It’s not really something we think about as artists, I don’t believe, that our works will never be perfected or completed. But it reminds me of a conversation I had with Li-Young Lee when he was in Columbia for Asian Arts Week. I had written poems in response to a few poems from his first book, Rose, and I made a point of letting him know the titles of some of the poems I used. “How did they go again?” he responded, and I recited the bits that I could remember. He got this big grin on his face and started to chuckle, and before I could ask what happened, he says “That poem has changed since then, most of them have.” Even though the book was widely published and adored, even perfected (according to some), they had to change because he had changed, and because time had passed.

 My first experience with poetry came in elementary school as a one-off exercise–just write a poem. It was in my language arts class, I believe, and it was an exercise that I simply did not do. Who writes poems? Pffftttt was part of my response, while my other response was How the heck do I do that? And soon after my non-completion of the exercise, the writing of poetry in my life slipped into oblivion until my second year of college. Literally, throughout my 12 years of pre-college education, I was asked to write poetry once. And hated it. And when it came back again in college, it was something that I was ready to embrace and fully appreciate.

 While this may all seem like just a rant at this point, it isn’t. I had never been asked to be creative in a way that I could use, and it’s something that I wish would have been different. We never know in what subject a child may blossom, and the best thing that we can do is expose them to everything–including the writing of poetry and fiction–early enough, and let them choose what they enjoy enough to stick with.

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.

 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.

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.  

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 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

 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!