Invitation
If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come site by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
That is a poem by Shel Silverstein, and it was incorporated into recent event held by my group in our class: "Poetry Playtime." The following are excerpts from a paper I wrote in response to the event.
***
Poetry Playtime was born of the idea that most people fear poetry. They loathe it. The very idea of it conjures up words like, “boring,” “long,” and “confusing.” Yet for most of us, poetry was an integral part of our childhood development. From the sing-songy scheme of almost all children’s books to the primary colored pages of Dr. Seuss to the simplest of all nursery rhymes, we learned words through poetry. We learned to love reading through learning to read and recite poems. We giggled at the way the words sounded and loved the way they felt spilling from our little inexperienced mouths.
Our group – Tom, Tiffany, and I – hoped to encourage our fellow college students by remembering the days when poetry was fun, not scary. We wanted to recreate the experience of having poetry read to us, and this would come complete with childhood snacks and a “reading” circle.
Our poetry outreach project took place on Wednesday, March 3, at the 10:00 hour. We were hoping for good weather so we could sit outside, so obviously it was raining, and we were banished to Neely Dining Hall. Though we hadn’t picked up any “carpet squares” (an earlier idea that got canned), we arranged some chairs in a circle in the corner of the room. It would be nice, quiet, intimate… or, 70+ people would show up… which is what did happen. Luckily, there were more chairs available, and so the circle expanded. Eventually we used up all the chairs and so some stragglers stood. They may have come for the childlike smorgasbord we had prepared: goldfish crackers, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (no crust, cut diagonally), Fruit-Roll-Ups, and Capri Sun pouches. Regardless, they came, and that was the most important part.
Tiffany went first, reading some poems from a Shel Silverstein book. As I looked around the room, some people’s faces lit up in recognition – not everyone, but some. Whispers of, “Oh, I loved this poem!” and “I remember this one.” arose from our reading circle. Now I can’t pretend to know how other people were feeling, or what they were thinking. But I know what I was thinking. As Tiffany recited “Smart,” I remembered memorizing the poem and performing it for my 4th grade class. We all had to pick a Shel poem to memorize and recite, and I was so proud of myself. I was proud because I had memorized the poem, of course, but also proud that I knew that five pennies was less than one dollar.
Smart
My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is more than one!
And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes -- I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!
Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!
And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!
And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head --
Too proud of me to speak!
Tiffany closed the session with an excellent rendition of Dr. Seuss’s classic, "Oh, the Places You’ll Go!" I would guesstimate that two-thirds of high school graduates either received this book as a gift, or heard some part of it recited during a graduation speech. Tiffany spoke briefly on this, and mentioned that perhaps in rereading it could be meaningful to us again and again as we encountered new phases of our lives.
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...
OH! THE PLACES YOU'LL GO!
You'll be on your way up!
You'll be seeing great sights!
You'll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.
It’s corny, I know. Yet I feel that so often we are ushered into this “adult” world and unfortunately we leave behind the meaning we found in simplicity, exchanging it for an embittered quest into what we assume is a “more mature obscurity.” I think there is as much truth to be found in Dr. Seuss’s monosyllabic stories and Shel Silverstein’s whimsical poetry as any other poet or storyteller could wish to have. It is powerful and poignant, just in an easy-to-open wrapper.
Our poetry project touched on the very oral nature of most children’s poetry. I thought this was interesting as it coincided with our in-class discussion on spoken-word poetry. Most children’s poetry is extremely adaptable to being read out loud, and I would venture to say that most of it is better when read out loud. The act of reading to a child is incredibly powerful and purposeful. Children who are regularly read to associate reading with the comfort of having another person’s undivided attention. It also encourages them to begin to read, as they sound out the words. If you pay attention, a lot of young children first learning to read almost always read out loud to themselves. In a sense (and our program tried to capture that), we could learn a thing or two from these children. Much poetry is better understood after reading it aloud. Our poetry reading combined the remembered sense of ownership of reading aloud with the remembered sense of comfort from being read to.
I think our group addressed in our poetry outreach project the need for poetry to be accessible again. People who may have struggled with understanding or appreciating poetry for most of their “academic careers” may have walked away from Poetry Playtime with a refreshed outlook on the craft. Though perhaps they did not rush out to buy the latest Norton Anthology, maybe a few went home and dug out an old copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends. At the very least, I am certain that people came, had an encounter with real, meaningful poetry, and left feeling non-threatened, non-confused, and probably a little happier. That is good enough for me.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
On Monday in class, we watched a documentary entitled, "What I Want My Words To Do For You." This critically acclaimed film follows a writing group in a maximum security women's prison, and then the performance of some of the pieces in a special presentation at the prison by actresses like Marisa Tomei, Glenn Close, and Rosie Perez. Here is the website about the film: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/whatiwant/index.html
I first want to address that this film is challenging on ethical grounds, because murder is murder, right? And yet to see and hear the stories of many of these women, one is struck by the honesty and remorse and shame - they become real people, not just faces and names that you flip past in a newspaper. Then again, their victims also had faces and names - but many of these women now realize that. So it is interesting, to say the least. I did appreciate that the film wasn't trying to make the point that these women should be released or given special priveleges. I don't even think it was making the point that the judicial system is bad or that prisons are bad. The message I got was that groups like this create a community in which writing becomes theraputic, and rehabilitative.
The honesty with which many of the women presented their stories was shocking and thought-provoking. One story in particular that struck me was that of a former prostitute who had, in a fit of rage, stabbed to death one of her "johns." As she told her story, she was crying, explaining that she knew that in a few minutes, that man had received all the guilt, shame, and hurt from years of sexual and physical abuse from her childhood and adolescence. She was acutely aware that she took the life of another human being, a real person with a name and a family. She was even conscious enough of her crime to say that, looking back, she knew the man she'd killed was not a pervert or sex-addict, but an elderly man who had recently lost his wife of 40 years and was craving intimacy. The fact that she could be that understanding and compassionate about a man she murdered really jarred me. At the same time - she did commit a crime, and she should be in prison. So---
Now on to the writing aspect. In class someone half-jokingly remarked that they'd have liked to see how this program worked in a men's prison facility. I think there's some truth to the idea, however, that a community of writers like the one in the film may only have been possible with a group of women. Men and women are so different in their ways of communicating, and something about the trusting - and even nurturing - nature of the women made their sharing capable. They wanted to listen, and more importantly they wanted to be heard, because then it made their stories of change and sorrow matter.
More thoughts to come later...
I first want to address that this film is challenging on ethical grounds, because murder is murder, right? And yet to see and hear the stories of many of these women, one is struck by the honesty and remorse and shame - they become real people, not just faces and names that you flip past in a newspaper. Then again, their victims also had faces and names - but many of these women now realize that. So it is interesting, to say the least. I did appreciate that the film wasn't trying to make the point that these women should be released or given special priveleges. I don't even think it was making the point that the judicial system is bad or that prisons are bad. The message I got was that groups like this create a community in which writing becomes theraputic, and rehabilitative.
The honesty with which many of the women presented their stories was shocking and thought-provoking. One story in particular that struck me was that of a former prostitute who had, in a fit of rage, stabbed to death one of her "johns." As she told her story, she was crying, explaining that she knew that in a few minutes, that man had received all the guilt, shame, and hurt from years of sexual and physical abuse from her childhood and adolescence. She was acutely aware that she took the life of another human being, a real person with a name and a family. She was even conscious enough of her crime to say that, looking back, she knew the man she'd killed was not a pervert or sex-addict, but an elderly man who had recently lost his wife of 40 years and was craving intimacy. The fact that she could be that understanding and compassionate about a man she murdered really jarred me. At the same time - she did commit a crime, and she should be in prison. So---
Now on to the writing aspect. In class someone half-jokingly remarked that they'd have liked to see how this program worked in a men's prison facility. I think there's some truth to the idea, however, that a community of writers like the one in the film may only have been possible with a group of women. Men and women are so different in their ways of communicating, and something about the trusting - and even nurturing - nature of the women made their sharing capable. They wanted to listen, and more importantly they wanted to be heard, because then it made their stories of change and sorrow matter.
More thoughts to come later...
Monday, March 15, 2004
Well it's been a few days since my last post, but with good reason - I just got engaged! And then I was on Spring Break. So it's been a whirlwind two weeks of calling everyone I know and setting a date, which was oddly enough a very stressful and difficult challenge. But the date has been set -Saturday, March 12, 2005. Yay!
And now, back to poetry.
Let's talk about Cowboy Poetry, today, shall we? Yes, you heard me correctly. Cowboy poetry. The poems of cowboys. Cowboys do still exist, and while they don't have shoot-em-ups with Indians, pretty much all the rest of the stereotypes apply. I can say this with some certainty because I was born and raised in Oklahoma. Listen to a Garth Brooks CD, if you don't believe me. I know what "spurs and latigo" are. Anyway, I was quite surprised to find that there is an entire subculture of spoken word cowboy poetry, and that these wranglers of the wild west get together at little conferences to share their poems.
Go on and snicker if you want, but the truth is that I think it is wonderful. It's no more silly and superficial than a rapper singing about being a pimp who likes his hos in Louis Vutton bikinis. In fact, it's strangely enough in the same vein - dreaming and bragging and speaking out to a group of people who consider a good horse the best bling-bling money can buy. I mean, they have a "Lariat Laureate" - how CUTE is that?! This is what LaVonne Houlton, one of the current Laureates, had to say about Cowboy Poetry:
"Cowboy Poetry isn't about kings, tycoons or posh surroundings. It is about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, be they set in the past or in the present. It covers an important time and aspect of American life that many people cherish, and children still dream of... I believe that poetry portrays the Cowboy and the West better even than prose can do."
In all seriousness, this quote, and others you can find at www.cowboypoetry.com, suggests a serious reconsideration of poetry as the primary method of storytelling and history-keeping for an entire culture. We are swept from the 20th century American West to BC Classical Greece, to the time when Homeric epics were woven and spun and retold from generation to generation. Cowboy poetry mirrors that exact desire to record great feats, to embody the dreams and fears of a people, to carry all those things from the past into the present through the oral sharing of poetry. What seems hokey and rusticated is, surprisingly, ultra-formal in both form and purpose.
And now, back to poetry.
Let's talk about Cowboy Poetry, today, shall we? Yes, you heard me correctly. Cowboy poetry. The poems of cowboys. Cowboys do still exist, and while they don't have shoot-em-ups with Indians, pretty much all the rest of the stereotypes apply. I can say this with some certainty because I was born and raised in Oklahoma. Listen to a Garth Brooks CD, if you don't believe me. I know what "spurs and latigo" are. Anyway, I was quite surprised to find that there is an entire subculture of spoken word cowboy poetry, and that these wranglers of the wild west get together at little conferences to share their poems.
Go on and snicker if you want, but the truth is that I think it is wonderful. It's no more silly and superficial than a rapper singing about being a pimp who likes his hos in Louis Vutton bikinis. In fact, it's strangely enough in the same vein - dreaming and bragging and speaking out to a group of people who consider a good horse the best bling-bling money can buy. I mean, they have a "Lariat Laureate" - how CUTE is that?! This is what LaVonne Houlton, one of the current Laureates, had to say about Cowboy Poetry:
"Cowboy Poetry isn't about kings, tycoons or posh surroundings. It is about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people, be they set in the past or in the present. It covers an important time and aspect of American life that many people cherish, and children still dream of... I believe that poetry portrays the Cowboy and the West better even than prose can do."
In all seriousness, this quote, and others you can find at www.cowboypoetry.com, suggests a serious reconsideration of poetry as the primary method of storytelling and history-keeping for an entire culture. We are swept from the 20th century American West to BC Classical Greece, to the time when Homeric epics were woven and spun and retold from generation to generation. Cowboy poetry mirrors that exact desire to record great feats, to embody the dreams and fears of a people, to carry all those things from the past into the present through the oral sharing of poetry. What seems hokey and rusticated is, surprisingly, ultra-formal in both form and purpose.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
For the past few weeks we've been continuing our discussion of spoken word poetry, though that discussion has branched off into related topics: namely, what defines poetry and should poetry be categorized into "literary" and "other." We read an article by a man named Dana Gioia called, "Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture." You can look at it here: http://www.poems.com/essagioi.htm
This is the article I want to talk about right now.
Gioia's statements are all based on his opinion that our society is seeing the decline of print as the primary form of communication. He supports this claim well, and it is not hard to see certain tendencies in our culture that make me want to agree. For example, I really don't think that children read any more, or at least not in the way that they once did. The accessibility of other forms of entertainment such as TV, movies, video games, music, and particularly the computer and internet, all make reading seem antiquated and boring. He listed some statistics I might question, however. After all, it's true that I probably spend a couple more hours a day looking at articles online than I do looking at an actual book - but isn't this still print? I mean, technically I could print the articles out and then read them in that way... so I'm not sure if the written communication is what is being abandoned or lost, so much as it is the physical manifestations of these texts in books, anthologies, magazines, newspapers, etc.
I also found it interesting that while Gioia believed print to be a dying media, he does not believe verse to be a dying art form. In fact, quite the opposite: verse is flourishing in non-print forms in a way that poetry hasn't seen in... well, ever. I particularly enjoyed this quote, which sort of sums it up: "From a poet's perspective, however, both the mass media and the culture critics miss the most interesting aspects of the new popular poetry, which is not the extravagant personalities of its creators or the sociological nature of its contents; rather, it is the unusual mixture of radical innovation and unorthodox traditionalism in the structure of the work itself and the modes of its performance, transmission, and reception." It surprised me to think of a poetry form like "rap" as "traditional" in any sense of the word, but as I thought more it seemed more true. Rap and spoken word poetry pick up many poetical devices that the modernists deemed unnecessary and lesser: rhyme, fixed meter, vivid sensory imagery.
It is not much of a stretch for me to think of some rap as poetry, as spoken verse. After all, as Gioia points out, "Rap has already become a major branch of commercial entertainment. It would be no exaggeration to say that rap is the only form of verse — indeed perhaps the only literary form of any kind — truly popular among American youth of all races. If there is a new generation of readers emerging in America, rap will be one of its formative experiences — just as jazz or movies were to earlier generations." Still, when I think about poetry, I'm hard-pressed to include something like 50 Cent's "In da Club"
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go shawty- ish yo birthday
we gon party like ish yo birthday
We gon sip bacardy like ish yo birthday
and u noe we dun give a f*** if that's yo birthday
and say it's in the same category as what I would consider more gifted and serious "poets" - even "popular" spoken word poets might agree. I don't really know.
This is the article I want to talk about right now.
Gioia's statements are all based on his opinion that our society is seeing the decline of print as the primary form of communication. He supports this claim well, and it is not hard to see certain tendencies in our culture that make me want to agree. For example, I really don't think that children read any more, or at least not in the way that they once did. The accessibility of other forms of entertainment such as TV, movies, video games, music, and particularly the computer and internet, all make reading seem antiquated and boring. He listed some statistics I might question, however. After all, it's true that I probably spend a couple more hours a day looking at articles online than I do looking at an actual book - but isn't this still print? I mean, technically I could print the articles out and then read them in that way... so I'm not sure if the written communication is what is being abandoned or lost, so much as it is the physical manifestations of these texts in books, anthologies, magazines, newspapers, etc.
I also found it interesting that while Gioia believed print to be a dying media, he does not believe verse to be a dying art form. In fact, quite the opposite: verse is flourishing in non-print forms in a way that poetry hasn't seen in... well, ever. I particularly enjoyed this quote, which sort of sums it up: "From a poet's perspective, however, both the mass media and the culture critics miss the most interesting aspects of the new popular poetry, which is not the extravagant personalities of its creators or the sociological nature of its contents; rather, it is the unusual mixture of radical innovation and unorthodox traditionalism in the structure of the work itself and the modes of its performance, transmission, and reception." It surprised me to think of a poetry form like "rap" as "traditional" in any sense of the word, but as I thought more it seemed more true. Rap and spoken word poetry pick up many poetical devices that the modernists deemed unnecessary and lesser: rhyme, fixed meter, vivid sensory imagery.
It is not much of a stretch for me to think of some rap as poetry, as spoken verse. After all, as Gioia points out, "Rap has already become a major branch of commercial entertainment. It would be no exaggeration to say that rap is the only form of verse — indeed perhaps the only literary form of any kind — truly popular among American youth of all races. If there is a new generation of readers emerging in America, rap will be one of its formative experiences — just as jazz or movies were to earlier generations." Still, when I think about poetry, I'm hard-pressed to include something like 50 Cent's "In da Club"
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go shawty- ish yo birthday
we gon party like ish yo birthday
We gon sip bacardy like ish yo birthday
and u noe we dun give a f*** if that's yo birthday
and say it's in the same category as what I would consider more gifted and serious "poets" - even "popular" spoken word poets might agree. I don't really know.
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