California Poets in the Schools
residency, Loma Alta High School, Marin Juvenile Hall, I met a dozen students once a week, on Fridays during the month of January.
Day 1, I Am poems. In my other life... The poetry of imagination.
After I introduced myself, and the California Poets in the Schools program, I asked students what poets they had worked with in the past, as this is an ongoing residency. I talked about my own teaching experiences.
In the spirit of keeping it real, or how poetry was relevant to their lives, I also told the students a story about former CPITS poet teacher, the late Judith Tannenbaum's star pupil, Spoon Jackson, at San Quentin, that, though he was imprisoned behind bars for life, poetry gave him another life. The idea that poetry changes lives. What Spoon discovered through poetry was that all human beings have one foot in darkness, the other in light. (
By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives). Poems take on a life of their own, and can travel the world. Poetry is so powerful that it can affect change. I listed a litany of poets who changed the course of human events. Pablo Neruda, Bei Dao, Victor Jara. And of course, Martin Luther King’s famous speech is pure poetry.
One of the model poems I used was from McGrath School, part of the Napa State Hospital—the place where kids
who were bounced from Juvie, or were sent to, before their final destination—prison. I wanted the students
to glean the significance that though they were incarcerated, their minds
weren't, that water could travel anywhere it pleased. Poetry was like that.
WATER
From the hills I learned
how to flow like a snake
I flow all the way down to the ground,
to the ocean, to some universe
far away in another galaxy
in a black hole and I become
the cloud of stars.
Class poem, McGrath School, Napa State Hospital
We made "I am" poems, based on the four elements, and discussed the intersection of metaphor and imagination.
I explained to the students that a poetry
framework was merely a teaching model, a jumping off point, should they get
stuck, and more significantly, that they had permission to take the poem in other directions. During
our group boardwork, that's precisely what happened. After the first three
lines, the group poem took off in another direction, wanting a life of its own, but they voted to keep it as one
poem. Radical change or thinking outside the box threatens them.
I am the lion of the sun.
The universe taught me
to count the stars of the
galaxy.
When we create poetry,
we shoot for the moon
We swim in sorrow, drown from
the pain,
hoping to float on the waves
to reach the sanctuary of land
saturated by the past.
Class Poem, Loma Alta HS
During a lull period where no
one was writing, and no one wanted to share a poem—even though they get cellphone time points when they do share—and we had 20 minutes to go before
class was finished, I asked them what secret animal lived inside them. (Someone had given me a stack of calendars, and I always have a few backup lessons in my go-bag.) I held
up wild animal calendar photos. They all wanted to have copies, soon they each had their totem animals on their desks. The guards were on instant alert, in case there
was anything sharp, like staples. The kids don't get to use regular pens,
because pens can be weaponized. I thought of the song, Pretty Boy Floyd: Some rob you with a fountain pen.
Since I had worked at Napa State Hospital, I knew the drill. No staples, count the pencils at the end of class. No contraband. I wasn't allowed to bring in a cellphone or my iPad in with me, which meant I had to rethink a few of my teaching tools. The security guards let me bring in one pen, but I had to check it both coming and going. To enter the lockdown system, you pass through an electronic metal detector gate, and three locked doors. The covered outdoor halls are lined with chain link fence, and for a moment, you're stranded in the hallway, like a caged animal, dependent on the the guards to answer the doorbells, in order to get to the next level. Sometimes they were lax. Fear bubbled in my throat each time I went through the checkpoint system, and renamed itself claustrophobia.
One guard wanted to make sure
the kids got adequate time to read, even though I had already asked students to
read several times, at 10:20, and again at 10:30, no one volunteered. The teacher
had stepped out of the room. I was annoyed by his interference. Other guards,
and there were several, were much more engaged. so it was odd—perhaps a bit of a turf
war. The animal calendar photos saved the day. The kids wanted to keep them. W., a bilingual Latino,
clearly the most productive and prolific of the group, really gets poetry. He
is willing to share and add comments. El tigre really resonated with him.
J. didn’t write at all, at first.
she was openly hostile when I was working the floor (teaching poetry is
sometimes like stand-up comedy where a recalcitrant audience needs to be warmed
up), but at the end, she came around and did an amazing spontaneous rap poem about growing
up in Oakland without electricity. The candle and the match became a metaphor shedding light throughout the
poem. It was stunning, I told her to write it down, and that when she got out, she could should
get involved with poetry slams. I told her she should look up Brennan deFrisco when she got out. I hope she does.
Three Latinix girls wrote
endlessly about personal angst and pain in their journals. They were shy and didn’t want
to share. I let them be. J. had trouble focusing and developing ideas in
general. Ditto that with D., R., and T. T., an Anglo, and also the
youngest, volunteered how much he hated poetry. I had to laugh. And I shared my
story about hating poetry too. But I also told him how it unlocked my dyslexic
brain so that I could learn to learn. And how it let me travel the world. One
staff member, a guard, wrote an amazing I Am poem that became a Day 2 model.
I AM LIKE WATER
I am the blood of my ancestors
with the heart of a warrior
I am like the grain of rice
being able to grow in any season
From my experiences,
I learned how to live
Being lost, I learned to grow
I cry from thoughts of my past
I am the humble beginnings
new life from the obstacles
I am thankful because I know the bottom…
I don’t need to speak of it.
Staff/Anon
Day 2. Personification of feelings,
deepening the metaphor. Feelings. If poems.
I typed up and copied the group
poem from last week to share during the introductory editing process. And
surprisingly, the students decided to split last week's group poem into two
parts and developed more ideas for each of them. So now we have two group
poems.
When we create poetry,
we shoot for the moon
We swim in sorrow,
drown from the pain,
hoping to float on waves
to reach the sanctuary of land
saturated by the past.
We are the light and life
of the universe.
Class Poem
I am the lion of the sun.
The universe taught me
to count the stars of the galaxy.
Books taught me of the universe.
But el norte lado taught me
the oral tradition, the knowledge
you will not learn in school.
Class Poem
Today we focused on poems based
on personification of feelings, with William Butler Yeats’ quote, Love is
like a lion’s tooth, and other
personification examples of emotions. I used several stellar lines written by Laura Walker's 4th grade Berkeley poets, about simile and
metaphor, using "If and Then" as a bridge. The idea that If never
happens. But if it happens, then there is an alternate reality. Writing
is In My Heart by Ryleigh Norgrove, a 4th
Gr. Alexander Valley ES, was the model poem.
If I were a caged bird
I would try to break free
like the wind through the trees.
Da.
If I was a river,
I’ve been moving slow, not fast
I’d be healthy and clear,
Not filthy and dark.
Ju.
We also discussed the idea of
writing alternative poems to our other life. Nancy Chery's In the
Parallel Universe, and Side 32 by Victor Hernández Crúz were the model poems. We
never got to Billy Collins'' Litany,
but that’s OK because I wasn’t sure I wanted to use it either. A little too
Kahlil Gibranish for me. Billy Collins runs hot and cold.
The students seemed to enjoy
making group poems on the board. The first day's group poem, "I am the
lion of the sun," came out of that process almost spontaneously. We talked
of metaphor, and I told them how I can’t teach metaphor, but I can teach them to make
simile. Basically, I’m trying to show these young poets that the transparency of teaching poetry is not so much
about following the rules as it is about that spontaneousness that happens when you think
you’re doing the lesson. In other words, it was OK to go off script. And that
the poetry frameworks were merely there to help them—should they get stuck.
I introduced editing during
the board work of their class poem, Perfect River, an If/Then poem, and lively discussions on
linguistics and line aesthetics, and imagery arose. How could sharks eat the
night stars? It doesn't make sense. I used those moments as teaching moments.
PERFECT RIVER
If I was the perfect river
I would be full of fish
Big white sharks
eating the stars
out of the sky.
Have you ever seen the stars
leap out of the water
and eat the moon?
If I was a river,
I’d be moving slow,
not fast.
I am the perfect river
and I’ll never stop
flowing into your heart.
I’ll flow all the way down
to the ocean of love.
Class Poem
Some
students were really locked into the idea that poetry had to make sense, had to
be literal, had to be true. Or that it had to rhyme. Which is interesting,
because when they read their poems aloud, they are, in essence rapping their poems in
iambic pentameter. I pointed out the
role of iambics and memory. The first poems before there was writing. The
origins of storytelling and myth. The handprint stenciled on the cave wall.
They delved deeper into metaphor—an interesting aside, was that they began to
spontaneously delve into the concept of spiritual awakening. I need to be careful
because I didn’t want them to get into a fiery God and brimstone act. We did
not get to the love is like poems which I had hoped to do. Surprisingly M. and D., the two Latinix girls wrote animal poems, and also turned in their
poems (which is a voluntary process—they leave poems on top of their desks if they want
me to read them).
Day 3
Since I actually typed up some
individual student poems from the week before, I individually asked each student before class if it was OK to
share that their poem. They each said yes, giving me the verbal permission I needed. If one student had said no, then, I would've changed my lesson plan, and not used the handout. They are also careful never to use last names.
And most students did either change their poems, or added onto their first draft. I introduced the idea that a first
draft could be a separate poem all on its own, and that it was OK to change the poems because
they would still have both copies after I added their edits and changes. But they were a
little anxious about the process.
I introduced the concept of
editing again, for Brian Kervin’s upcoming editing class on February 7. There is a Marin
student poetry contest on Feb. 14. We did lots of revisions on the typed poems
from the previous week. And we did some great boardwork. We didn’t get to the love
poems again, the I Am poems prevailed, a
spillover. I reintroduced the idea of In my other life as part two of the poems during freewrite, after the
board poems. I always attempt to pick up the threads of the week before, as
an ongoing process.
Some kids are willing to do
freewrite, most are not. We created more board poems again at the end of class,
after students shared their own work. D. seems to really like the group board
work process. He doesn’t do very much on his own. W. is the most engaged
student I have met in a long time. U., from Guatemala, who spoke no
English, sat next to W., so W. could translate what I was saying. He was
suddenly engaged. I told him of my travels to Guatemala and he wrote a poem
about his village, asked him what his name meant, and said of course, Ulysses,
the famous Greek hero. He beamed with pride.
R. is very thoughtful, I
like his silence. T. wrote something today too, very surprising. He still
doesn’t really want to share. Said he was unfairly incarcerated, he didn’t do
anything wrong, a litany of denial they all share. The substitute teacher was
enamored of the idea of If and Then
poems and began to recite spontaneously a Rudyard Kipling poem based on If. She really enjoyed the class and it was fun to have
her there, unlike most subs.
Day 4 Heart poems
It was much harder today to
begin the class because most of the kids whose poems had been typed up, were
gone as in matriculated from the program—including my star pupil, W. There
were five new kids and that significantly changed the dynamics of the class.
Wi., an African-American, wanted to take over the board poems completely
with gangster talk. It was the first time we had to invoke the appropriateness
clause. Three guards called him on it. I was glad for the back-up. Wi. wanted to completely take over the board poems, and no one else got a chance to
say anything. However, the teacher was thrilled that he was coming out of his
shell and interacting. Oh!
We revisited last weeks
end-of-class board poem, a derisive poem about breakfast. In essence, it was a
list poem. Some of the kids began to defend breakfast, but it was a fun
mini-comparison exercise. I told them they could do freewrite riffs on it, or
develop their own ideas from the board poems if they didn’t agree where the
poem was going.
This morning
I ate rubber eggs
stinky as fish,
bread as hard as rock.
Frozen OJ like Antarctica
Pancakes taste like Playdoh.
Milk smelling
like rubbing alcohol.
Cleaning supplies,
like our cleaned up minds.
Class Poem
We finally got to Dorianne
Laux’s heart poem—on the day she was named a Chancellor of the Academy of
American Poets. I told them about other CPITS poets who’ve gone onto national,
and international fame: Jane Hirshfield, Juan Felipe Hererra, Molly Fisk, who also quoted
yesterday in the New York Times. Students are amazed that one could ostensibly win money,
or become famous via poetry. Which brought me back to that upcoming Marin
student poets contest Feb. 14, with a $200 prize. To the students, that was 200-karat money. Everyone wanted to enter a poem.
We finally read the Laux Heart poem, which I wanted to introduce last week, so we
could lead into Hikmet’s Things I didn’t Know I loved, but
there just wasn’t enough time. I asked them what lines or images resonated. I
wanted students to personify the heart, or the soul, and or life—or
something less than concrete, in order to be able to talk about it in abstract
terms, and yet relate it to their own lives.
I sang a stanza from the Canadian
songwriters, the McGarrigle Sisters: Some say the heart is just like a wheel….
saying that song lyrics is where poetry and music intersect. I also tell them that the hardest thing
I can do in public is to sing, that I’m terrified. But I do it anyway. You
could feel a palpable shift in the air. We just deepened. And now it was time for me to go. The next poet to take over. I wrote Josef Conrad’s famous line about the Belgian Congo, heart
of darkness, on the board, and told the
story of how the novel came from that metaphor. And the students wrote an
amazing class poem on the board.
HEART OF DARKNESS
A heart of darkness
Takes the patience of greatness
Throughout the day
It brings on phases of freedom
Itching for poetry
It wants a door of iron, a path of fire.
But don’t get wired.
Inside the heart of a soldier
Too much on my shoulders.
An American dream.
Class Poem
Since we still had some time
left at the end of class after students shared their poems out loud, they
wanted to do another board poem. R. kicked off the first line it was great.
I had him write his own line on the board, next step to owning it. Then Wi. decided he wanted to write the second line and we went nowhere fast. So I never
got to do my closure speech with them. But having them write on the board was
priceless. We covered a lot of ground, but the Laux poem didn't generate the response that I had hoped for. I had to remind myself that sometimes closure happens after you're gone. The board poem was my closure.
