mean? I asked. How could you dress ‘as a Mexican’?”

John S. O'Connor

Once More, in English Please

The recent announcement that Herta Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a huge surprise to me as I’m sure it did to many Americans. While Muller has written twenty books, only 5, according to the New York Times, have been translated into English. The tiny percentage of Muller’s work translated into English is hardly an aberration. Rather, it is a sad symptom of a much larger problem. There has been a steady decline in the number of literary works translated into English, and in the United States the decline has perhaps been even more precipitous than in other English speaking nations.

John S. O'Connor

Making Room for Poetry

dali-clock-500x500

In the past year I’ve talked about poetry with a few hundred classroom teachers and heard one overwhelmingly common complaint.  Given the demands of required texts and standardized tests, there just isn’t enough time for poetry.

One teacher drew the analogy of designing a curriculum and furnishing a house: “You start with the big pieces — the sofa, the coffee table,” she told me, “not with the accent pieces.” Novels and plays are the serious works, she suggested — actual books that serve a vital function, substantial texts that might really require some heavy lifting. Poetry, by implication, is regarded as wall art, something exotic rather than essential — not something to plan a room (or a unit) around.

John S. O'Connor

Pledging Allegiance to Poetry

school
take out the “sh”
and it’s cool

Starting is often hardest – the first gesture determines so much of what follows. This is true for poems, for personal introductions, even for blog posts! It’s also true when thinking about the school day.

At my school, like so many others, the day officially commences with a student reading of the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a nice idea to have students read, but the readings – whether giggly or sober — are all delivered in the same sing-song manner, as I assume they are in every other school. I don’t mean to sounds critical of these students, but the point of the pledge is often not patriotic reflection but a means of bringing the school to order. The pledge functions like a judge’s gavel, a drawn out “sh,” a pre-hypnotic suggestion that promises we will eventually awaken and remember nothing.

Joel Brouwer

Back to Skool

fhproto

“The folklorist Vladimir Propp thought he was accomplishing something worthwhile by identifying in Russian folktales thirty-one functions and 151 elements, with a mathematical symbol assigned to each.” — Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge

Joel Brouwer

Renaissance redux?

antony-gormley-terracotta-army

Pop quiz: What do Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Frank McCourt, Art Buchwald, Pete Hamill, Edward Abbey, Elmore Leonard, Mario Puzo, James Dickey, James Wright, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Randall Jarrell, Frank O’Hara, Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, A.R. Ammons, Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling, Aaron Spelling, Terry Southern, Walter Matthau, Robert Duvall, Tony Curtis, Harry Belafonte, Rod Steiger, Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Krikorian, Dan Spiegle, Robert Miles Runyan, Kenneth Noland, LeRoy Nieman, Richard Callner, Ed Rossbach, and Robert Perine have in common?

Answer after the break. Don’t click until you’ve made your guess. One thing you’ve already noticed is that they’re all men. That’s sort of a hint.

Joel Brouwer

In the stacks

library_stacks

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the role of the library in your life as a 21st century reader and/or writer. I taught a summer class this past June, and when I needed to mark papers or work on my notes, I often retreated from the summer sun and my always-on computer screen to the basement of Gorgas Library here on the University of Alabama campus. The basement of Gorgas approaches my Platonic ideal of librarity (or librariousness, if you prefer): cool silence, greenish tile floors, flickery yellow fluorescent lights, indestructible but much-graffiti’d wooden and green metal furniture, creaky and ticking pipes crisscrossing the low ceiling, and of course aisle upon aisle of books, many of which (e.g., a 1932 history of Catholicism in Montana) may never be read again, but all of which stand ready, patient, in case you want them. I love it down there. When my mind wandered from my students’ papers, I got to thinking about how my relationship to libraries has changed over time. I wonder how yours has, too.

Camille Dungy

Poetry is making things happen! Installment #1 (Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project)

We’re nearly a week into National Poetry Month.  Poems, poems, everywhere. Also economic chaos, heightened criminal activity, catastrophic climate change…and all the other worrying realities of our time.   This world is full of real-time hard times. How can poetry make it better?

Ada Limón

Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is putting together a group of micro-essay for teaching poetry to beginning writers. Though I’m not really a teacher, he asked me nonetheless. And since I have so many dear dear friends beginning their semesters this week, this goes out to them. Thanks JMW for inviting me to participate.
Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry
Because I work outside of the academic field, I don’t get the
opportunity to teach very often, but when I do, I’m surprised by how
many people read poems as if they can have only one meaning. In my own
experience, I find it nearly impossible to hear the beauty and
meditative joy of a poem’s lines, or the sensual sounds of a syllable,
when I’m reading solely for narrative sense. So, I’ve come to think
that one of the first things to learn about poetry is to simply relax
in its mystery. We need to learn that a poem can have many meanings
and that it can be enjoyed without a complete understanding of the
poet’s intent. On a good day a poem might bring you great joy, on a
tough day, the same poem might reveal great agony, but the poem hasn’t
changed—it’s what you have brought to the poem that has changed. The
more you read a poem, the more time you spend with it, read it out
loud to yourself or to others, the more it will open to you—start to
wink and flirt and let you in. A poem is a complex living thing, its
multiple edges and many colors are what makes this singular art form
so difficult to define. There is an ancient Chinese Proverb that says,
“A bird sings not because he has an answer, but because he has a
song.” That is how I have come to think about poetry—that a poem isn’t
a problem to solve, but rather it’s a singular animal call that
contains multiple layers of both mystery and joy.
It’s that unique animal call that we have to carve out time for if we
really want to do the work that poetry requires. Though I admit I
struggle everyday to find the right balance between my writing
practice and the daily pressures of living, there are a few things
that help me remain true to the work of poetry. Although these may not
work for every writer, the following five points are what have kept me
writing poetry with greater ease and discipline on a daily basis.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Anselm Berrigan
Abigail Deutsch
Tonya Foster
Melissa Friedling
John S. O'Connor
Barbara Jane Reyes
Amber Tamblyn
Edwin Torres

STAFF WRITERS

Cathy Halley
Michael Marcinkowski
Travis Nichols
Fred Sasaki
Don Share

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