Second round of workshops, week 6: revision and editing

This was my last week with the second workshop group. Last week I asked them to bring a poem to work on revising, with the possible goal of contributing to a workshop poetry anthology.

When we arrived today, my son pointed out that it was very quiet. One of the staff told me that attendance was very low, so I shouldn’t expect a full workshop. Six kids came, but one left a few minutes into the session and another didn’t join us until about 15 minutes after we started.

I opened with some thoughts on editing from The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes. She talks about achieving the balance we talked about a bit last week – keeping the parts of the poem that come from the heart, but making sure that you’ve made your poem as well as you can, whether that means cutting it or adding to it.

I then shared a couple of handouts – starting with Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s revision advice for his college poetry courses, which you can find here:
www.unco.edu/poetry/jeffrey.lee/html/syllabi/REDFLAGS.htm

Since the few kids I had today looked utterly bored and/or were giggling with each other, I moved quickly to the second handout, the poetry section from Weekly Reader’s Writing for Teens special issue on revision. You can find it here:
http://www.weeklyreader.com/teachers/Writing/WritingPage0405

First I shared an interview with poet Lee Bennett Hopkins about how he revises, accompanied by one of his poems in various stages of editing. The rest of the handout was a poem by a New York City teen before and after revision, with notes on how to give and receive writing critiques.

Since none of the kids brought a poem to revise, and several didn’t even have their writing journals, I suggested we try an exercise in the handout, based on the student sample. They wrote poems using the title “I Am From” as a jumping off place, and then swapped the drafts with a partner and tried asking specific things about the poems so the authors could make revisions. Or at least that was the plan.

Everyone wrote, but no one really got into the critiquing. One boy’s mentor arrived in the middle of all this, and he ended up hurriedly finishing so he could go chat with the mentor about a car he plans to buy. Really.

D. was my partner. He asked pretty good critique questions, about two lines in my poem which could be clearer.

Here’s his poem:

I Am From

I am from a place where you don’t want to go
where red cover the flour and family just say, “so”
A place where you duck and hide to look outside
and have a mean look to hide your smile

I am from a place where killing takes place when
somebody gets kill people just say it’s another day
a place where you had nothing to eat but bread and rice
and your mama did what she had to do to make sure you eat at night

I am from a place where brother had to stick together
to watch each other
a place where you don’t want to go where I
don’t want to go anymore

I’ve added a comma and quotation marks to the second line because that was where I asked him for more information; otherwise the poem is just as he wrote it. He said his uncle was shot and everyone just went on. He tried a few other ways of saying it but ended up leaving the “so.” I think that was a good choice, but I think the quotation marks really emphasize how upset he was to witness this indifference.

He told me the poem was a true story, and it happened in New Jersey, where he used to live. In his old neighborhood there, he said, if you smiled at anyone they would say you were gay, and if you looked at someone wrong, you could get shot. Then he said the police caught the killer but dropped the case, and that when people die there, nothing happens. We talked about working on the word choice but keeping the truth of the poem.

No one wanted to share any poems out loud, although a couple of the other teens showed me what they’d written.

M., a student from the first workshop group who is editing the PLC poetry anthology, came in and asked this group to get their contributions to her by next week. When I asked how the project was going she said that she’d lost some of the poems people gave her and that if they “weren’t going to be selling them” she didn’t know if it was still worth it.

You may recall that the first workshop group had big plans to have a reading, and they thought they’d print up the anthology and sell it. The reading plans fell through. M., meanwhile, had asked to receive additional credit since she was taking on the editing and I spoke to the principal on her behalf. But here she was, telling me she’d not really done the work and also that she didn’t feel particularly motivated to, since there’d be no monetary reward.

While M. was talking, most of the other kids drifted out. It was a deflating ending to the 2007 poetry workshops at the alternative high school in my town. If I continue next semester, I will ask that a) only kids who really want to participate sign up and b) they understand that they are committing to a six week workshop, once a week for an hour.

Second round of workshops, week 5: exploring poetic forms

If you want to see what I cover in “exploring poetic forms,” you can check out the blog entry from the first set of workshops, here:
https://poembound.wordpress.com/2007/02/23/plc-poetry-workshops-week-6-exploring-poetic-forms/

When I got to the school today, the principal told me there was very low attendance today, so I’d probably be missing some kids. She was right — only six teens made it to the poetry workshop today, and one of those actually missed the entire discussion portion and came in just as we began writing.

As I was waiting for those few to trickle in, I greeted J., and gave him a book I’d found at the public library book sale last week after the workshop. It’s called the Illustrated Directory of the US Marine Corps, (http://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Directory-United-States-Marine/dp/0760315566). He was thrilled. It turns out that another PLC student, T., is also planning on joining the Marines. As I learned last week, J. is already signed up and goes to Parris Island in July.

T. is training with her dad so she’ll be physically fit, but she hasn’t signed up yet. She said her uncle and his wife are both Marines and that “they make good money,” but that “it isn’t about the money.” She told the group it’s always been her dream to serve and she wants to prove to herself that she can do it. J. immediately cracked a huge grin and said, “For me, it’s about the money. I’m staying in 20 years, too, so I can retire!”

T.’s uncle is currently deployed in Iraq, and she said she wants to talk things over with him when he gets back, to make sure she’s ready, before she joins. As the other students came in and we got ready to begin, I found myself praying silently that T.’s uncle will stay safe and come home to talk to her, and that she and J. will succeed and be safe as well. They are both so young . . .

In the first workshops, I felt I’d tried to cover too much when I delved into poetic forms. So this time, I went over the basics of why poets think about form as well as substance, and then we talked about free verse and how it is not just a free for all, but is a form in which line breaks are the poet’s key formatic tool. I suggested that for a look at early free verse they should check out Walt Whitman, and we talked a bit about how he envisioned a new American poetry, less formal and more expansive than its European antecedents.

I then explained that their handouts included a guide to the villanelle form and three villanelles, and encouraged them to read them on their own, because I wasn’t going to go over them in the workshop. Instead, I told them, we’d turn to my passion – haiku and related forms.

This group was more receptive than the last to the notion that what they’d been told about haiku as children was likely not very accurate and I was about to set them straight. For more on how haiku is not what you learned in school, please see the blog entry at the link above. Mainly, please note that haiku is NOT defined as a poem with three lines and a certain number of syllables.

In order to convince the teens that I know what I am talking about, I showed them that I am one of seventeen poets featured in A New Resonance: Emerging Voices in English Language Haiku, v. 4, which you can find here, along with other fine haiku volumes: http://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=21&osCsid=et6nbl94cbo0fdil383c5dmks4

We went over the Haiku Society of America’s definitions of haiku and its close relative senryu, which you can find here:
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/archives/HSA_Definitions_2004.html

After discussing haiku and senryu, I read several examples of both forms from my own work, and we talked about the subtle difference. My children were glad that they each featured in my examples. I read from several journals which I recommend to anyone interested in these forms, including:

Modern Haiku http://www.modernhaiku.org/

bottle rockets http://www.geocities.com/bottlerockets_99/index.html

Simply Haiku http://simplyhaiku.com/

The Heron’s Nest http://www.theheronsnest.com/

Frogpond – the journal of the Haiku Society of America
http://www.hsa-haiku.org/ (the journal itself isn’t online)

As we discussed my poems I talked a bit about the writing life. I encouraged them to continue to write no matter what anyone told them about the practicality. No, you won’t make much money by writing poetry, but you can write no matter what else you do. We talked about rejections, and about believing in your work enough to keep looking at it critically, and sending it back out if you believe in it. Rejection, I told them, is a part of writing, and it doesn’t necessarily mean your work stinks. I was getting some blank looks.

L. piped up and said, “If it comes from your heart, how can it stink?” While there is certainly much to be said on the subject of good writing, and a piece needs to be well written, grammatically correct, and of the highest possible quality before it will be accepted for publication (at least in theory, that is how it should work), L. hit on an important truth, as I told the group.

T., who hasn’t contributed to the conversations as much as some of the other workshop participants, said, “That’s true. If there’s one thing you’ve taught me it’s that what comes from my heart is good.” Again, just when I was thinking that the topic at hand was boring these kids, they let me know how important our work together is.

I do think that L. and T. are right. If you write passionately, if you put your whole self into your work, it will never stink. It may not be polished and ready to go, you may need to revise, but at its heart, the work will be good. I plan to expand on this thought next week, when we talk about revising.

We went over the HSA definition of haibun and the traditions this form grew out of, and I read some of my haibun. At this point the group seemed anxious to write, so I wrapped up and suggested we try working collaboratively first. L. wrote two haiku before we even finished talking.

We tried Timothy Russell’s haiku writing exercise (found here: http://shachihoko.homestead.com/1exercise.html ). It’s a great exercise in observation, so I recommend it for anyone, not just haiku poets. To start, you write down the month or season and something about the day. Then, you spend a few minutes noticing and observing (outside is best), and jotting down descriptive phrases. Do this about ten times, and you’ll have some raw material for haiku

The group came up with:

First line:
cloudy morning

observations:
the breeze leaps from tree to tree
the flags snap furiously
a smiling face in the crowd
ships sail across yellow fabric (a boy’s shirt)

and we wrote a few haiku together:

cloudy morning
the breeze leaps
from tree to tree

cloudy morning
flags snapping furiously
in the breeze

cloudy morning
a smiling face
in the crowded hallway

Then they wrote on their own. All of them wrote, but only a couple of kids wanted to read what their poems:

T. wrote:

in dark morning
clouds float
slowly moving

L. wrote:

morning wind
sun rising into the sky
fog drifts away

black sky
you stroll through the night
waiting for a glimpse of light

We closed by talking about what we’ll do next week – wrap up the workshops with a session on revising poems.

Second round of workshops, week 4: wishes, lies, & dreams

For an overview of the topic of this week’s poetry workshop, see workshop week 5, here:

https://poembound.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/poetry-workshops-week-five-wishes-lies-and-dreams/

I went in early today to set up a circle of chairs. As I said last week, because of the various interruptions and disruptions, and the fact that some of the participants are only in the workshop because they’ve been told to attend, I’d had trouble connecting with them. I wanted to try using a less formal room arrangement to see if that might foster more participation.

It certainly led to conversation before the workshop began. The results of the graduation test came out yesterday. L., who still has another year of school to go, passed. He said juniors can take the test, so if they fail they can work on it and try again. I asked the early arrivals who was graduating this year, and what their plans are. Both of the two young men I wrote about last week, who sat alone, are graduating in a few weeks. D., speaking so softly I had to lean in to hear, said he will be attending the technical college (a two year college) here in town.

J., the one who wrote about his frustration with the frivolous word pool last week, is going into the Marine Corps. He heads to boot camp in July. I told him my husband was a Marine for 7 years and that he still speaks highly of the camaraderie. I said we’d lived in Hawaii, which elicited admiring sounds from the students. When I asked if he knew where he’d be stationed, J. said he won’t find out until after Parris Island, but he hopes that he’ll be sent to Iraq, because, he said, he’s heard Marines get $3,000 a day for being in a war zone.

While I am guessing he has the particulars wrong, I asked whether students felt this was right – after pointing out that it has long been Pentagon policy that soldiers on “hazardous duty” receive extra pay. A young woman sitting beside J., wearing an Army sweatshirt, said she thinks it’s only fair, and announced, “My baby daddy in Hawaii, he gets extra because there’s volcanoes and stuff over there.” (If this is obvious, I apologize, but I didn’t know until recently: a “baby daddy” is the father of a young woman’s baby.)

When I had recovered my power of speech, I turned to N. (the athlete who has a natural feel for the sound of poetry and has shown me some very beautiful, thoughtful pieces) and explained what we were talking about – he had just come in. He immediately said that if you volunteer to join the military, you know you’re going to be in danger, and you shouldn’t get extra money.

Another girl said she thought some kids she knows don’t think beyond the money when they hear they’re going to get thousands of dollars in bonuses. She pointed out that the money is no good when you are dead. The group concurred that death is a distinct possibility these days for a new military recruit. J. laughed, and said, “Yeah, I’m maybe going to die.” I literally had chills. Not one person in the room cited military service as a way to serve the country – only as a way to get money, and to travel.

By then all the students who were going to come had joined the circle – I think there were eight or nine today. I told them parts of our conversation were related to the topic at hand: lying to tell the truth in poems, as a way to express big ideas, deep emotions, or difficult subjects.

After sharing what I mean by poetic lies – imaginative alternatives to what our minds tell us is reality, told to plumb the depths of emotional truth, we had a conversation about the idea that some emotions defy the use of conventional language. Unfortunately, this week’s headlines provide the perfect example. Saying that the massacre at Virginia Tech was “awful,” or “tragic” doesn’t come anywhere close to telling the emotional truth. Ordinary language won’t capture it. We talked for a few minutes about the shooting. I asked if they could think of any other situations where they had to “lie to tell the truth” because of the emotion involved, and one girl said right away, “When I talk to my parents.”

We brought the conversation back to poetry and I shared some of my favorite poems that employ “wishes, lies and dreams.” You can find links to them at the workshop link above.

This time I read “Geometry,” by Rita Dove; “The Minister for Exams,” by Brian Patten; “God Says Yes to Me,” by Kaylin Haught; and “I Go Back to the House for a Book,” by Billy Collins.

As with the first workshop group, Haught’s poem caused the most vivid response. She addresses God as “she,” and “her,” and we talked about how that catches readers off guard. I asked whether they thought the poet was trying to provoke; none of the girls said yes, but a couple of the boys did. In the last group, it was a girl who was most shocked by the image of a female God. I told them about Desmond Tutu’s idea that God is neither male nor female as we humans conceive gender, but is instead perhaps beyond our understanding of identity.

“The Minister of Exams,” which I joked was my anti-standardization of education lecture of the week, also got some response – most of the kids agree with my view that high stakes tests are not an accurate measure of a person. A poem about a man working at minimum wage jobs because he failed his exams actually cuts a little too close to the bone at this school. They can easily put themselves in his place, and so far in both workshops, there have been kids who visibly squirmed as I read it.

The most popular poem of the day, however, was “I Go Back to the House for a Book,” one of my own all time favorite poems. N. and L. both really loved this one, and N. said that it reminded him of how we don’t always think about what we do, or about the choices we make. I said he’d hit on the core issue in human communication – so many of us speak or act without thinking through the consequences. We’re reactive, instead of contemplative. This is something I’ve thought about a fair bit lately, as I’m a novice student of mindfulness. Nick grasped it instantly. I’m not sure whether that’s what Collins was getting at, but it’s what his poem said to N.

This is one of the best parts of the workshops – reading poems aloud and seeing where they land, how they resonate, what sort of thoughts and responses they inspire. L. was reading ahead and asked about another poem in their handout packet, “For Mohammed Zeid, of Gaza, Age 15,” by Naomi Shihab Nye. If you’re not familiar with this one, here’s the link:

http://www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/poets/formohammedzeid.html

I explained that this poem deals with exposing lies more than telling lies, and that poets are often at the forefront of society’s response to popular mistruths. One famous example is Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” which you can find here:

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

Owen exposed the “old lie,” lifted from a poem itself (one of Horace’s odes) that Britain’s WWI soldiers were somehow making a glorious sacrifice for their country. I brought it up and immediately wished I hadn’t, since they didn’t have the poem in front of them, and I now had to explain what I was talking about! And I have to admit, the way I discussed this poem was shaped by the earlier talk of J.’s potential deployment to Iraq.

What I pointed out was that Owen was able, through his poetry, to expose the horror of poison gas, and to confront the terror of the trenches, juxtaposed with patriotic propaganda back home, which was being used to encourage young men to volunteer for the front. His poem was a response to those in Britain who claimed the soldiers’ sacrifice was glorious. Owen’s experience of trench warfare showed him that war was not glorious. I explained how close the trenches were to each other, and how mustard gas was not something soldiers in earlier wars had faced.

In Nye’s poem, she speaks the truth about the misnomer, “stray bullet” – which is not stray in any sense we normally mean when we use that word. For the victim of her poem’s title, it was not stray at all. So poets can expose what others try to tell their own poetic lies about.

Next we turned to the easel paper and worked on a collective emotions wordpool. I asked that if they think about opposing forces in selecting their words, to help them get into the creative tension such words can provide. Here’s their wordpool:

emotions arrogant
sad confused
passionate smooth
courageous bashful
hate unified/unity
humility/humble bouncy
outgoing stiff
aggravated desirable
angry whack
nauseous

I laid out several natural items I’d brought in to help the group form interesting imagery to use with the emotions wordpool, including shells, rocks, a small piece of driftwood, and a gum tree seed ball. More of the teens read their poems aloud, or asked me to read them aloud, than ever before with this workshop group. Whether it was the circle or the way we came together in our discussions today, I can’t say, but I’ll stay with the circle for next week.

Here are several poems from the group:

L. wrote:

The emotions in the rock is like a muggy lake,
As transparent as the mud, and outgoing as the everyday spirits.
The smooth surface of the rock, but stiff as a stick.

J. wrote:

slow, fast, run, skip, hop
jump, trot, roll, ride
fly, jog, hitchhike
it doesn’t matter how
I get there I just
want to go home

N. wrote:

Emotions and confusion

emotions are sad
emotions are passionate
emotion is confusion to the mind of one
unity and humbleness is what I desire
but emotions confuse

Js. wrote:

Confused in a world where emotions
are kept secret. Hate has turned
into love but sad all at once
passionate, humble people in
a world so stiff some
wonder if they should give
or give in or give up.
Form a life of forgiveness
trust, unity and always
look up.

D. wrote:

My emotions is going crazy like I’m angry
but I’m not angry why people won’t believe me. Only thing I need
is somebody to help me. Once you get me started I’ll
get a lil puppy. Please forgive me for being so smooth
that’s how I was raise up to never lose my cool.

We talked briefly about a reading or anthology but I sense it’s too close to the end of the school year (they get out in about a month) to interest them in a project.

After most students filed out, and I was talking to the principal about next week’s schedule, N. came back and asked me to read a poem he’d written the night before in his writing journal. He said it was written in anger, so he had to decipher a couple of words for me. It was perfect for the topic of the day – reaching beyond ordinary language to tap deep emotional truth. I had no idea he was experiencing such turbulence inside, although he was a little quieter today.

N. said that when I read the Collins poem he realized he had been trying to say the same thing. His poem was very angry and raw, and he was very hard on himself in it. When I finished reading, he said he’d had trouble in 10th and 11th grade and he was afraid now that he was going on that same path, and the poem was about his frustration. He plays baseball, but wasn’t allowed to play during those years, I gathered because of his grades. Before the workshop he was trying to finish an email to a reporter who wants to interview him about this.

I told him that the very fact of recognizing that he’s on a path at all, thinking about his life and choices, and writing about it all was something most people don’t do, and that I was very glad he’d shared the poem and the concerns with me. I encouraged him to keep writing and to continue to think and that perhaps those things would help him when he felt troubled. I didn’t write the poem down, it seemed too personal, but one line struck me because he repeated it several times, “Why am I the boy I am?”

I also told N., in all sincerity, that I am glad he is the boy he is, and I enjoy his presence in the workshop and truly hope poetry will be something he can take with him and make a part of himself. G. broke the tension then (N. shared all of this with G. & K. beside me) when he said, “Just don’t play for the Yankees.” N. immediately broke into the first real smile I’d seen from him today and said, “Nah, I hate the Yankees.”

Next week, we take a whirlwind tour of poetic forms and revisit a topic dear to my heart – contemporary haiku.

Second round of workshops, week 3: the sound of poetry

First of all, if you’re following along with the workshops, you might have noticed that this is only the 3rd time I’ve met with this second group, but I’m on the 4th week’s topic. Due to the delays from the March 1 tornado and Spring Break, I condensed workshops 2 & 3, both on imagery, into one session last time. So for quotes, an overview of what I covered, and a list of poems I handed out or read in the workshop, visit the poembound entry called “Fourth week of workshops: the sound of poetry,” which you can find here:

https://poembound.wordpress.com/2007/02/02/fourth-week-of-plc-workshops/

I had eleven teens in the workshop today, and two were from the first group but had missed this session and wanted to make it up. So only 9 of the 15 kids from the second workshop group were there, and some have missed two weeks in a row. As I worried in the last poembound entry, I’m not connecting as well with this group, and they’re not as connected with each other.

Actually, I’m dealing with the classic school dynamic – there’s a small group of students who seem to be a group within the group, and then a lot of kids who come in alone and sit alone. In the last workshop series, the whole group seemed to interact together better. For a workshop that’s important, but I don’t really think it’s something I can influence very much, beyond laying the basic ground rules of civility and kindness.

When I tried to get everyone’s attention and get started today, the “group within a group” didn’t quiet down. I just plowed ahead and in a few moments they settled down. Not a terrific way to start.

I explained that while the entire range of sound tools a poet has at her disposal to shape the sound of a poem is not going to come into play in every poem, they should still know all the tools available. So we went over sound patterns, like alliteration, euphony, and assonance; rhyme and near rhyme; repetition, including refrains and anaphora; and rhythm (whether part of a pattern or not) and meter. I had to move pretty quickly to get through all of these concepts and still have time to read example poems aloud and leave plenty of writing time, so I asked them to call out questions if they had any.

Several times as I explained something or read a short excerpt of a poem as an example, someone laughed. I never figured out if it was something in my presentation, something the group within a group was talking about beneath the current of the workshop, or something my kids were doing that was funny (they sat behind me today). Whatever the cause, it was discouraging.

To discuss the importance of sound in poetry, I reminded them that this is an ancient tradition that was sung or chanted in its earliest forms. I asked if anyone knew of a contemporary example of an art form that is comparable to early oral poetry. As I’d hoped, one boy brought up rap. I agreed and said that any popular song types do some of the same things for our modern culture that oral poetry did for its time (like it or not) – they tell a culture’s stories, deal with universal human experiences and emotions, etc. – and that the tools of rhythm and rhyme are clear to see in these art forms.

To explain poetic meter and introduce the idea of rhyme scheme, I used good old “Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare, which begins, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Since I’d read it in our last session before Spring Break, I knew it was familiar. Before the workshop, I wrote it out on easel paper and marked the scansion (metrical pattern) for the first two lines, and then noted the rhyme scheme in the margin.

When I told the class about iambic pentameter, and we clapped or tapped it out, they quickly noted the sound of a human heartbeat. It’s a cool connection to make — I like seeing the looks on their faces when they realize what they hear. Gregory associates it with the coconuts in Monty Python that are supposed to sound like hoof beats. To each his own!

I briefly discussed rhyme scheme, because I learned in the first round of workshops that at least in my alternative high school sample, students today don’t seem familiar with this idea, and when we talk about forms, I need them to at least know what I’m talking about, or the villanelle won’t make any sense.

I also cautioned them that outside of formal poetry, more contemporary poetry than not is unrhymed, or uses more subtle sound patterns, like near rhyme, alliteration, etc. So far I hadn’t noticed the tendency to arrange all their stanzas in song lyric form that occurred so often with the first group, so I wanted to head that off.

After our whirlwind tour of sound patterns and tools, I read examples. I added one poem this time, “Night Song,” by Lisel Mueller. There doesn’t seem to be a copy online that doesn’t have a typo. It’s a very lovely poem, and seemed to me one that would resonate with teenagers. Even better, Mueller very effectively uses anaphora and many of the other sound tools we’d been discussing.

The other poems I read aloud were “Samurai Song,” by Robert Pinsky; “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost; an excerpt from “The Raven,” by Edgar Allen Poe; “We Real Cool,” by Gwendolyn Brooks; “My People,” by Langston Hughes; and “Let Evening Come,” by Jane Kenyon. For links, see the earlier sound of poetry workshop entry (at the link above).

With the sounds of these masterful poems swirling in our brains, I asked the group to collaborate on a sound wordpool. The only criteria was that any word they suggested had to be one they liked the sound of. Here’s their wordpool:

insane depressing whump rat
ring idiot nose feelings
chain love hatred peace
more care bears tie dye rock star
sex (gender) hallelujah skip fear
fold ok yeah

I asked them to copy the wordpool into their journals and add any of their own sound words, and spend the remaining time working on a poem.

A college professor friend of mine told me after my first workshop that if every kid wrote something, I was a success. So by that measure, I had a good workshop, because they did settle down and every person wrote something. Five read aloud today, which was a record for this group. I copied down some lines that struck me:

“A ring in my nose, a hole in my heart.”
From a poem by a girl from the first workshop group who sat in today, who has a new nose ring and was taking a lot of ribbing about it earlier in the workshop.

“When I’m sad, I’m strong. When I’m happy, I’m strong.”
Written by a girl who is pregnant.

“Does my gender offend you?”
This poem went on to use the wordpool to address one of the oldest human issues: how women are viewed and treated by the culture at large. It’s by the same girl who wrote the poem “Visions of Earth” in the last workshop, two weeks ago.

I talked a little about editing ideas, and asked them to think about a final project, perhaps a workshop anthology. I mentioned that the first group is organizing a reading. I didn’t get a lot of reaction, so I’m not sure which way this group will go in terms of a project.

As the students were leaving, one young man who had been sitting alone told another he should show me his poem. He did, and it was a very thoughtful, honest, and raw-edged piece. I said I’d noticed the two of them writing and writing, and they both nodded. The boy who showed me his work smiled and said firmly,“Yeah, I pay attention.”

I wonder how many times in his life he’s felt the need to point that out, or how many people look at his skin color, wardrobe, and demeanor and assume he’s not serious about classes? Before you brand me a bleeding heart, think of how many people have commented publicly on the fact that Barack Obama sounds thoughtful or articulate. To my knowledge, this hasn’t even come up in media coverage or commentary about any other presidential candidate.

True story: a couple of African American women who work at our public library told a friend of mine who also works there that they were certain Obama is from another country, because he doesn’t sound American. They were serious. Others who heard the conversation agreed, even after my friend googled his biography (never mind that it didn’t occur to these people that a foreign born citizen can’t run for president). This is the community in which my serious young poet lives.

I didn’t get a chance to copy down his poem, but it was about the frivolity of the wordpool, the fact that words like “rat” and “care bears” are uncool, and how he felt like throwing the journal page in the toilet after he copied down these silly words. He ended with the sentiment that even though the workshop got on his nerves today, no one said he has to be a poet. His final line alluded to his inner rapper, and the whole poem used many of the sound techniques we’d gone over.

I told him that he was dead on about care bears, and that rapping and poetry writing are not so far apart, and I thanked him for showing me his poem. Despite the frustrations of the giggling and whispering, the way the wordpool ended up being about predictable or stale word choices (peace and hate, love and hatred, etc.) rather than sounds, I realized as I thought over today’s workshop that some of the kids are “getting it,” or are writing in new ways, and that’s enough.

Actually, I like to think it wasn’t the workshop itself that got on this boy’s nerves, but that he was bothered by the group within the group, which generated most of the wordpool and chatted without regard for the others. Upon reflection, I think one of the problems with the group dynamic this time is that the principal told me she and her staff had decided which kids to “sign up for poetry,” whereas the first group self-selected based on their interest in writing.

You can lead kids to a new idea or a genre, give them a journal, and ask them to write, but you can’t make them like it or participate enthusiastically. Several of the kids in this group have lost their journals – the journals I drove about 45 miles away to purchase, that we talked about carrying around so they could collect poetic raw material. In the first workshop group, I had one person lose a journal, and she was upset about it and very careful with the second one.

Several of the kids in the first group showed me poems or other writing they’d done between sessions. Many of the kids in this group simply doesn’t care about poetry and writing enough to make it a regular habit. They’re there because they need some language arts credit, and they were told what time to show up. I think if you asked them, most would say it was a decent way to spend an hour – they don’t resent being there, or hate it. But they don’t love it either.

One reason my family embraces autonomous education is our deep belief that people who are self-motivated truly learn, while externally motivated students go through the motions. Although students who are controlled and directed by external forces and influences may learn something, they don’t love either the process or the result as whole-heartedly, and they don’t retain the learning because they don’t own it.

Think back to your own schooling – do you remember the things you didn’t really care about? Most of us forget whatever we had to learn after the test, but easily remember things we learned ourselves because we wanted to know.

It’s an important but very challenging concept – I know and believe in the freedom to learn independently, but in everyday practice, I often think of something I think my kids should hear or know or learn, and I have to stop my deeply schooled mind from pushing external controls on their autodidactic pursuits. I can tell them about, expose them to, and encourage them to explore further what I find to be interesting or important ideas, but they will each ultimately decide what is important and interesting in their own minds.

Next week, join poembound as we explore themes of “Wishes, Lies, and Dreams,” inspired by the book of the same name by Kenneth Koch.

Second round of workshops, week 2: Imagery

This week’s poembound workshop met at a different day and time, because the principal called and told me she didn’t think there’d be many kids at school on Friday, the day before spring break, and the day after graduation exams. Besides the low projected attendance, Friday is a planned service day for students to work towards the community service requirement for graduation.

Because of the various delays we’ve had, I combined both imagery workshops from the first series – figurative and literal – into one week’s session. I got there early to be sure I had plenty of time to get the handouts copied and to get set up, with my papers, books, and easel ready to go. Five minutes before we were to begin, there were only 4 kids in the room. I wandered the halls trying to round up the rest; it turned out only 8 attended altogether, of the 15 who came to the first session last week.

As I waited to begin, I chatted about testing with the students who had come in. I was honest and frank about what I think of standardized tests – useless, beneficial only to administrators, test publishers, and education bureaucrats, and completely non-representative of the actual value of a person’s true education, knowledge, or skills. They agreed but seemed amazed that an adult, and one who was there in the role of “teacher,” would openly espouse such heretical views about tests they’ve been told are for their own good. I said it seemed better to be open about my views so they knew where I was coming from. I hope my candid attitude will also foster openness in the workshop.

One girl asked why my kids were there – I realized later that I didn’t introduce them last week because they were both getting over being sick and were home with S. I explained we homeschool, and she said she had homeschooled too, but that when she came back to school (for reasons she didn’t explain), the attendance forms her family filed were lost, so she didn’t get credit for the two years she homeschooled.

A family files the forms required by law, but because the school loses the records, the kid gets a raw deal, and is made to believe her learning was not valid – that’s fair? Schools routinely “lose” homeschoolers’ attendance records in Georgia; people post to email lists every year about trying to get a teen’s drivers’ license and discovering the school didn’t keep any of the records they’d filed. But the burden of proof falls to the homeschool family, not the schools. Two years of a child’s life, and she’s told they “don’t count.” Her view was that homeschooling had been bad for her, because it set her back – she didn’t see that it was the school’s dismissive attitude of her family’s choice, not the homeschooling, which hurt her.

I can’t even begin to say how wrong that is, and how unacceptable I think it is for schools to act with such hostility and suspicion towards homeschooling. Thankfully that’s not the case everywhere, and I don’t know the entire story with this girl’s circumstances. The principal I work with has told me she admires what I am doing for my children – which is kind of her, but still illustrates that she probably has very little idea of what we do, because they do as much or more for themselves as I do, educationally speaking. I’ll grant that we make sacrifices as a family in order for me to be physically home with them all day, but they are primarily responsible for their own learning and I am just a companion on the journey. At least she is not telling them or me that we’re wasting our time. She has enough confidence that her school is helping her students, I guess, that I don’t seem like a threat. And, she is just a genuinely nice person.

But we are a threat, as a group – homeschoolers routinely do as well or better (and around here, almost any alternative is consistently better than the average public school classroom – even my local teacher friends agree with that) than schooled kids when measured by society’s standards, even those of us who don’t care to apply those “one size fits all” standards in our home education life. We autonomous learners don’t have the credentials that the education industry would like society at large to believe are necessary for “quality,” “standards-based” education, and that’s scary to some professional educators – how can we do so well without them?

I am thankful every time I set foot in the school, and so are my kids, that we can learn in freedom. My kids are two of the most fascinating people I know, with varied interests, and a wide perspective on the world. Their viewpoints and knowledge aren’t packaged by some educrat – they see the world as full of possibilities and they know they can learn whatever they want. Adults, to them, are people who can help them get the knowledge they seek, or interesting friends, or fellow volunteers, not authorities who can deny their requests, who label them, or who judge them for not measuring up in some way.

I witness that dynamic at the alternative high school every week – there is always some student in a fervent conversation with a staff member over something the student is perceived to have done or not done. One of the reasons we unschool is that I admired a family I met when my children were very young for their lack of that very struggle between adults and adolescents – they had no “us vs. them” feelings, it was we are all learning together, working on our goals, supporting each other.

The students I’ve met so far have little confidence in their own knowledge or abilities, and many of them have been told by some adult in their lives that this is their last chance, or that they’d better listen and wise up. You may recall that one boy last week wrote: “success is such a stress.” Success? Getting a diploma, when you have almost no practical knowledge of life in the real world, little idea of what to do on your own or even what you like to do or how to go about pursuing your dreams (if they haven’t all shriveled up like a raisin in the sun . . . more on that in a bit), and you’ve been labeled as a difficult student, a discipline problem, or in this case, an emotionally disabled person – no wonder he’s stressed.

Many people tell me that they feel homeschooled kids aren’t in the “real world.” This is so ridiculous I can barely fathom it – my kids are with me as I go about living, shopping, banking, making decisions, comparing choices, working, taking care of my needs and theirs, acting as a productive, responsible member of my community, as well as learning in real situations. When we travel somewhere, we learn about it right then and there; when we want to do something like have the car repaired or plant a garden, we do the research we need to do to make good choices; so what they learn is not a bunch of disembodied facts, it’s practical stuff they need or want to know. They also know a greater variety of people – people of all ages, from all kinds of backgrounds, who do all kinds of work. Which is the real world: the place where students are labeled, sorted, ruled by bells and standardized, segmented facts pieced out and then regurgitated back on high stakes tests, or the actual living, breathing world of human beings going about living and working and learning?

I wanted to tell the students all of this, but it’s tough to tell people who are trapped in a system they have been made to believe is their only hope for a productive future that it lies to them to serve itself, so I danced around the edges, and tried to be both honest and gentle. I focused on the fact that tests shouldn’t make or break a person, which is a safe thing to talk about because many teachers are also exasperated by standardized testing and the way it stifles their teaching things of substance so that the focus can be on raising test scores, which satisfies administrators and government officials who hold the purse strings. And I told the former homeschooler I was sorry the school had made it hard for her. So, with my views on standardized testing aired, my thoughts on education eluded to, and the students intrigued by this strange adult who felt comfortable discussing how wrong it seemed to her to judge people’s lives and work in such a way, the rest of the group trickled in and we began.

I followed the same plan for the workshops as the earlier posts called “Workshops, week 2 : figurative language:”

https://poembound.wordpress.com/2007/01/19/plc-poetry-workshops-week-2/

and “Workshops, week 3: imagery:”

https://poembound.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/plc-workshops-week-three/

– you can see those blog entries for quotes from The Discovery of Poetry and Poemcrazy, and links to the poems I shared with students. I read some poems aloud, and spent time talking to the students about looking at the world through poetic eyes – using a viewfinder or their two hands to frame a view and then writing about the images they spot, listening to conversations for figurative language, thinking about the way we naturally compare things, defining things in terms of what we already know.

One poem I read was “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175884

We talked about how powerful it is to imagine a deferred dream festering, shriveling, exploding – and the conversation came back to school again. I said that Hughes often wrote about getting through the hoops we all have to jump through in life, the systems we have to deal with, without losing the dreams and hopes we all have. I asked if that didn’t seem familiar – school is a system you have to get through in order to reach your dream of whatever it is you really want to do in life. A few heads nodded.

One of the girls who came in after our earlier conversation on testing asked about my kids. I explained again that they don’t go to school. The group asked more questions about this and I told them that I don’t ever want my children to think of learning as something that happens during certain hours in a particular building according to some plan that someone who will never even know them as individual human beings has devised in order to accommodate the system that imparts the curriculum, not the consumers of that curriculum; rather, I hope they see that life and learning are one and the same. I said that school tells you what to learn and when to learn it, and usually also how, and that our philosophy was to learn in ways that made sense to the kids and explore what they are interested in. The whole idea seemed to amaze the group. Some of them seemed horrified that we don’t stop for the summer, others seemed amazed that I could say that the order of learning things imposed by school isn’t a part of our lives.

After that aside, we got into the practical portion of the workshop. I asked them to take some “tell” examples I had written on the easel paper and write “show” versions – we’d explored some examples of showing the reader strong images rather than just telling what you see, and now I asked them to try it. It was hard to get them to call out ideas – as I said last week, this group is more reticent than my first workshop group. Possibly, they were still unsure of what to make of me.

After an awkward silence, I did the first example myself, to get them started. That seemed to help – again I realized that many of these kids have never been asked to think for themselves or expected to “get” an idea the first time, without being walked through things, held by the hand, led through the work. More than one of the students today asked me “is this right?” I told them there is no right or wrong in my workshop – more on that in a moment – but this seemed unbelievable to them.

Here are two ways to “show” that they came up with, after my example:

tell: A woman crossed the street.
show: Her pumps trampled across the road – click, clack, shuffle – as a driver honked.

tell: It was raining.
show: There was a drip drop sound on the roof.

Next I passed out a pile of photos from old issues of National Geographic. I asked them to look at a photo, write, “I see” in their journals and describe the image literally, to make their words become “the thing itself, created by my soul a second time,” in the words of Juan Ramón Jiménez (The Discovery of Poetry, p. 72). Then, I asked them to write “it looks like” and then describe the same photo, this time using figurative language. I only gave them a few minutes to finish, explaining I wanted their language to be spontaneous and fresh.

Finally, I asked them to use one of the two image worksheets in their handout packets, one from Discovery of Poetry and one from The Practice of Poetry. We were running out of time, so I suggested they just generate one or two images using the prompts, and then try to write a short poem using either their National Geographic image or the worksheet images.

Despite the brief time remaining before they had to, as my friend L., a teacher here, told them, “get back to the grind,” several of the students asked me to read their work, and I was universally impressed by the way they applied themselves seriously to their work. The giggling and whispering faded away and everyone wrote. Several of them wrote about the magazine photos. One boy wrote from Frances Mayes’ prompt: “Days pass like . . .” (The Discovery of Poetry, p. 96), and his poem was about everyday frustrations.

This young man is an athlete and identifies himself that way, frequently jokes around, and he’d written a really lovely, sensitive poem. He knew it was well done, too, because he sort of pumped his fist when he finished, and asked me to come over and read it. He used a very natural and effective form, beginning and ending with the same line, and I pointed out how beautifully he’d given the piece a cyclical resonance with that technique. He looked baffled, with an expression that said, “I did all that?”

Only two teens read work aloud. Here are those two, which I copied down:

I see a face.
It looks like Buddha, it says doom.
Brown, frantic big eyes, sharp teeth, spaced eyebrows.
King of the jungle, wild thornberries.

There is a section in the front of National Geographic called “Visions of Earth,” and this phrase is printed on a page I’d brought in with an aerial photo of a North African sand storm, which prompted one student to write:

Visions of Earth

I see the universe expanding, people migrating,
I see nations progressing. I
see races communicating and trusting
each other’s faith.
I see religion converting,
people dancing to rhythms.

After the first girl read her face poem, the second said, “I did this wrong.” I assured her there was no wrong way to do things in the poembound workshops, and encouraged her to share what she’d written about “visions of earth,” so I could reassure her that it wasn’t “wrong.” After she read, the girl next to her said, “there’s nothing but dirt in this photo, you didn’t see that stuff.”

I jumped in and argued that on the contrary, she had used a poet’s eye to really see, beyond the literal image. She’d had a visit from what Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge calls “the image angel,”(Poemcrazy p.149-153) a connection between the concrete world around us and the imagination. Not anywhere near “wrong” – I told the group I’d like to live in the world she saw in that image. Her poem is one of hope, and her view of the world being interconnected was perfect for the storm photo, because the caption explained that southern Europe was covered in the dust of the African storm. We are interconnected, and her poem touched that truth.

Here’s another poem from today’s workshop:

The river flows like the
voice of a sweet child. The
wind is roaring like a lion in a
jungle. Moments of silence
after a long, noisy day that
anyone, anything, would sleep
all day. But when the day is
over, all is back the same.

Several students wanted my feedback and showed me poems they wrote, or images they were working on. Here’s an image from a magazine photo by another of the boys in the group:

The island stretches out from
a coast like a rubber band,
you pop it, it comes back.

He said the photo made him think of how a person would be drawn back to the island again and again.

Because the group had been pretty reserved with me to that point, I was relieved and pleased to see how they dove into the imagery exercises, and also sought my feedback. They really thought about what they were seeing and tried to see things in new ways. I thanked them for tapping into their creative energy after the mind sapping tests in the morning and the crunch they are all in before spring break, with the school year winding down. School lets out here in mid-May, and the principal and other staff have alluded several times to the last minute rush of trying to ensure everyone has the credits they need in these final few weeks. I asked the group to try to notice images and figurative language and capture it in their journals in the next two weeks, and suggested they might even try journaling their dreams when they wake up.

Last week I wasn’t sure I was reaching them, but today they began to open up to what’s possible in their own writing, and it felt like we really were poembound. I sincerely wish spring break wasn’t about to disrupt our workshops, but when we come back together in two weeks, we’ll be talking about the sound of poetry.

Second round of poetry workshops, week 1: Why poetry?

After several delays, I started a new round of workshops today at an alternative public high school in my town. There were fifteen kids, many of them seniors, in the new group. I’m getting over a very bad cold/sinus infection and had a fairly low energy level, so I wasn’t sure how it would go.

I used the same material as in my earlier post for the first group, called “First week of workshops: gathering raw material,” so if you want to see the poems and quotes, refer to that, here:

https://poembound.wordpress.com/2007/01/12/poembound/

As I had with the first class, I told them this week was about warming up to poetry, freeing them to play with words and experiment, and getting comfortable.

After going over what I hoped they’d do with the workshop – try to keep a journal, read and write daily, be open to new ideas and to their own writing, write first drafts freely without worrying about what the result would be like, etc. – we talked about why poetry exists, and what makes poetry necessary. I read quotes from The Discovery of Poetry and Poemcrazy and read them poems by Billy Collins, Robert Hass, and Don Paterson.

We talked about creating wordpools, and I asked them to toss out words. Their wordpool, to me, reflects the pressure they are feeling as they try to get through the graduation exam and as their final weeks of school draw to a close:

singing
survive
dark
escape
senior
crazy
success
daddy
arrogant
wigwam
fantastic
fiend

I asked them to put words together in any way to make phrases we could use to collaborate on a class poem.

They were slow in responding – there didn’t seem to be much group camaraderie, although there were some kids who seemed friendly in pairs or small groups. With some coaxing and help, we came up with:

escaping is my destiny
I’m singing my survival
success is such a stress
alone I will survive
the fantastic fiendish wigwam
of dark testing

One girl kept saying things like “I just don’t get poetry,” and “I’m no good at this.” I tried to reassure the who group that if they read something that didn’t make sense, they could actually allow that – they don’t have to “get” it the first or even the second or third time, they can simply let the words rest in their minds and take what they can from a poem, without working at understanding. I read from Poemcrazy about poems taking us “beyond sense.” (Poemcrazy, p. 125), and I emphasized that they can write in their journals without trying to get “right” answers – that in fact there are no right answers in the poetry workshops.

Next I went around with my box of word tickets and asked them to take a small handful and copy words into their journals to make wordpools, then play with the words until they made small poems. I reminded them this was an exercise in wordplay, not a time to over think or analyze, and asked them to avoid trying to rhyme, since that forces word choices they otherwise might not make.

There was a lot of talking; it seems to be very hard for teens to work silently, and to leave each other alone. They took a long time to write and play with the tickets, and I tried working with some tickets myself to keep from rushing them.

No one had comments or questions, and no one wanted to read a poem out loud. I had already announced that no one would have to read, and it was up to them, but I was sure someone would want to – there were a couple of kids in the first workshops who were always just itching to read. One girl did show me what she’d written, and then when I responded positively, said I could read her poem out loud.

Here’s the last line: “I won’t accept the darkness, but I have a passion for the light.”

Her poem was about feeling she’s on the edge of a mountain, with no help, trying to hang on without falling.

While no one else wanted to read aloud, they all wrote in their journals. The principal told me at the end of the session that at last night’s parents’ night, several kids from the first set of workshops read poems aloud. She said that almost none of the kids in this new group has ever had any exposure to poetry. They’re just weeks from graduating, and they’ve never had any poetry? She was telling me not to be discouraged if they didn’t seem very enthusiastic. I wouldn’t say they were unenthused, since they all participated, but they seemed unsure of themselves – will any of them see themselves as poets in a few weeks?

Because of delays, and hopes for the group to write enough poems that some of them feel comfortable participating in the school’s poetry reading in May, I am planning to work two weeks’ worth of imagery workshops into one next week. I want to have an open week at the end for revising and editing.

Stay tuned for new workshops

This week’s planned workshop was once again delayed. The principal called and asked me to postpone until next week, because of scheduling conflicts. So, until next Friday, thanks for reading poembound!

Workshops, week seven: revision and wrap up, post-tornado

Because of the tornadoes, I didn’t meet with my workshop students last week. This was supposed to be my first week with a new group; instead, I met today with 11 of the 15 teens in the first group to discuss revision and talk about their plans for their final projects.

First, we talked about the tornadoes and how everyone is doing. Many students and staff at the school are among those impacted by the storm. The administrative assistant told me she only had a little damage. The principal later explained that in fact, she has drywall damage, and a high deductible on her insurance, and can’t afford the repairs. One student lives in the neighborhood I have mentioned in my other blog entries, just beyond the hospital. She is living in the house with her mother, without windows. The landlord, according to the principal, is not helping. Another staff member said the family has somewhere else to stay but the mother won’t leave, since the house is open to weather and people.

A couple of my students were there when the president visited. One student, who is white, said she was pretty sure he just wanted to be photographed with black people because of Kanye West’s accusation, after Hurricane Katrina, that the president doesn’t care about black people. She said she noticed him making sure to take photos with blacks. An African American student agreed with her but was still proud to have met the president. Some of the students agreed when we talked about my son’s observations –he does not agree with many things the administration has done, but was able to set that aside and respect President Bush’s compassion.

The students agreed that it would be hard for anyone not to be moved by the devastation, but on the whole, they felt that while it’s good to respect someone for their efforts, the president couldn’t actually feel their pain. The student who told about the photo ops said “He claimed what he saw was heavy on his heart, but if he had a tornado, he wouldn’t be dealing with this.” Others chimed in, “Yeah, he wouldn’t have plastic over his windows,” and similar comments. The kids seemed to feel that while it was all very nice to come and say how sorry he was for our losses, it wouldn’t make any difference.

I asked, after the principal mentioned that they should be writing lots of poems about all of this, whether anyone had in fact written something during the last week that they might want to share with the group. No one had a tornado poem to share, although at least one person said she was working on something related to the storm.

Sensing that the principal wanted us to get back on track, I handed out a piece on revising by Jeffrey Ethan Lee, which I found on his website:

http://www.unco.edu/poetry/jeffrey.lee/html/syllabi/REDFLAGS.htm

We went over the main points he makes, and I especially cautioned them against forced rhyme, since so many poems in the workshop have had a kind of song lyric aesthetic, and against cliché and over generalization. Lee also warns his students about trite love poems.

I explained what some of the terms on Lee’s handout mean, like archaic language. There was lots of energy in the room today, and I felt like they were with me . . .

Then I asked if anyone had any poems they’d been working on or had already revised that they wanted to share. Two students were eager to read. The first poem, written by a girl who hasn’t read much of her work so far, was a love poem. Another student even asked if it was dedicated to her boyfriend, and she confirmed this. She was very emotional as she read; I wasn’t comfortable pointing out that this was just the kind of thing that defines cliché, since she was nearly in tears.

T., one of the most prolific writers, who always has several new poems to show me, asked me to read his “The Meaning of Poetry” to the group. It’s a long list poem, with all the lines starting with “Poetry is.” He put a couple of definitions of poetry from the Internet at the top as his epigraph. Here are some excerpts from his poem:

“Poetry is the arc and swish through the hoop of a far flung basketball in that last second effort to win.”

“Poetry is a song in my heart that longs to be heard.”

“Poetry is the mood I am in.”

“Poetry is the real person I am.”

Although the poem as a whole did several of the things that Lee warns students about in his revision advice, T. has come a long way from his first workshop writing two months ago, when everything rhymed and there wasn’t much imagery. I was impressed with the effort, and I am really struck by the idea that he now sees poetry as the real person he is. How could I ask for anything more from the workshops, than to find out that one of my students feels that way? And the first image is certainly perfect for March madness, not to mention an apt description. Poetry really is an arc and swish, in many ways.

I asked if there were any questions about revision, and one student asked, “How do you know where to start, since you wrote the poem and obviously, you liked it that way when you wrote it?” I suggested that distance was a good way to start – set the poem aside for a couple of days or even a week, and then try to look at it from a new perspective. We also talked about reading a poem aloud to listen for awkward words, forced rhyme, rhythmic problems, etc. I encouraged them to read each other’s work; that said, we also talked about how hard it is to take and give criticism. I also said to look for “pet” words that they use over and over.

M., who has taken over the editing of the group’s anthology after the original editor took a job that conflicts with the workshop time, said she knows she uses “soul” all the time. We talked about looking for that kind of pattern and replacing overused words here and there, saving the favorite word for places where nothing else works, or where it is especially effective.

I also pointed out that it’s natural to have a favorite word or phrase, and told a story I once read about Maxine Kumin being surprised when a student pointed out how often she used a particular word. But then I joked that if you’re a “rock star” poet like Ms. Kumin, you can do that, but until then, try to watch for overused words. I also pointed out that revisions aren’t permanent. I told the student who’d asked the question about where to begin to try rewriting and then holding the two drafts side-by-side and deciding which version was stronger and truer for her.

I also told the group about a submission I’d sent last week which was rejected with some rather curt comments only a few hours later; I re-submitted the poems after reading them over and deciding they were saying what I wanted them to, and the second editor accepted two of the poems later in the week. If you feel in your gut that the poem is good, don’t give up. They asked me how much I get paid and were dismayed when I said that often, I just get a copy of the journal where the poem is published.

The rest of our time this morning went to discussing their plans for the anthology and the reading, which are the workshop group’s final projects. They have made a lot of progress already, and M. is definitely organized. March 22 is the school’s spring parents’ night, and they’ll be reading some poems. The final reading, which will include the kids in the second series of workshops, will be in early May, just before school lets out.

M. already had a folder full of poems she’d collected for the anthology, and some preliminary plans in place for the reading. She’s not only editing, but keeping everyone on deadline and leading the discussion of how they’ll present the reading. I’m a little nervous about the fact that we hadn’t finished discussing revision and she’s already got people’s final drafts, but I also know it’s not my anthology, it’s theirs. Also, as the workshop today showed me, I can tell them what to look out for as they edit, but if they love their own words, they’re not going to change them.

My goal in leading these workshops was to get the kids thinking about poetry, read good poems with them, and give them the tools to write. Some of them have never loved any schoolwork they’ve done before, so I think it’s ok if they love their own poems. The process is more important than the product, as a sign on my desk, inspired by one of my favorite writing books, reminds me daily. (The book is Take Joy by Jane Yolen.)

We called the principal back in to get their project schedule approved. It turns out that next Friday is a student holiday, again! But I’ve got approval to start the new workshops series on Thursday so that we don’t lose another week. I asked the group to encourage their peers to take the next series of workshops. The principal pointed out that there’s plenty of interest . . . because they’ll get English credit, which they need to graduate. The group did thank me, and I invited them to come sit in on any workshops they missed. M. asked to take my picture on her phone, to show her family! She joked, “See, you’re a rock star poet, too.” God, these kids, teenagers sent to this school as a last resort, many of them with rougher lives than most people will ever have, are amazingly kind and sweet, even innocent in some ways.

All things considered, it was a good day. Many of the students are participating in post-tornado volunteer work – they are working at an aid distribution point at the fairgrounds, helping to feed firefighters who are in town to help, etc. But most of them took time to attend this wrap up session, so I am glad of that.

Next week, check back for the first workshop, “Gathering Raw Material,” with a new group of teens. I’m excited to begin, and I hope you’ll join me in following their journey, poembound.

Tuesday after the tornado

First of all, thanks to all of you who have called or emailed to tell me my blog or photosite update was helpful to you. Some of you have shared this information with other people — please do, since we continue to hear that in most areas, the news cycle has moved on.

Some news I learned today:

The hospital, which will be closed for an indeterminate amount of time, referred to only as “months,” has announced they are not laying off employees, as early reports hinted. This is a huge relief for the employees, as well as local government, which is already reeling from the loss of about 350 jobs only recently.

Many businesses are already reopening in temporary locations, including our family doctor, who moved into an after hours medical care facility. I read an interview with his partner, which said they were all set to move into a new 15,000 square foot facilty; both their current office and the new space were destroyed. According to a local TV station’s website, all but four local doctors have temporary office space somewhere in town. An accounting firm moved into a vacant church. Some other businesses have set up tents in their parking lots. But dozens of other businesses are still working out what to do, and initial reports state that hundreds of people will lose their jobs, at least temporarily. The Georgia Department of Labor set up an emergency center to start taking claims yesterday.

The Red Cross has announced that of the 500+ homes that are damaged, 173 were “destroyed” and 198 were “heavily damaged” — that’s 371 homes in unlivable condition.

Georgia Public Broadcasting did a piece I heard on the way to soccer practice that said the statewide damage from the storms and tornadoes was $135 million, and may possibly be the costliest insurance payout in state history. They stated that the “bulk” of the damage cost was in our town; the AP reports that only half that amount was here.

According to a widely published AP piece which my brother brought to my attention, Habitat for Humanity built four of the seriously damaged homes, and announced today that they would replace them, as well as helping other poor victims of the tornadoes. Interestingly, the article went on to say they would work with another local housing charity — the Fuller Center, founded by Habitat’s founder and former CEO, Millard Fuller. This would be a big step towards healing the hard feelings in the our community that resulted after Habitat asked Millard to leave. I hope the injured parties and local gossips are all ready to move on. You may have read the AP piece in your local paper.

I reached a friend yesterday afternoon, the deacon at our church, who I serve with in a local AIDS nonprofit. We caught up after leaving messages back and forth, and I learned that he’d gone in to take out what he wanted to keep from his home. I mentioned in my second update that both his home and his car were destroyed. His cottage was scheduled to be bulldozed today. He had a remarkably positive perspective — he told me it would be a relief to shed the “stuff” of his life and start over with only the essentials. Personally, I hope he saved his notebooks. He was an AP reporter, and covered the Civil Rights movement. He was the first reporter on the scene of the Birmingham church bombing, and filed the AP story that morning. I’ve heard him speak about interviewing Dr. King, and about the danger he and other white reporters faced all over the South. When we spoke though, he mostly wanted to tell me what a relief it will be to be reunited with his cat, who has been boarding at the vet while he worked out shelter for the two of them.

Much of the cleanup that can be done by volunteers is wrapping up. That’s hard for me to believe, having driven around town today, but I guess businesses generally have to hire help, for liability reasons. Home cleanup, at least on the exterior, has gone pretty smoothly, and a friend of mine who went out on several cleanup teams yesterday said that today the volunteer center sent her home. What’s left are structural problems, demolition, and huge trees or other large, heavy debris that cannot be cleared by hand or without professional consultation.

Schools, including the local state college, will reopen tomorrow.

Our effort to help out today was to invite kids from two families we know over to play soccer this afternoon (real and video). One is the family we were trying to reach on Saturday. An update on their electrical situation — they managed, through the dad’s personal contacts (he’s a contractor) to track down help and get the connection at the house repaired, and the power company restored their electricity. They won’t have phone (nor internet access) for another week. The other family lost power through Saturday night, but like us, were spared other damage. The dad is also a contractor, and the mom is out of town, so he was free to go check on some friends with major structural damage while the boys were here. None of the 4 boys who came over are looking forward to school being back in session. As I was loading the car to take two of them home, and then take G. to practice, a tree fell in the empty lot next door, not too far from the property line. Both boys jumped — and these are pretty fearless, rough and tumble guys, 12 and 13 years old. I imagine there won’t be much accomplished in classrooms this week, as kids are trying to move on from what they’ve been through, and what’s happened to our community.

That said, stay tuned for my regular poembound update on Friday. I am hoping to get back to my workshop group, and if I do, I’ll look forward to encouraging them to write about their experiences of the tornado and its aftermath.

Tornado update

A little more information about the tornado and the aftermath:

The tornado was an “EF-3. ” The scale goes up to “EF-5,” and “EF-3” means that the winds were 136-165 mph. The storm was over a mile wide and 38 miles long, according to a city spokesperson. I don’t know if that means the actual path of destruction stretched 38 miles? It’s mind boggling. I didn’t think it could be accurate, so I surfed around this evening looking for this statistic, and found this entry from the National Weather Service bulletins out of Peachtree City, Georgia for Thursday night:

“TORNADO 5… TRACKED ACROSS WEBSTER…SUMTER…AND MACON COUNTIES…FROM CHAMBLISS TO ABOUT 17 MILES NORTHEAST OF AMERICUS. RATED EF3. LENGTH APPROXIMATELY 38 MILES AND MAXIMUM WIDTH OF ONE MILE. HEAVIEST DAMAGE WAS IN THE CITY OF AMERICUS NEAR THE HOSPITAL. AT LEAST TWO DEATHS WERE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS STORM IN AMERICUS. THREE INJURIES ALSO OCCURRED NORTHEAST OF CHAMBLISS. ”

Here’s a handy explanation of the “Enhanced Fujita” (EF) scale:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/ef-scale.html

I sincerely hope I never see what an “EF-5” can do.

The Red Cross estimates that more than 500 homes were damaged, and one report said the repairs are estimated at $65 million. I don’t know how they calculate that.

In church today, we learned which members have damaged homes and/or cars. Amazingly, no one was injured. Our deacon spent Thursday night (through the second wave of thunderstorms and rain) in his severely damaged home, alone with his cat. His car was flattened by a large tree, and the pastor said she had to climb over about 8 other huge trees to get to him on Friday. The road he lives on — a state highway on the way out of town to Andersonville — was so covered in downed trees and power poles that it’s closed to all but emergency crews and residents. They were hoping to get it reopened today.

After church, my friend Y. and I went to the store and then packed lunch sacks in her kitchen, with sandwiches, fruit, cookies, and water. Then S. and our kids (G. and K.) and she and her daughter and I all went back to the neighborhood G. & I were in yesterday to try and find folks who were unable to get out, and give them lunch. It wasn’t much, but we wanted to do something.

S. had not seen the damage in person, since he and K. stayed home yesterday. He was blown away. He and G. decided it was too intrusive to take photos today, but G. has asked to go back tomorrow, which we may possibly try to do. We don’t want to get in the way, but I understand his desire to capture what he’s seeing. K. told me on the way home that it was much worse than she was expecting.

We saw so much devastation I am not sure I can really do it justice in words. Cars overturned or smashed, windows broken, roofs damaged, large pieces of sheet metal crumpled up like a piece of paper and tossed around, signs bent over, massive trees with root-balls in the air, others snapped like twigs, garages or sheds flattened. But the good news is that there were power crews in that neighborhood today, and we saw teams of volunteers from at least two churches — people who just wanted to pitch in, who were out there with saws and tarps and tools, trying to clear trees and help people. G. also chatted with someone who had come from North Carolina. In a few houses, relatives were helping. In others, no one was home — I imagine some people are just too overwhelmed to even know where to begin. But at least help is starting to arrive.

One woman, near the “house with no walls” that I described yesterday, came to her door, took the lunch I offered, and said “God has blessed me so much, and He’s continuing to bless me now.” Wow. She had power lines in her yard, damage to her house, trees all over the place, broken glass leading up to her steps, and that was what she said.

Many of the residents we visited today face the same problem as our friends on the east side of town, who we did manage to reach in the afternoon yesterday. The electrical box where the lines come into their house detached or was otherwise damaged — which requires a certified electrician for repair and then inspection by the city before power can be restored. She was worried that they wouldn’t be able to find someone to do the repair work, because her husband had already called three electricians who hadn’t called back. An elderly couple who was sitting on the porch of their damaged house down the street from the hospital today told us the same thing — the power was due to be on in their street late today, but they would not be able to get power to their house because of the damaged box. It’s a potential fire hazard, so I understand the rule, but I wondered, having hired contractors here and there over the years, how people of limited means will be able to pay. I hope this is something FEMA can help with, since we were officially declared a disaster area today, and that means people will be able to apply for loans and other aid through their programs. We’ve all heard such horror stories about the red tape involved in this process. I hope the system works smoothly for those who need it.

S. made it through an area that was closed off yesterday. It’s where we stayed in a historic old inn when we were house hunting. All the trees are down, the gazebo is crushed, all the houses ringing the park sustained some amount of damage. There is an old brick school on the park, where K. used to take art classes, which recently underwent a major restoration; the whole back half of the building is now rubble. S. noted that you can now see clear across town in the north/south direction because so many trees are gone. They look as if a giant just came along and snapped them all off.

I realized today through emails and calls with friends and family that in some parts of the country, even with the presidential visit, the tornado was barely a blip in the news, or wasn’t reported at all. It really made me realize that I’ve had the same experience in the past — I hear a brief mention of a tornado or other natural disaster and I haven’t really understood the extent to which people’s lives are impacted. In fact, right now in many other communities across the South, people are dealing with their own tornado damage, injuries, and grief. The next day, or even later the same day, the news cycle moves on to something new. Meanwhile, people in the place where the damage took place are still devastated.

On the other hand, those places recover, eventually, and so will our town. Even though many people are overwhelmed, the community is expressing great resolve, and overall the response of officials and volunteers has been very impressive. The Red Cross has had to turn potential volunteers away because they have so many. The power crews from other places began arriving early Friday. The whole plan for temporary emergency medical care seems very organized, and today, a mobile hospital arrived from Ft. Benning; it will serve as the temporary community hospital until ours is rebuilt.

On a final note, I learned today that the “house with no walls” in my blog entry yesterday (and site of the president’s visit) was the duplex you may have read about in the news, where two people died. We felt utterly amazed today that no one else was killed here, based on what we saw. We have heard many stories of people who ran to another room just before a tree crashed through, or made it to a hallway, or went into a bathroom literally seconds before they would have been injured. A hospital official told the media he felt there was no explanation for the fact that all the patients and staff there were safely evacuated with no deaths or injuries during the tornado or after, other than “the hand of God.” Indeed.