Arts Institute Blog

I am attaching a Larry Levis poem that another teacher shared with the students in a workshop at the Governor’s School.  It got me thinking about opening lines to poems and about writing what you know. For obvious reasons, you want to have a good opening line in a poem, but I think that oftentimes I will have a poem that really starts about halfway through what I’ve written, and while I may not want to cut the first part off, the poem often becomes so much stronger in doing so. This Larry Levis poem starts in the action, and it brings in this conflict in the father-son relationship.

As far as writing what you know, I think that this poem has a lot to teach us as well. Several of my students wrote about boyfriends and girlfriends breaking up or high schoolers being petty, and while, yes, this is ”writing what you know,” oftentimes they had more unique stories than these, but it was hard sometimes to get them to write about those things. I’ve been realizing more and more just how important it is to expose students to a variety of good poetry and to have them read read read. Because I think that reading good poetry and writing is the way to make our students better writers and critical thinkers. It seems a little too obvious of an answer and too easy of an answer maybe, but I look back on my high school and middle school experience and I wish that I had been required to read more contemporary poetry.

Winter Stars  

by Larry Levis 

My father once broke a man’s hand

Over the exhaust pipe of a John Deere tractor. The man,

Ruben Vasquez, wanted to kill his own father

With a sharpened fruit knife, & he held

The curved tip of it, lightly, between his first

Two fingers, so it could slash

Horizontally, & with surprising grace,

Across a throat. It was like a glinting beak in a hand,

And, for a moment, the light held still

On those vines. When it was over,

My father simply went in & ate lunch, & then, as always,

Lay alone in the dark, listening to music.

He never mentioned it.

I never understood how anyone could risk his life,

Then listen to Vivaldi.

Sometimes, I go out into this yard at night,

And stare through the wet branches of an oak

In winter, & realize I am looking at the stars

Again. A thin haze of them, shining

And persisting.

It used to make me feel lighter, looking up at them.

In
California, that light was closer.

In a
California no one will ever see again,

My father is beginning to die. Something

Inside him is slowly taking back

Every word it ever gave him.

Now, if we try to talk, I watch my father

Search for a lost syllable as if it might

Solve everything, & though he can’t remember, now,

The word for it, he is ashamed…

If you can think of the mind as a place continually

Visited, a whole city placed behind

The eyes, & shining, I can imagine, now, its end—

As when the lights go off, one by one,

In a hotel at night, until at last

All of the travelers will be asleep, or until

Even the thin glow from the lobby is a kind

Of sleep; & while the woman behind the desk

Is applying more lacquer to her nails,

You can almost believe that the elevator,

As it ascends, must open upon starlight.

I stand out on the street, & do not go in.

That was our agreement, at my birth.

And for years I believed

That what went unsaid between us became empty,

And pure, like starlight, & that it persisted.

I got it all wrong.

I wound up believing in words the way a scientist

Believes in carbon, after death.

Tonight, I’m talking to you, father, although

It is quiet here in the
Midwest, where a small wind,

The size of a wrist, wakes the cold again—

Which my be all that’s left of you & me.

When I left home at seventeen, I left for good.

That pale haze of stars goes on & on,

Like laughter that has found a final, silent shape

On a black sky. It means everything

It cannot say. Look, it’s empty out there, & cold.

Cold enough to reconcile

Even a father, even a son.

We just started the children’s camp at the Columbia Museum of Art this week, and it’s really interesting seeing the difference with teaching different age groups. This is a theme that I’ve discussed in earlier posts, as I taught a group of rising 10th graders and then a group of rising 9th graders, and the difference between these groups was very noticeable (which could have been attributed to the specific group of students that we had .. but I do think something happens when students go to high school).

 The most challenging aspect of teaching younger age groups (around ages 8-11), is 1) keeping their attention 2) having activities that will work with such a range of ages. There are different issues, like spelling and vocabulary, that make it interesting to teach poetry to 8 year olds and 11 year olds at the same time. I think that an effective way of dealing with the age gap is  to give the assignment to the students (for instance, responding to a piece of artwork in the gallery…have them imagine what the person in the painting or picture is thinking, how they got where they are, where they are going, etc) and then go around the room to give the students individual attention about specific age-related questions that they might have.

The students came up with some interesting poems during the workshops today. I taught a group of 2nd graders a poetry workshop earlier this year, and I remember being impressed with their attention span and their attention to detail. I played the students a poem that was recorded on CD, and even though it was a longer poem, they asked questions about various images and wording throughout the poem after the poem was played. My point is that–whatever age someone is– it is both suprising and refreshing to listen to their responses to both poetry and art. I’ve found that I really learn something from teaching younger kids.

I ended up doing a variety of prompts with my students, and they varied with the different age groups. We usually made it through more prompts in the older class because I found that the younger group was frustrated when they didn’t have time to finish as much. While I told them that the prompts were not meant to always produce finished products, they still felt like they wanted more time to spend on each prompt. I think you also have to balance the amount of activities, though, based on the age group and their attention span.  I would break up the time in the class by going over other poets’ poems, by having the students workshop their drafts, and by doing some group exercises. I found that the students wrote better work and stayed more focused if I gave them a variety.

One activity that I did with the students is that I had them freewrite in response to about 8 songs, in various genres. I asked them to write about whatever came to their minds. I am more of a words person when it comes to music, but I have friends who do not pay much attention to the words of songs, so I thought that it would be an interesting exercise to have them respond to either the mood of the music, the lyrics, or a combination of both. They really enjoyed the exercise, as it was fast-paced, and included a variety of music. After I played all of the songs, and they had 8 responses (a few paragraphs each, give or take), I asked them to pick either one of those responses and write a poem or take interesting images and ideas from various paragraphs and come up with a draft of a poem. They came up with some interesting work from this particular prompt. And they asked if we could do it again the following week, with different songs.  

Here is a little glimpse into the collaborative process between my mother and me. It all starts with my script. For example (from page 2):

2. The weatherwoman sheepishly gives up trying to get it right. She shrugs and says:

Weatherwoman: It’s going to be a hot one!
Caption: I bet she can’t even spell barometer.

3. Interior of living room. Woman, still in chair, looks out window to a stormy sky.

4. Through the window, closer view of exterior. A man stands outside in the windy weather.

Caption: No, the only time the weather guys have anything to do is in Hurricane Season.

5. Woman, who now stands before the window, looking back over her shoulder, away from window and back at T.V.

Voice of the television: Breaking News!
Caption (this caption can carry over onto the adjacent panel): Then they break into regular programming and whip everyone into a battery and bottle-water buying frenzy.

My mother then takes this script and gives her interpretation of it—in a story board, she sketches out the scenes I have described and adds more details. Often she has follow-up questions like:

Has the woman had a recent fight or disagreement with Barry? Is that why she is so sad and he’s outside? I need to know because when I draw him outside I will make his body language say he is upset or depressed. 

These questions are great for me because they get me to think more about the characters’ motivations or to express them more clearly. In this case, I had definitely imagined that the man and the woman had been fighting so I got to flesh out in my own mind and with my mother what was at the heart of their argument. The end result of our conversation is a more emotionally vivid story and image.

I have done so much since my last post here. The internet has been down, and I only recently have been able to get back on here. I plan on posting more often considering the internet cooperates!

I am in my third week here. This week I begin a class on improvisation to improve my performances and make them more personal and genuine. The first week, the course was singing (to make us comfortable with our true musical voice), and last week was a public speaking course to allow us to approach an audience more comfortably. They call these ‘communication classes’ because we, as performers, need to be able to communicate our art uninhibitedly. Every week we will have a new course, but I have not been told what each week holds. Supposedly, we will have an acting class, and rumor has it that a big-time actor will be here. More later on that if it turns out true. That would be so great if Morgan Freeman or Meryl Streep walked in the door one day!

I have had two one-hour private lessons per week every week. For these first 3 weeks, Barry Snyder from the Eastman School of Music has been here teaching the 7 pianists in the program. He is a fantastic teacher that I would LOVE to study with in graduate school. I figure the time I’ve spent here with him is a little like a mini-graduate school audition. Chances are we’ll stay in touch and when the graduate school audition comes around, he’ll remember me, my playing ability, etc etc. Next week we have a major international competition winner, Andre-Michel Schub from Manhattan School of Music to teach us for two weeks. I’m not sure what to expect from that, but it should be really exciting.

I performed this past Sunday morning at a nursing home in town. A handful of people were chosen to play for them, and though it was a difficult situation for performance (very loud, busy, coughing, talking, nurses, etc) I think all of us played well and hopefully made somebody happier as a result.

The caliber of musicians here is astounding. Everyone plays so well and only a handful of people here (including myself) come from a school that is not a major conservatory. It’s very eye-opening to be here and to see and here the caliber of musicianship that’s actually out there.

I’ll update my week in detail very soon. Bis bald! ~Brian

The first session of governor’s school went really well. The group was rising 10th graders, and most of them are interested in the residential program for 11th and 12th grade. It’s a really unique opportunity, I think, and I was talking to my boss there about how I wish I had done something like that in high school. The students take all of their core academic classes, and then take classes in their particular art area. Although, in high school I would have probably had more of a leaning towards visual arts, as my interest in creative writing didn’t really peak until college.

 As I said in an earlier post, I taught a prompt class in the mornings, and a reading discussion group in the afternoon, and was there in the evening to look over drafts and talk to students about their writing. I really enjoyed the one-on-one time during open classroom because I was able to talk to the student about their work in more detail. As I was preparing for the classes and while I was discussing poetry with my students, I found that I was looking at texts (that I’ve seen many times) in a new way. I know it’s pretty cliche to say that you learn something by teaching, but I really found that I was learning a lot from teaching the past two weeks.

 This next group that’s coming in is made up of rising 9th graders, so it will be interesting to see how we adjust material for teaching. From what I’ve heard from teachers who’ve taught these sessions before, there is a real difference between the two, even though the students are only one year apart.

One interesting activity that I did with the students is that I made color copies of Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” and had them do prompts in response to the painting–they were free to focus on the painting as a whole, or certain aspects of it, such as color or texture. I started out by giving them the Sexton poem “The Starry Night,” which is in response to the painting as well. I think that it helped to give them an example to go on–they came up with some interesting poems from this exercise.

 More to come!

Many alternative comics are created by a single artist: the same person writes the story, draws the illustrations, and puts in the text (captions and dialogue). When you have complete creative control over all stages of your work, it can be a little easier to ensure that the final product is exactly what you envisioned. Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes are just two examples of this kind of one-man-show comic artist.

Most comics, however—especially mainstream comics—are much more collaborative in nature. Putting together these books is more akin to making a move. Instead of writers, directors, and actors having to share a vision and work together to make a cohesive whole you have writers, pencilers, inkers, and letterers. It all starts with the writer’s script but then each of these artists (pencilers, inkers, and letterers) must interpret that script—the penciler draws the characters and the landscapes, the inkers add the shadows and contrasts, and the letterer choose the fonts and lays out the dialogue and captions. If the writer imagines his story to be a light-hearted romp then he better hope his penciler gets that and doesn’t draw the characters to all look like Bela Lugosi after an especially hard break-up. And it will be hard to pick up on the story’s comical tone if the inker uses heavy lines and dark, dramatic shadows. And, really, that is an oversimplification of all the issues that must be considered and the ways the various artists must come together and share a vision. It really is like putting together a film—only doing it one still frame at a time.

Fortunately, while there are times when styles and ideas clash, most comic artists are professional, masters of their craft who put out polished products in record time.

Here is a link to a panel from HeroesCon where several such professionals talk about the highs and lows of collaboration.   

I’ve just finished my third full day here in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire where I will be studying piano and performance techniques at the Heifetz International Music Institute. It is one of the most beautiful and pristine places I have ever seen in my entire life. The institute takes place on the campus of a boarding school in town which overlooks Lake Winnepesaukee and a small range of the White Mountains far in the distance. The town claims to be the oldest resort town in the country, and I believe it. If there is anyplace I would like to one day build a second home, it would be here. And the town itself looks like one of those collections Department 56 comes out with around the Holiday season. Alas, I digress.

Out of only 78 musicians, I am one of six pianists chosen from around the world to study with some of the best-known music pedagogues in the business. I’ll study with Barry Snyder, Andre-Michel Schub, Jeffrey Sharkey, and Andre Watts over the course of the summer- all of whom are internationally acclaimed performers, pedagogues, and musical leaders. It’s thrilling. I will be playing chamber music, attending classes targeting the different aspects of performance issues, and performing about once per week. It is a tad strict when it comes to obligations, though, as we’re told to practice 5 hours per day, have 6 hours of chamber music rehearsal per week, 2 one-hour piano lessons per week, 5 hours of class per week, and still have time to eat and sleep. It may not sound like a lot to someone who is not accustomed to this lifestyle, but the energy and focus required to complete everything at 100% is almost mind-boggling.

In the end I know I will leave here a new person and a new musician, but it looks like it’s going to be a hard road getting there. I will have updates about how things are shaping up. Cheers!

I just returned from a wonderful visit to the HeroesCon comics convention. I went for the first time last year and had a blast, and was equally pleased this year. I am not big on the comics convention circuit, but from what I understand this is a fairly small gathering compared to others like the one held every year in San Diego. This convention had an excellent book fair, at which I spent a lot of money, and offered several interesting hour-long panel discussions. Every hour there were about three panels to choose from. On Saturday, I attended a panel discussion on the experience of collaboration (something that happens a lot in mainstream comics), a panel discussion with several contributing artist to the upcoming anthology of visual interpretations of the lyrics of Tori Amos, and finally a panel that hosted a conversation between indie comic greats Mark Dorkin and Jaime Hernandez.

The Savannah College of Art and Design had a significant presence at both this year’s and last’s years convention, though they hosted more panels last year. Last year seemed more devoted to the craft of comics while this year seemed to focus on the industry itself. In either case, I learned a lot—especially at the collaboration panel, but that is for another blog.

This convention appeals to me because it offers a great selection of books from indie or alternative comics publishers like Ad House Books and Top Shelf Productions. Last year I bought several books from both vendors—including a sweet anthology of love stories from Ad House and a gorgeous, hard-bound book called The Ticking by Renee French from Top Shelf. The Ticking is all done in delicate pencil sketches and tells the story of a disfigured boy trying to find his place in the world. It is grotesque and beautiful, funny and heartbreaking. This year I bought Super Spy by Matt Kindt from Top Shelf. This is a collection of short stories about the lives of spies. Again, beautiful and tragic. What I love about these publishers is that they are putting out works of art—the stories are artful, literary and moving, the images that convey the story are arresting and surprising, and even the binding is finely crafted and makes the book a delight to read and to display.

I bought a lot more, but I’ll leave it at that. All in all, the convention was a big success. I bought a lot of good books, learned some valuable lessons (and not just “maybe it’s not such a good idea to tattoo Hello Kitty’s face on your own forehead,” a lesson at least one convention goer would do well to learn), and enjoyed myself immensely. I’ll share more from the panel discussion nest time and also talk more about why I love literary comics and who some of my favorite writers and artists are.

Today I leave for Charlotte, NC to attend HeoresCon, a small comic book convention. I went for the first time last year and had an excellent time. This convention, while offering the usual superhero fare, also has an excellent selection of alternative and literary comics. Here is a link to the convention:

http://www.heroesonline.com/con-indie.html

I’ll offer a full report when I return.