New Poems Featured at Raft

Three of my new poems (inclusing audio files) are featured on the new online literary magazine Raft. These are poems where I was experimenting with form - two poems that use adapted computer code (javascript, perl and a little splash of xml) to write lyrics.  Another poem, "Dear Real Life" is an exploded sonnet - a sonnet that speaks in two voices written in two columns. 

November is Poem a Day Month too!

Beginning November 1, I will be participating in another poem-a-day excercise throughout the month thanks to the lovely California poet, Molly Fisk. There is something so powerful about a daily writing practice (it's how my book Inheritance  came about! Writing a poem a day riding the subway into and out of Manhattan from Brooklyn.)  I'm looking forward to whatever comes about!

What the Titanic can teach us about teaching writing

Ocean Explorer Robert Ballard's Ted Talk inspired me recently.  During the beginning of his talk he asserts that everything he needed to know in order to do his job well he did not learn in college.  Science was changing so fast while he was in college that by the time his Professors taught him theories he already knew what he was learning was obsolete.  But instead of challenging the teachers he lied on his tests in order to get an A.  Ballard's point made me think about the steep learning curve we face teaching students how to write using a multitude of mediums the workforce today.  Once we become adept at micro blogging and have successfully developed curriculum to teach students how to use twitter as a communications vehicle in the real world will it be obsolete? Maybe, who knows! Since it's almost impossible to keep up with all of the new mediums, seems like we should leave ourselves open to our students' expertise in using collaborative technology in order to keep up with the curve.  What would Ballard's teacher's have learned had he been taught in a more collaborative environment?

Writing it Real - Shirley Jackson's Memoir Life Among the Savages

I am completely enjoying reading Shirley Jackson's memoir about motherhood entitled, Life Among the Savages.  Thanks to Ayelet Waldman who recommended the text as a "real" account of parenthood (aka the good, the bad, and the ugly about what it is like to raise young children). Jackson (who most famously wrote the chilling, highly anthologized short story, "The Lottery") is writing about parenting her three small children in rural Vermont (after just having left New York City) in the early 1950s.  Jackson's tales may have been written over half a century ago, but her accounts of her oldest son's terrible first weeks of Kindergarten, her daughters cast of imaginary friends, could have been written yesterday.  If you are looking for a well-written, hilarious read about what it is really like to be a parent, I highly recommend this book.

There is much to be learned about how collaborative technologies can change the way we teach and interact with literature

There is much to be learned about how collaborative technologies can change the way we teach and interact with literature. As a recent Ph.D. with ten years experience working at a Fortune 100 technology company, I know how powerful collaborative technologies can be; however, rarely do you see the right technologies facilitating collaboration within the creative writing and literature classroom and beyond. Students who are constantly updating and checking their Facebook status page will not engage in a discussion driven by a text-heavy PowerPoint slide deck delivered in a darkly lit room. But how will they engage? Do we need to constantly entertain the tweeting youth in order to keep them engaged in the Higher education classroom? Does every college student learn in exactly the same way? No, and no. Technology (especially collaborative technology) evolves because people adapt it to solve problems. My approach to integrating collaborative technology into my creative writing and literature classrooms is to encourage collaboration, expand the modalities used to reach a larger breadth of students, and to open the doors of the classroom to the greater community.
What can we learn from Facebook and Twitter about teaching a poem?
A great deal, some examples are:

• The Wisdom of the Crowd – students constantly interact with content on the web. Why not create a learning environment where students can comment on, rate, share and recommend poems?

• Ambient intimacy - Typical students have 100s of Facebook friends but only respond and interact with a core group. They do, however, glean information about many more friends through ambient intimacy. Ambient intimacy is the indirect relationship achieved by reading and following someone’s microblog posts. Why not encourage students to follow key microbloggers and bloggers who are experts on the topics you are covering in the course? Who knows what they may learn by following these threads?

• Microblogging as a creative tool – writing Twaiku, or poems written in the 140 character-limit form of microblogging can teach students about the power found in brevity. How about requiring 140 character responses to specific poems?
The Collaborative Classroom
Collaborative technologies extend our reach in the classroom by allowing us to create an online community where students can feel empowered to interact with content. Not every student will understand a poem by H.D. by reading it on the page, but by including a video clip and an audio file or by encouraging students to comment on poems and interact with their peers about a poem, more students may come to understand H.D.’s work. The other area where students can be empowered in the Web 2.0 space is in collaborative research. In many American survey courses students listen to one-way lectures and skim through an anthology, with little interaction with the work. But I believe topics like American literature can be opened up especially in the online classroom. By encouraging students to engage and empowering them to do so. How did American literature come to be American literature? How did Alice Walker stumble upon Zora Neale Hurston’s work? Serendipity. By looking for what was not yet there. By introducing students to online databases and resources and teaching them how to access this information and encouraging them to believe that the American canon is a living thing, ever changing, and that they, too, can discover great works of art they feel empowered to look and read more closely.
Video/TelePresence
There are technologies available today where video quality is so high that the person viewed appears real, as if she were sitting across the table for you. Think about the possibilities these technologies could offer up to students? Speakers from around the world could visit the classroom, sharing their knowledge and interacting with the students.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but rather a drop in the bucket. Technology is not something that should be thought of an additional peripheral tool that can/can’t be added to enhance a class. It should be thought of as part of the organic experience of the learning environment, especially within the humanities. The question isn’t what technology can I use to enhance this lesson? It’s more symbiotic - how does this lesson evolve using technology/ how do we evolve this technology to enhance teaching? How can we re-think how we think about texts by using technology? It’s also important not to use technology just to use technology. All technologies are not equal and will not solve the same problems. I’m looking forward to future research in this area – how to evolve how we think about using technologies in the Creative writing classroom not as a means to draw more students to our classrooms but as a means to teach better.

Maximize the Surface Area Where Serendipity Can Happen - Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco

Of course there were no sessions dedicated to the connected/collaborative classroom at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, but a number of the keynote speakers had inspirational messages that could easily be applied to the use and application of Web 2.0 technology in higher education learning.   

One key point was the switch to thinking about Web 2.0 technologies as technologies that are driven by and evolve based on people and how they use these technologies.  Most of the big advances that have happened in the New Media space have happened because people have invented new ways to use existing technologies in new and interesting ways (ways that the developers of these technologies never dreamt of) to maximize the surface area where serendipity can happen. 

In the higher education space it seems like we could learn a lot from our own students...how do they currently use social media to consume/interact with content?  Also, how do we move away from the "all or nothing" philosophy?  What is we were to allow students to interact with content in multiple mediums?  There is a time and place for video, microblogging, podcasts, as well as regular, face-to-face interactive lectures...how do we learn as educators how to choose the right medium for the content we are teaching?  And how do we accommodate the different types of learners in our classroom by providing content in multiply mediums.
Interesting Keynotes from Web 2.0 Web Expo to check out -

• June Cohen of Ted Talks - Ideas Worth Spreading
• Ge Wang of Stanford University - Breaking Barriers with Sound

30 Days / 30 Poems

I've just finished writing a poem a day during the entire month of April thanks to the daily prompts provided by readwritepoem.org. I don't know what will come of all of this writing (or how much of it is salvageable) but the practice of daily writing was truly amazing. Hmmm...maybe I should do this more than one month out of the year?

100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teaching Students About Social Media

100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teaching Students About Social Media

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Thirst

I've been reading Amy Lowell's most famous biography lately (by S. Foster Damon). It's fascinating. It's so interspersed with excerpts from her letters that it's almost as if Amy is telling the story herself. I've been thinking a lot about Lowell's intense sense of place and how her home permeated so much of her work. Lowell grew up in a house named Sevenels, just outside of Boston, then stayed in the home (after renovating it) after her parents died. So, her sense of place was deeply rooted. Her childhood, her adulthood, were both intertwined and lay rooted in the soil of her family home.

She had a unique way of taking anything she learned about - but especially the classics - and planting it in Boston. She was never formally educated in the classics. But she read them voraciously throughout her life. Perhaps her lack of formal education, the fact that she came across these poets eye-to-eye as a poet, made her feel more comfortable renovating their themes and motifs into the new, modern landscape of America. She called Sappho "a burning birch tree" and replaced Arcadian meadows with the flora and fauna of the sunken garden of her estate in Boston. I think this aspect makes her a very American poet. And I think that the audacity of her poems (paired with the sheer honesty and confessional quality of them) was greatly influential on the writers in the generation that would follow her.

I think one of the loveliest versions of Lowell's Boston-Grecian themes is found in ΔΙΨΑ (Thirst) from A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass (1912):

Look, Dear, how bright the moonlight is to-night!
See where it casts the shadow of that tree
Far out upon the grass. And every gust
Of light night wind comes laden with the scent
Of opening flowers which never bloom by day:
Night-scented stocks, and four-o'clocks, and that
Pale yellow disk, upreared on its tall stalk,
The evening primrose, comrade of the stars.
It seems as though the garden which you love
Were like a swinging censer, its incense
Floating before us as a reverent act
To sanctify and bless our night of love.
Tell me once more you love me, that 't is you
Yes, really you, I touch, so, with my hand;
And tell me it is by your own free will
That you are here, and that you like to be
Just here, with me, under this sailing pine...

A Birthday: Keats at Dawn, Sushi and Lear

This was my birthday weekend. And it was certainly a catalog of extremes (which seems fit, given my life these days).

1. Friday at dawn. I couldn't sleep so I came downstairs and read Keat's letters (for the first time). Had many revelations about my dissertation topic, none of which have solidified.

2. Friday night. WENT OUT. with new and old dear friends. Ate emense amounst of sushi (see before and after photo below).

BEFORE:

AFTER:

3. Sunday. Went to the Folger Shakespeare Library and saw King Lear. Lear roared on the stage. Almost naked. His hair seemingly aflame with insanity. Had more revelations about my dissertation topic.


4. Sunday night. Jackson gave me a birthday card where he actually wrote his and Max's name in legibile letters. Amazing.

Needless to say, it was an incredible weekend!

To Launder or not to Launder...

I am sitting in my basement right now completely ignoring the immense pile of clothes I have to fold. There is this quiet nagging voice in my head (it's been there since about the time I had my first child) that keeps telling me to go into the other room and fold the laundry (by the way, it is also telling me to get dinner going, pick up the living room, empty the dishwasher and take out the trash). I was never a slob growing up, but I never really though about housekeeping the way some of my other girlfriends did in college. Maybe it was because I always had my nose in a book, or I was thinking about a poem I was working on, I don't know. But, somewhere between here and there I developed this voice in my head. The one that won't let me go to bed without picking up the kitchen, getting the coffee ready and starting the dishwasher. I remember consciously watching my mother go through her evening thousand thinking that will never be me. It's strange how things change. I guess out of a sense of necessity. If I don't turn on the dishwasher, Maxi won't have any clean bottles in the morning. And if I don't get the coffee ready in advance, I'll have to try and fumbled through making it in the morning. When, given the sleep deprivation I've experienced lately due to sick kids, who knows what could happen. But, in the end, during brief periods of the day, I have control of the voice. Yes, I could be folding laundry now. But, it feels so nice not to!

Mama Gonna Knock You Out

Lately, I've been intellectualized lyrics by L.L. Cool Jay as I run on the treadmill. Maybe that's because I've been teaching hyperbole to my 7th graders, but I think it is more likely a sign that I need to get back to the books. I've taken almost two months off from my program and I'm itching to get back into it. If only the children could pick themselves up from school, make their own dinner and put themselves in bed! I'd have ample time to get back to it! : )

It is strange to be this side of the exams. To know that all that I need to study now is what I want to study. I've been gorging myself on books on Sappho. (I've actually found the edition that H.D. and Amy Lowell referred studied her from and it is surprisingly good!) I've also been applying for jobs at community colleges. I've definitely realized that teaching 7th grade English is not something I can do even for a little while.

D.C. finally got snow on Monday. We got a dusting, but schools were delayed by 2 hours. It was a great treat to have a slow morning and not have to rush the kids (and myself) of to school. It's funny how little snow shuts this city down. When I was in college there was a blizzard and it shut the whole city down for over a week.

In the spirit of getting back into the swing of my studies, I thought I would post a poem by Amy Lowell. This one is called "Generations" and is taken from her collection Pictures of the Floating World.

Generations

You are like a stem
of a young beech-tree,
straight and swaying,
Breaking out in golden leaves.
Your walk is like the blowing of beechtree
On a hill.
Your voice is like leaves
Softly struck upon by a South wind.
Your shadow is no shadow, but a scattered sunshine;
At night you pull the sun down to you
And hood yourself in stars.

But I am like a great oak under a cloudy sky,
Watching a stripling beech grow up at my feet.

It's not her best poem. But it is a poem that really showcases Lowell's style. She didn't fear repetition (repeating beech). And the clarity and emotional breadth that radiates from her images is gorgeous (the last two lines of the first stanza).

Christmas in Washinton D.C.

The sky is blue. There is no snow. This Christmas was so different from the last four we've spent in Cleveland, OH. Winter was something you put on and carried for months in Ohio. A thick coat. It was, as one of my friends once put it, an escape from the pressures of the outdoors. It was a chance to sit still, or bury oneself beneath bundles of clothes and face the bite of cold.

Last night, we went to see the tree that is in front of the Capitol. And for the first time this winter, we felt cold. The wind was one of those that bites through your clothes. The tree was beautiful. Blue, purple and gold lights and behind the tree that majestic stretch of the mall from the reflecting pool, to the Washington Monument (or as my son calls it, "the pencil"). There is something about D.C. in the dark. All of that granite and history weighing on you as you look at it.

Form as Meaning

I am listening to a Japanese pop song (off the songtrack to Lost in Translation) while I work on my questions this morning and I am absolutely struck by the way form carries over even without language. I don't understand Japanese, but I know this song is a pop song immediately when I listen to it and I am just as struck by the pop form (just as I would be if this song were in English, only I have left of a tendency to sing along when the song is in Japanese [ which is why I am listening to it while I am working on my questions]. I don't know why, but this really struck me this morning. Maybe it's because I am writing about the differences between form in poetry. Who knows. I guess it is the structure and sound of something that reaches the listener (or reader for the matter) above all else and creates the immediate emotional response. I wish I could place a soundclip in here so you could hear the song I am talking about, but I have no idea how to do that. The song is called, "Kaze Wo Atsumete." But if you speak Japanese, don't tell me what it means. Just like Randall Jarrell in "Deutsch Durch Freud," I prefer to not to completely understand, to just have the gist of it, as it floats down to me in its silly little pop form.

Ah...Merwin

"Exercise"
by W.S. Merwin

Exercise

First forget
what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly
every day
then forget
what day of the week it is
do this regularly for a week

then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
then do them together
for a weekwith as few breaks as possible
follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them around
after a week
both will help you later to forget how to count
forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backward
starting with even numbers
starting with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
starting with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
until everything is continuous again
go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire
forget fire

I was debating whether or not to go for a sort run to try and clear the cobwebs from my brain so I can write again and I came across this poem by Merwin. He is so elementally lyric. And I always think of him, with his boyish smile, walking through the rainforests of Maui. He must be in his 70s now, but to me, he'll always be 40 or so (however old he was on the cover of some anthology I read where I fell in love with him for the first time). I am spending the day writing on my questions. Matt took the kids to his aunt's house. I think one of my questions is done. Now, just three to go. I am working on getting up the momentum to begin another one and procrastinating with poems once again.

7th grade...what was I thinking?

Blogging as a procrastination device

Ok, now that I am writing at least one of my questions, blogging and reading poetry has become a procrastination device. I just picked up Alice Notely. Just plucked The Descent of Alette off the shelf and all of these loose-leaf poems I'd tucked in the paperback. Treasures. I've no idea what book they are from. They are just poems by Alice Notely. Like this, the opening poem from her book-length poem, "The Descent of Alette":

"One day, I awoke" "& found myself on" "a subway, endlessly"
"I didn't know" "how I'd arrived there or" "who was I" "exactly"
"But I knew the train" "knew riding it" "knew the look of"
"those about me" "I gradually became aware--" "thought it seemed

as that happened" "that I'd always" "known it too--" "that there was"
"a tyrant" "a man in charge of" "the fact" "that we were"
"below the ground" "endlessly riding" "our trains, never surfacing"
"A man who" "would make you pay" "so much" "to leave the subway"

"that you don't" "ever ask" "how much it is" "It is, in effect"
"all of you, & more" "Most of which you already" "pay to
live below" "But he would literally" "take your soul" "Which is
what you are" "below the ground" "Your soul""your soul rides

"this subway" "I saw" "on the subway a" "world of souls"


I find her work stunning. (And in direct conversation with Pound's Metro now that I think of it.) And the breath-pause created by the quotations is aurally both hypnotic and abrasive (in a subway car, jerking sort-of-way). Descent, is Notely's epic poem about unearthing her female voice.

Ok, I've got to stop procrastinating...

Islanded

I islanded myself in the world of Manhatten for a night last night -- sans children. I had, there and back, eight solid hours of reading on the train which proved immensely productive. So, when I stepped onto the platform at Penn station, I was myself islanded in metaphor theory, and H.D. criticism. I was islanded between myself before children and after children. The subway just smelled good when I got on it and headed downtown to West 4th (one of my poet friend later mentioned what I might have been smelling was nostalgia, and the freedom of my old life). Melissa Hammerle is leaving NYU CWP, so I went to pay tribute for all of her support. The reception was in the building where I had last faced Donoghue (spelling?), who now, I just fondly refute in the marfins of my reading. Then, after, we went to Cedar bar. I was surrounded by writers. Generations of them, all of whom Melissa had kindly supported during her tenure.

It was good to be in NYC. (The first time in five years!!!) but also, surprisingly, nice to leave it this morning, to get on a train and read and write, and return to my quieter domestic exsistence here in D.C.

Well, I've begun to teach 7th grade.

It is quite a change from teaching college. For one thing, there are FIVE classes! It's a long day. I see a lot of caffeine in my future. Then there's the classroom discipline thing -- you have to do a lot of getting everybody back on task. Besides that, teaching is teaching.

Jackson started pre-school today. He loved it. He wears a little uniform (a yellow polo shirt and khaki shorts -- he looks so cute!). Maxy had his first birthday last week. (That's why he's wearing a little plaid suit in the photo. Also pictured in the photo holding him is my host mother from Germany - Gaby. She and Rolf, my host father, visited us all last week. It was wonderful to see them again.) I can't beleive Max is already a year old! He really enjoyed being the center of attention for a day. It was great.

Ok - I'm trying to make a table of contents and MY GOD! How do you line all of those little numbers up? There has got to be some little plug-in on program I could use to make my table of contents without having to "eye it" as I am trying to do (and let me tell you - I don't have a good eye!).

But, the fact that I am writing a table of contents at all proves that yes, indeed, I have sucessfully collaged together yet another version of my first book manuscript. Now I have two chapbooks and a book manuscript to circulate. Now I guess I just send out and send out and send out and send out.