Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal, Day 2, June 17

Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal, Day 2

6/17/1987. Day Two. I begin at 10 AM, a light day is scheduled. I work with artist Linda Wargo's S – 2 Ward, adolescent training program – they're supposed to be shielded from the adults. Except for us, so I'm a novelty. It is easier to work with them, I'm on familiar ground. They're supposed to be low achievers and I think they do just fine, considering. I really like this group.

We write ekphrastic poems to pictures and photographs. We make one group poem. And I'm amazed by how many students can recite poems from memory. Shantell keeps saying this poem is embarrassing, and then launches into these incredible raps that are both spiritual and holy. Spontaneous combustion of poetry. I think the work is his own, not something read and repeated. 

I find that I need to make some basic rules with them, and to be much clearer. Chaos is quick to rise otherwise. I worked with them from 10 to 11:30 AM, and then I was told they couldn't handle it. Ha! They did just fine.

Only one girl, Julie, was in the group. Napa is a place of mostly men. I had to draw her out. We talked about where we were born, etc. A lot of male energy in this group. Mostly Latino and African American inner city kids—many kids from the East Bay. Motivating them isn't difficult. Getting in-depth poetry, and not fragments may be harder to do, because they're not used to writing, or writing in-depth the way I do.

Later, I meet with Eric, from the Q 9–10 geriatric ward and, and his psychiatrist, a tiny Korean woman in a classic white doctor's coat—they're both late. He has trouble disassociate himself from her.

I don't know whether it's a mistake having her here because Eric carries on his therapy session with her. I am invisible. I'm frustrated with this arrangement, because I don't want to be rude and break into their conversation, but if I don't, nothing will happen. 

I will need to be firm about taking the stage. The patients are so used to talking and having the therapist listen. But I need to establish with them that I am not a therapist. I need tools so that I can channel and focus their attention on creativity. I say something to that effect. 

I collect phrases from him and utilize them. It's about love. We make a group poem. They both like what is happening during the session, and  he says he'll come back. He was a bit crabby and a bit of a primadonna. It was a case of the I – me me me syndrome. He says God, all these crazies sound like college professors and poets! Now in the real world....

Andrew is a funny sort. A huge hat completely swallows his head. He says: I want to learn calligraphy. That's the most coherent thing he can say, or do. I find it difficult to get him to do anything at all. He is fascinated by my felt tip calligraphy pens. I demonstrate the process, write his name. He is pleased. He might not have the fine motor skills, though he did manage to make ten pen-widths on his paper just fine, so maybe there's hope. 

I had him write his name and I showed him how to form the letters in Italic cursive. He had trouble following the simplest instructions.

At one point, he talked to himself into his hat, and then froze for a few moments, and then he resumed writing, as if nothing had happened. He said, I can't write Andrew. I'm not Andrew anymore. I have a printing press inside of me. I tell him he should write poetry then. I seriously wonder if I'll make any difference in his life.

Life at Napa so orderly, I have a hard time adjusting. The library closes from 12 to 1 PM sharp. I mean, shut up tighter than a tick! No place for me to go. The whole hospital stops dead at noon, and then again it repeats the shutdown at 4 PM. A strange, inexorable beast. Clockwork Orange.

There's lots of free time for me to work on ideas, but the structure time is inviolate. Patients don't have very much free time to themselves, and going to the library is part of their free time privileges. Some patients only have half an hour a day to themselves. To have 2+ hours a day is a privilege! I am honored that they choose to spend it with me. I have much to think about and process on the drive home.

• • Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal, June 18
  • Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal, June 15 & 16

Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal, Day 1, June 15 & 16

Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal

June 15, 1987: I'm nervous before my California Arts Council Artists-in-Libraries residency. I dreamed about teaching a class and that the patients won't listen. I keep changing my lesson plans and don't have complete information on any of them.  It's as if I had forgotten all the pieces. No one pays attention. Can the ground please just open up and swallow me whole? I don't know if I can do this. It's great that the CAC has so much faith in me, now I just have to believe in myself. It's only a three-month pilot program.

6/16 Tuesday Day One. Nothing scheduled. I haul in boxes of books and art supplies. Today is my first day up and about after my knee operation, and I'm still shaky. Patricia, the librarian, introduces me to several patients. It's an informal drop-in visit. 

I began my residency. I spread my books out on the table and worked with patients individually. The first inmate I meet is Liebel, who has several books of poetry out, as well as essays. It's clear that Leibel knows more about poetry than me. He quoted from Vosnesenski, and his own work. He asks me if I am a radical and had I heard of the red papers? Shades of my boyfriend, John Oliver Simon’s red diaper baby stories. I guess he's an old commie. We talk of poetry. He quotes me several sonnets he had written to his wife—some in the style of Khalil Gibran, the inevitable jug of wine and that goddamn loaf of bread…must be a hockey puck by now.

We talk more of Andrei Vosnesenski, the role of form and content in poetry and we verbally spar with some Bantu rhythms to make a ghazal of sorts. I wonder why he's in here, in this place—he's missing a leg, he says he's not on the mend. He knows more about poetry than I do. We discuss Alexandrine couplets and Alexander Pope.

Then I meet Cecil, a black man who talks so fast I can only catch one word in six. We read Nazim Hikmet's Things I Didn't Know I Loved. I encourage Cecil to "write" that is, he dictates a poem to me. He listens when I read it back but interrupts. Short attention span. He also mutters under his breath when I talk directly to him – unless I'm reading a poem. It's disconcerting, and also a challenge to keep him actively engaged. He doesn't seem to like eye contact. I memorize the stripes in the carpet.

Bart Swain, one of the NSH staff, drops in, he taught my class last week when I couldn't be here because of my knee operation, and he was amazed at what the kids came up with. We discuss lyric poetry, music, content and form. I read him Carl Sandberg's Rain poem, and he gives me a line of his own for each Sandberg line.

It seems the only way to proceed here is to begin a conversation in the middle of things—in medias res. Lesson plans are far too rigid. I interview them, find out what they know, and from that conversation, an idea for writing presents itself. They don't seem to want to write, so I take dictation.

Mark C, a sociopath I'm told, is a bright light. As it turns out I've already read his work in the February issue of ArtScan. Actually he has a collection of poetry. I read his poems and make comments. We play with stanzas that are unclear, we take the poems apart and put them back together. He has several fine poems. I mostly make punctuation suggestions and offer technical advice. 

He likes to read John Berryman. Shades of Leonard Cirino, who was in this very library as an inmate himself. Leonard probably checked out that same book. Mark says he'll be out next month. Patricia warns me they will all say that. After I'm out... becomes a mantra. After class, I find out that he's served six years for killing someone with a steak knife—but he seems so together. So charming. I have to look up the definition of a sociopath, as I don't know what it is. I am horrified. And amazed. Like with Leonard, I realize that genius and madness are one thing.

I meet with the therapist to schedule more patients. An exhausting first day. Big learning curve. Long drive back to Forestville at dusk. There is so much to process, I dream of teaching inmates all night long. Like herding cats.

SUMMER OF LOVE (poem)

SUMMER OF LOVE

During the Summer of Love, drug experimentation

blossomed in kalidaescopic exponentials.

My mother checked out Ken Kesey's acid tests.

People sleep in doorways, in the Haight

crash pads with bare mattresses

and sinks-fill with rotting garbage

Crazy people get crazier.

We ran from one end

of the San Geronimo Valley to the other 

searching for dope and rock stars.

An abandoned van parked at Dead Man's Curve

in Lagunitas was a crash pad for lovers without a bed.

Parties on The Charles Van Dam

an old steam boat stuck in the Sausalito mud-flats.

Varda's geometric blue and red paintings

nailed to the wall, defied horizon and plumb-line logic 

but the colors were neon exponentials.

Big Brother and the Holding Company took over the barracks 

at Barbano's summer camp on Arroyo Road. 

Mrs. Barbano's daughter was killed by a car in Mexico— 

Mr. B. shot himself in the head. 

Walking home -from school, I see him all white and red 

as if asleep in the ambulance.

When the shadows grew long and settled into the gulch, 

the hills reverberated with screaming electric guitars. 

My friend Micaela quit coming home, 

dropped in and dropped out at Barbano's, and I felt betrayed.

Kerouac On the Road. Cassidy at the wheel.

Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass floated into town.

The names rolled off the tongue

like a Who's Who of the counter culture.

No time for recording history.

The search for dope was more important than scoring.

After a bad acid trip, mirrors 

and checkered tile floors were a drag.

Like Pinnocchio, my nose grew

every time I looked into the mirror.

It takes me years before I can look into a mirror,

touch grass, or alcohol without hallucinating.

I don't know whether I've passed or failed 

the Electric Koolaid Acid Test.

We tried everything at least once.

Spirits of the land came forth into air like patterned fog. 

Time slowed down enough to swallow another dimension. 

Rocking in a legless wicker chair, my arms were Shiva's. 

Crack in the world.

A friend brought news of a friend stuck in a Mexican jail

said the border police tore tore apart their van

they even removed the tires from the rims. 

Moulton's store burned down in Forest Knolls. 

There wasn't much left to downtown 

except the Valley Tavern and the post office. 

The same was true about Lagunitas. 

Some say the boy who set his own house on fire,

killing two younger brothers, torched that building too. 

When the Hell's Angels rode into town,

Old Man Bevans stuck a rake handle through one Angel's tire spokes.     

There wasn't much left to hospitalize. 

Everyone started selling out. Land was subdivided. Dairies went under. 

One could feel the change in the wind.

Morning glory seeds coated with poison.      

Heavenly Blues turned deadly.

A friend in the slammer for dealing.

Another turned up in an oil barrel in the San Rafael canal

Hendrix dead. Janis. Bobby dead.

The vets. All those dead coming home in boxes.

Someone out there was playing for keeps.

And the strung-out freaks were alwayslooking for action.

In art class we listened to Ravi Shankar on KPFA.

"Everybody's" made Time Magazine

as the first health food store in the US.

Life magazine ran glossy photos of the Vietnam War.

Etched in my mind like shadows of Hiroshima.

On Bolinas Mesa, the writers colony discovered Turtle Island. 

Gary Snyder talked about my home as if he owned it.

I said I could write like him. What's the big deal? 

So I began my apprenticeship with the coyote.

My mother checked in and out of mental wards.

Handed me her bible, One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest

so I could understand shock therapy. As if I wanted to.

I waited in green hospital wards for her

to come shuffling in paper slippers and a blue gown

across yellowed and green tiled floors with curved corners.

The medication they gave her made her worse. 

Alice and The White Rabbit were institutionalized.

I'm working with the crazies at Napa State Hospital

They have poems memorized. l can't remember any of my poems. 

I meet a friend of my mother's, an inmate, 

Sally Lacy, who raises an eyebrow, 

and wants to know what I'm doing in a place like this.

 I meet a high school classmate. So, this is where they wound up. 

Do I tell them poets are the must often institutionalized?

Maybe it's those locked up who are closer to poetry. 

The nuthouses are breeding poets. 

The trickster Coyote has holes in his pockets.

Little did Lew Welch know when he wrote

"The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings"

that there was nowhere else left for us to go.

It was no longer a question of need.

Houses desecrate the sides of the goddess, Mt. Tam-Fujisan.

When a friend tried to leave the Sufis,

they stopped him at the airport,

placing a hand on his shoulder and said he'd die for it.

His shoulder burned, an x-ray imprint of a hand,

and later, cancer.

Vietnam is our mantra. At People's Park

Governor Reagan brought out the National Guard.

Brothers and sisters fell.  

We shielded our faces from FBI telephoto lenses 

aimed from the top of the Zim's Drive-in tower 

with Zim Boy waving and grinning down at us.

We were confused by the sudden violence.

People moved to the country and joined communes

to Morning Star Ranch or moved to the Eel Eiver.

Raised families. Most lost their land to taxes, or CAMP.   

Got tired of it eventually. Cut off their hair.

Bought suits. Joined the rat race.

Now it's hard to remember what it was like.

Jerry Rubin. Yuppies. Baby boon,baby carrots and raduccio.

Bitter vets returned home like aliens from another planet.

John Lennon gunned down in New York by some crazy wanting fame

and 20 years later, we like to think a revolution is brewing.

The children conceived during that Summer of Love

have come of age in an era of violence and apathy.

6/1987

I didn't find a file, or clean final hard copy of this poem so this is a faxsimile. added 6/17

COMING OF AGE IN AQUARIUS (Summer of Love) long v.

I grew up on Turtle Island. I was an unwilling player during the revolutionary birth ot the 60's and the Summer ot Love. Some ot it had to do with age, or lack ot it on my part. I was 14 and uptight. Half of my friends ran away to the Haight Ashbury and the other half practiced making their necks as red as the necks of their blue-collar parents'.

My mother turned me on with green oatmeal cookies. Actually, it was an accident. We were at her gay friend's house in Larkspur having dinner. A friend, Sue Williams and I helped ourselves to the big cookie jar. We couldn't understand why they made such a fuss, and wouldn't let us have any more health food chocolate chip cookies loaded with that weird green shit. Ugh!

Why were they watching us so oddly as we corn-braided and beaded each other's long hair, danced, and wove peace symbols on the shoebox we converted to a finger loom? My mother went along with my frenzied creative urges before I fell into a narcoticised dreamstate while Janis wailed and crooned on the stereo:

Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart
now baby
you know you got it
if it makes you feel good

A life size poster of Grace Slick wrapped in an American flag sung to me from the wall and the air filled with visual debris.

Micaela and I crashed parties on The Charles Van Dam ferry boat stuck in the Sausalito mud at an angle that almost rivaled that of the Spreckles House. Jean Varda's geometric blue and red paintings nailed to the curved ferryboat wall, defied horizon and plum-line logic. 

We sneaked into the captain's brig that served as a loft and watched the party below us carry on. While our parents were turning on and dropping out, we ran wild in the streets. Sneaking off to the Avalon. Fillmore. Winterland. Sometimes finding our parents there before us. My mother was very hip and my reverse rebellion kept me straighter than most of my friends.

The drug experimentation blossomed in kalidascopic exponentials. Crazy people got crazier. My mother checked out all Ken Kesey's acid tests. Took me to the Panhandle. Parties and concerts in Golden Gate Park. The Be-in. Magic Mountain of Marin. Clouds of incense roiling out of the Psychedelic Shop. People sleeping in doorways. Crash pads with wal-to-wall bare mattresses, sinks filled with putrid dishes, mountains of rotting garbage, incense and patchouli oil made me wary of acid and hard drugs.

Various rock groups divided up the San Geronimo Valley like musical mafias. Jefferson Starship hung a model bi-plane from a bay tree in Woodacre. The Grateful Dead were mostly encamped in Forest Knolls, while Big Brother and the Holding Company took over the barracks at Barbano's summer camp on Arroyo Road. Mrs. Barbano rented the dorms to them, but after her daughter was killed by a car in Mexico— something to do with dope; Mr. Barbano shot himself in the head. Walking home from school, I remember him all white and red as if asleep on the gurney as they wheeled him into the ambulance.

Most afternoons, when the shadows grew long and chill settled into the gulch, the hills reverbrated with the distorted screaming of electric guitars. My friend Micaela quit coming home from school, dropped acid with the musicians at Barbano's instead, and I felt betrayed by this.

We ran from one end of the San Geronimo Valley to the other searching for dope. And the rock stars were our best bet. Most of the musicians never got out of bed until afternoon—that was the time to score, and hang out for a jam session. Bill Bowan, the drummer for the Sons of Champlain, always had grass and there was even an abandoned van parked at Dead Man's Curve in Lagunitas for lovers in search of a bed. John McBride often took advantage of that pad on wheels.

It wasn't just the rock stars who moved into the San Geronimo Valley. Those fleeing from the Haight. From LA, or New York, everybody began to migrate westward like lemmings to the sea. 

House of Richard took over the old dance hall in Forest Knolls. I sold my first chain crocheted caps there, and in exchange, bought hay for my horse. Richard told me how the border police, looking far dope, tore apart their VW van after a textile buying trip in Mexico. Even the tires were removed from the rims. The disciples of the Summer of Love moved to the Valley enmasse. 

COMING OF AGE IN AQUARIUS

COMING OF AGE IN AQUARIUS

"If you remember the '60's you weren't really there."
— Robin Williams

I was an unwilling player during the birth of the 60's and the Summer of Love. Some of it had to do with age, or lack of it on my part. I was 14 and uptight. It was an accident but my mother turned us on with green cookies. We couldn't understand why they made such a fuss, and wouldn't let us have any more cookies loaded with weird green stuff. Why were they watching us so oddly as we corn-braided and beaded each other's hair and wove peace symbols on an improvised shoebox the finger loom? Janis Joplin wailed and crooned on the stereo:

Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart
now baby

A life size poster of Grace Slick wrapped in an American flag sung to me from the wall and the air filled with visual debris. We crashed parties on The Charles Van Dam ferry boat, sunk rakishly in the Sausalito mud. Varda's geometric blue and red paintings nailed to the wall defied horizon and plum-line logic. The drug experimentation blossomed in kalidascopic exponentials. Crazy people got crazier. My mother checked out Ken Kesey's acid tests. Clouds of incense roiling out of the Psychedelic Shop. People sleeping in doorways. Crash pads with bare mattresses and sinks filled with rotting garbage, reeking of incense and patchouli oil.

Big Brother and the Holding Company took over the barracks at Barbano's summer camp on Arroyo Road. After Barbano's daughter was killed by a car in Mexico— something to do with dope; Mr. Barbano shot himself in the head. Walking home from school, I remember him all white and red as if asleep in the ambulance.

Most afternoons when the shadows grew long and chill settled into the gulch, the hills reverbrated with the distorted screaming of electric guitars. My friend Micaela quit coming home, dropped acid at Barbano's, or hung out at one of the Grateful Dead pads instead, and I felt betrayed by her abandonment.

We ran from one end of the San Geronimo Valley to the other—searching for dope. And the rock stars were our best bet. It wasn't just the rock stars who moved into the Valley. Those fleeing from the Haight, or New York. We all dealed.

At The House of Richard, once the old dance hall in Forest Knolls, Richard himself, told me how the border police tore apart their VW van looking for dope after a textile buying trip in Mexico. Even the tires were removed from the rims.

Kerouac On the Road. Cassidy at the wheel. Timothy Leary and Baba Ram Dass floated into town. Alan Watts was staying with a former Jesuit brother at the Heart Sutra House. There was no time for recording history. In Mary Mackey's English class at Drake High School (emphasis on high), we studied the lyrics on the Revolver album. We tried another high. Someone issued a warning that morning glory seeds were coated with poison. Heavenly Blues turned deadly. A friend in the slammer for dealing. Rumor of another petty dealer turning up dead in an oil barrel in the San Rafael canal for double-crossing a dope dealer. Hendrix dead. Joplin dead. Bobby dead. The vets. All those dead coming home in boxes.

We traded Zap Comix for dope. The school narc married red-headed Kelly, a friend of mine. My art teacher Warren Fairbanks (who went to school with my mom), married my classmate Rachel and moved to Bolinas. No one else bothered to get married. We watched light shows at the Fairfax Pavillian. Everybody's made Time Magazine as the first health food store in the US.

Things got hopping on the Bolinas Mesa. Lots of writers climbing aboard Turtle Island. Gary Snyder talked about this place as if he owned it; I thought I could write like him. What's the big deal? So I began my apprenticeship.

Moulton's store in Forest Knolls burned down and there wasn't much to downtown except hang outside the Valley Tavern, or at the train platform. The same was true about Lagunitas. Some say, the boy who set his own house on fire, killing two younger brothers, torched this building too. Some say he burned down all the historic wooden buildings in The Valley.

Tensions rose. Old Man Bevans, out gardening on the old railroad bed between Castro and Sir Francis Drake Blvd at Arroyo Road, went vigilante and stuck his rake through one Hell's Angel's tire spokes. When the Angel got done with Old Man Bevans there wasn't much left to hospitalize. Everyone started selling out. Land was subdivided. Dairies went under. One could feel the change in the wind.

Gurus and TM moved to Marin. Then, the EST graduates. Most of us moved on and became ex-patriot. I moved from Forest Knolls to Forestville. Little did Lew Welch know when he wrote "The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings," that there was nowhere else left for us to go. It was no longer a question of need. Houses desecrated the sides of the goddess, Mt. Tarn. Ken Kesey, the Merry Prankster headed north to greener pastures.

Life magazine ran pictures of the war in full color, they're still etched in my mind like shadows of Hiroshima. My mother checked in and out of mental wards like they were revolving doors. She wanted me to read One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest so I could understand shock therapy. I waited in hospital wards with wax-yellowed and green tile floors with curved corners for my mother to make her grand entrance in a blue hospital gown and paper slippers.

One pill makes you whiter

And one pill makes you small 

The ones that mother gives you 

Don't do anything at all

On the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love, I'm working with the crazies at Napa State Hospital. The inmates have their poems memorized. I can't remember any of my poems all the way through. I meet a friend of my mother's, Sally Lacy, an inmate, who raised an eyebrow, and wants to know what I'm doing in a place like this. It's like a 60's time capsule here. Do I tell them that of all the artists, poets are the most often institutionalized? Depending upon how one looks at it— maybe it's those who are locked up who are closer to poetry. The nuthouses are breeding poets. The trickster Coyote has holes in his pockets.

The Summer of Love wore down like a bad trip. Vietnam. Reagan brought out the National Guard at People's Park; brothers and sisters fell. As we marched, we shielded our faces from the FBI who took photographic aim from the top of the Zim's Drive-in tower in San Rafael. Zim Boy grinning down at us and waving.

People moved to the country and joined communes like Limelighter Lou Gottleib's Morning Star Ranch in Sonoma, or moved to the Eel River. Some went back to the land and raised families. Most cut off their hair, bought suits and joined the rat race. Jerry Rubin. Yuppies. Baby boomers, baby carrots and raduccio.

Bitter vets returned home and were treated like aliens from another planet. John Lennon gunned down in New York by some crazy wanting fame, and 20 years later, we like to think a revolution is brewing. Punk rock. The children conceived during that Summer of Love have come of age in an era of violence and apathy. And Lew Welch, with a gun to his head, walking off into the wilderness for the last time because there was no way left to remind the planet of its smoky gentleness. Turtle Island is shaking again. In what form will the revolution take this time around?

6/1987
added 6/17

More S o L

• COMING OF AGE IN AQUARIUS (Summer of Love) long v....
• COMING OF AGE IN AQUARIUS

Summer of Love, etc.
A revamp from an earlier post from 2013, 'Tween Worlds

A related blog post: Ken Kesey

RRWG reading & book party, Falling to Sea Level at the Burbank Activity Center with John Oliver Simon, Maureen Hurley

Letters to the editor, Pomo Only Official Language, Nuke-free zone, The Paper (no date)

INTERVIEW WITH MAUREEN HURLEY At Mark West School

Q: How did you first get interested in poetry and art?
I'll answer the art question first. When I was about four years old, I remember watching my mother design Christmas cards. With a pen and colored ink, she was able to make black squiggles on a piece of white
paper into broken glass Christmas balls under the tree. I drew ever since I can remember. I loved art. I had trouble learning in school but I always got A's in art. Later, after I graduated from college, I became interested in poetry because when I wasn't doing art, I was writing down my feelings. I didn't even know it was the beginnings of a poetic career until many years later when I took a poetry class. I HATED poetry in grade school. It was so BORING—it always rhymed and it wasn't about things that were interesting—like feelings.

Q: Do you enjoy teaching kids poetry and art?
Of course! That's why I'm here! I <3 it.

Q: Would you make this your professional job?
This IS my professional job. I was chosen from many other artists across the state of California to work with students because I am a professional artist. I was judged by my experience working with kids
and by my artwork.

Q: Did you like poetry as a child?
I think I already answered that, I liked to sing. Songs often rhyme. But I liked the melody, not the words. Whenever there was poetry in a novel I was reading, I used to skip over that part. I think now, it's
because the poetry was old-fashioned and I couldn't get into what the author was trying to say. Because it wasn't accessible—like Olde English! To read poetry one needs to slow down and try to imagine the
poet telling them the poem, it wasn't until I went to hear a famous poet Gary Snyder read at College of Marin one dark, stormy night (before most of you were born} that I said, I could do that! And then
I found out how hard it was to write. I'm still learning—even from you guys!

Q: Are you thinking of a big success with selling the books at the Crafts Faire?
You Bet! And all the money will go to having an artist come and work with you next year. Most kids don't ever get to work with an artist so it's important to show that you support having art in school. So buy
lots of little books. We have one-of-a-kind art masterpieces designed by 5th and 6th graders, blank books and beautiful hand-colored Christmas cards by students. But, I would love to work here again in
the future because I think the kids, the teachers and school community are TOPS and I've been to a lot of schools so I know Mark West is a great school.
.
Q: Have you ever done a booth before? If so, what were you selling?
Do flea markets count? Once I sold all my friend's clothes because she was too shy. I've also sold calligraphy at crafts faires.

Q: Do you think some of your future work might become famous?
Well, when I was about 12 years old, I remember saying to myself, someday I'll be famous as a writer. And then I said, Don't be ridiculous. Of course, you're not going to be famous. You're going to be an artist, NOT a writer. I think it's possible that some of my work will get fairly well known because I do have a lot of unusual talent. However, talent isn't enough. You have to work hard because your work is what you believe in—even when everyone else says, Give it up. You're no good. That happened to me. If I'd listened to some of my teachers, I'd be doing something safe and boring. But I work very hard and very long hours, many more than if I had a 9-to-5 job. As far as getting famous, it's just a fluke. Being at the right place at the right time with just enough talent or work to convince someone you are famous. That's too fickle. I'd rather have a lot of GOOD work out in the world. Fame is just a large popularity contest.

Q: Do you think the 6th grades will continue to write poems in Jr. High?
You guys better! Actually, I think once writing gets into your blood, it's hard to shake. I know that MWS students at Comstock who took my writing classes are still writing and winning awards. Philip
Bazzano is head of the literary magazine at Comstock. So you'll have friends in high places! Even if you don't write for 10 or 20 years after you leave MWS (poetry & creative fiction) you may wake up one
morning and be a writer again. Once you see the world with the eyes of an artist, you'll always be taking notes on life itself. That's mostly what art is about anyway, being a spy.

Napa State Hospital Poetry Journal, Teaching notes May 29

Lesson plan ideas:
Remember those final exams in school? The bluebooks?

Do a self portrait that begins with the idea

You will never awaken from the bluebook…

Go back 10 years, to the summer of love, where were you? What were you doing? Go back 20 years. Who remembers the moon landing? Or the assassination of President Kennedy? What were you doing? What were you wearing? Where were you?

Discuss Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Write about the walls you have inside. Describe them with details.
Now go back and write about one brick on that wall. It's loose. What's hidden behind it?

Male perspective, Stephen Crane uses intense descriptions. Use intense description as you write about that brick in your wall.

Another writing idea is about hope.
What is the first thing that you will do when you get out? What do you miss most? The answer of keys surprises me.
Start each sentence sentence for each paragraph with the line: When I get out…

Pass around poem: write two lines, fold one line back, and pass it on. (Treat it like renga haiku.)

• HAIKU from Napa State Hospital
• Renga and haiku, linked verse

SCHEDULE
My schedule is this: I have one week of training in orientation and learning the rules of management of aggressive behavior.

"P cards" are passes. I need to ask the clients; Show me your P card.

There are 11 programs here.

program three is wards five and six, and seven and eight (admitting)

program two is the little kids, and program five are the adolescents (most kids are here because of gangs, or they're self-harming.)

there are eight people at a time in the geriatrics ward and they can handle up to 30 minute segments.

The kids and the adolescents are scheduled with 30 to 45 minutes sessions

some groups are for only 10 to 15 minute visits 

I will have to change that, it will never work

I'll be working Tuesdays 10 to 11 at Zoey's admitting ward, which are people right off the street. Admitting wards are O five and six.

So my schedule is Tuesday 9 to 12 in the geriatric ward.
And then 1 to 4 or perhaps 1:30 to 2:30 in Greg Giatto's group
Wednesdays 9 to 12 and 1to 2
I have a group of profoundly deaf students from 2 to 2:30
And at 3 to 4 another group perhaps drop-ins.
Thursday is working in the closed down wards from 9 to 11, 1 to 4, but 3 to 4 will be a group process.

Meeting with my coordinator, Patricia Brown, the librarian. I will use her library for the afternoon drop-in clients.

Shopping list
I need bond paper for drawing, 12 x 18 size colored paper, calligraphy pens, pencils, glue, glue sticks, paper strips, and tag board to make little books. Mylar, contact paper, cardboard, crayons, watercolors brushes, tempera paint, etc.

projector, tape recorder video monitor—xeroxing will be a problem.

Then the issue of keys comes up. It turns out that keys are tantamount to everything: they get you in, the get you out. They're also status symbols and also be aware that nobody steals your keys. Great. everyone's aspiring to look like a janitor at Napa.

I have access to an Apple IIe, and a daisywheel printer, xeroxing will be tricky. I cannot bring anything stapled into the lockdown boards. Pencils have to all be accounted for. They are lethal weapons.

At Lagunitas School

In this room was where the big kids sat, and across the hall was the principal's office: Mr. Fry. The office was where my skinned knees were bandaged, where I was sent down for being in trouble, and the WPA mural in the hall of the rich farmlands was the only thing that saved me.

I stared and stared at all that depth on the flat wall intrigued by the magic of paint and the outbuildings seemed so real. That wing is now a preschool. Where I did my first year of labor, my first grade class was in the old library building, a portable shed.

I dropped out of kindergarten, bored by at all and the painful years I spent in the other wing: third, fifth, and seventh grades seem to stand out the most. How we hid under our desks practicing for nuclear war and the brilliant flash in the eastern sky towards the Nevada test sites.

I'm not the first writer who suffered in these halls. It's not their fault, sheer numbers. I was not a socialized animal. They say the wounds make an artist. Did classmate Linda Gregg suffer that? Or was she a golden child?

Poet Bob Hass, in his book, 20th-century Pleasures, refers to this place as the Whitehill School where he played baseball. My uncles and aunts studied in these same rooms. I remember a class photo of them out front and my uncle played baseball too. But he was too old to have played with Bob Hass. Hass often gets confused in his geography and has Papermill Creek emptying uphill into Nicasio.

He said that Robert Frost spent time in Nicasio, and my family well remembers Kenneth Rexroth in Devil's Gulch. I remember stopping by Marie Rexroth's house under the redwoods studying the small signed nailed to the telephone pole.

I remember all my teachers names, well nearly all of them. Mrs. Burge, second grade who died of a heart attack, wanted me to collect the starfish maple leaves in fall to press them between tissue. I never did, it but I still keep trying to to fulfill that promise.

Miss Lenz, a popular redheaded third-grade teacher, had a pet skunk, whose cold claws and coarse fur was a surprise. The twins Adrian and Adair Daley were in that class, they were hellish. Adrian, the feminine one, packed a pistol, and a temper, and Adair, the tomboy, could swing punches with the best of them.

That was they year I failed to learn math but I learned to read.

Billy Joe Bianchi who got pneumonia in second grade, got put back a grade, so he was only one year ahead of me. We went into his room and a teacher demonstrated how to make carrot juice. We all had samples.

He drank his juice and said it was good. I drank mine, the bitter skin from the horse carrots was so overpowering, I felt betrayed. I have an aversion to carrot juice to this day though it's never tasted as bad as it did that first time.

I can't remember two teachers, one in kindergarten was an elderly woman who played the piano, and my fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Smith? I remember it was a fourth/fifth grade split class. Wasn't Billy Joe in that class too?

My fifth grade teacher was Mrs. Hards and she certainly was well named. I remember the magic that came from a ruler and construction paper, we made cable cars. First practical application of math, or was that in Mrs. Smith's class?

Mrs. Hards commented it was hard to find something grade level that I hadn't already read. The school used the SRT reading skills collection. I was never interested in completing the chapter tests and I did them halfheartedly. I only wanted to read, read, read.

I read my way through third and fourth grade SRT booklets with a voracious hunger. I remember learning about bats and dolphins, the good stories in the science SRT section had me mesmerized.

Sixth grade was even harder, my uneven learning skills forever separated me from the rest of the class. I loved Miss Kolanoski, her love of music had me singing in the chorus, but but my inability to do task work was a challenge.

My math skills were practically nonexistent and it took me 20 years and an accident to discover there was a reason for all of this, dyslexia. I'm still overcoming the horror of it all.

Mrs. Brice in seventh grade, was borderline cruel, but I did like the fact that she read to us in the afternoons. The Phantom Tollbooth had me impatient for each afternoon to come quickly. The story was like the minus stew, it made you hungrier for more. Mrs. Brice also introduced Spanish into my life.

Eighth-grade was even worse with the effeminate frustrated majordomo in a fussy canary yellow vest, and carefully combed hair over his bald pate. Mr. Sliney, who probably had no business being a teacher, with his military background, broke rulers over the boys' hands. As far as I was concerned, school was a full-scale war.

It was then, I realized my reading ability was unusual, during science, we timed ourselves how many words we could read per minute and most kids were turning into respectable double-digit scores. But mine was something like 500. No one believed me, so they retested me, asking me regurgitate what I read which I couldn't do of course. If I could have done that I could've done the class work too.

Reconstructing material in an orderly fashion was well beyond my means, in retrospect. Or so it seemed. About that time we switched over to multiple classes and teachers. What a relief to be out from under Mr. Sliney's thumb, who of all people, had to teach us sex education. I remember his livid face and bulging eyes as he discussed the distasteful subject.

Mr. Plant who was my geeky science teacher was a love. Then there was Miss Smith who could kill you with her sour looks, luckily she left me alone when it came to art. Something she admitted she knew nothing about and she was my art teacher. When we did pastel she handed me Kleenex to blend the colors.

Harry Roche, the coach, was another matter altogether. His method of teaching was to yell louder if you didn't get it the first time. For once, being assertive, I made the mistake of saying, I don't understand— it was probably fractions—and he came undone. As did I. My mind rolled up shop for the rest of the year. I was done with learning. Done with them.

TO W.T. WILEY

This is just to say
that once I was a child on a red horse
who rode past your house
when you moved in
to replace the dead Mrs Raynes
who choked at a dinner party on a piece of steak.
but I was shy in the presence of strangers.
At nightfall, the styrofoam woman's torso
you'd nailed to the madrone tree
came alive to haunt me.
My horse danced nervously on the fire road
and I had to return in daylight
to lay that ghost to rest.

5/16/1987