Early Daylight Saving Time and the Darkness Is Lifting

http://www.ymcaofgreatersyracuse.org/arts/programs.aspx?ac=141

As I have mentioned in my brief blogging in the past months, I have been coping with a rough road. Redefining my career twice in 5 years has taken its toll, particularly as I am, as in the sage words of my dear friend Cathy Gibbons, basking in my late 50s and fearful of the vulnerability I face in a multitude of ways, not just in aging. I loved my work with Partners for Arts Education and I have loved my work in schools, for the most part. But this last couple of years of cobbling things together, hinging so much of it on the hope that Our Difficult Sunlight would translate into miraculous opportunities to deepen that work, I am seeking focus and stability. I need to find ways to continue doing what I do well and to support myself while fostering my work and identity as a poet.

I love everything I am involved with, most particularly my work with the Downtown Writers Center and the Comstock Review. I have been scattered over much of 2012 and now I feel there is more solid ground, I am clarifying my focus and commitment to both. One is a job, one is a volunteer act of love. The job is part time so, satisfying as it is, it is only a portion of what I need to keep the wolves at bay. I am working on additional income that is reliable, satisfying, and close to home.

I love working in schools but I am weary of it, all the stress, the travel, the negotiation, the ways I have to always be ready to shift in the immediate, the walking into classrooms that are unprepared for my lessons, the compressing a carefully designed program into half the time the process of learning actually requires. I do like the teachers (mostly), the students (mostly), the ways I learn more about teaching, and I love sharing my passion. I also love the checks when they arrive. I just am exhausted by it all, after 13 years of pursuing it as a career. And I am tired of being a living "Where's Waldo" book for my family and friends. I see much of the sacrifice that this career has entailed as well as the gains.

The real issue is that I have known my identity most of my life, at least since 3rd grade. I am a poet. I am relentlessly committed to that truth, even in the quiet decade in which I did not write and my faith was seriously challenged. But the words came back, as I had prayed. In the 20 years since, I have published consistently, with a chapbook, two complete volumes, and the textbook all in print. I have another collection being considered by a publisher now (I asked if he wanted first rights of refusal but am hopeful). I am working on two other collections of poetry that I am really excited about, a food memoir that is languishing somewhere in files on my computer, and now I know I am ready to start the notes that will result in a book on the craft of this confounding, amazing art form that is the spine of my soul.

There was a moment in the quiet time of my 30s to early 40s when I knew that I was being delivered back to the channel that results in poetry. No one but me would be able to decipher the difference. It was a cellular memory of what translating experience into image and language feels like. But now, I am experiencing another deepening of that jolt in the work I am producing. There is a maturity of craft that has come through years of teaching others what I believe about poetry and expression. It helps that I teach people in so many circumstances with such a wide range of age and skill. I have to make it tangible for anyone.

But the poems are surprising me. That is a great thing. They are mirroring to me how much I have embraced the notion that we teach what we want to learn. I hear and see the influence of all the poets I have taught as examples echoed in the images that unfold before me as I strive for the best word and challenge every syllable to earn its right to be spared the slash of my revision pen. I see complexity without obscurity. I hear musicality that makes me wonder where it even came from. The poems are in control and I am a diligent listener as well as servant.

I am close to solving the income problem but I also have the pining to spend my days just reading and writing and pondering and doing all those things that make a poet's life. Instead, I am sneaking things in around the obligations, even this blog post, and somehow getting books written, the bills paid once again, and seeing family and friends more frequently. I even have a dog. I think the spring will bring more growth, stronger roots, and maybe cause for celebration.   

   

Attachments, Assumptions, & Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

This school year, I have been rocked to my very core by a small number of 4th graders. I already mentioned in my previous post the kinds of concerns I was grappling with and the questions I have. I hoped that I would erode the barriers and we would start to have fun, as well as get something productive and creative accomplished. Now, with just a month left with this session of the after school program, my goals are to get through one complete 100-minute session without struggle and conflict, both with me and between themselves.

What I have seen are small indicators that I have somehow managed connection with several of the students, even if it does not look like it on the surface. One student will periodically draw me a little picture or write a note, "Ms. Popoff is my favorite teacher." Another will sometimes just stand close and tell me stories or share his feelings. These feelings are often of fear and alienation. Last week, this young man told me he wanted to be called by his middle name from now on. I agreed to comply but asked why the change. He said that he was tired of people never saying or spelling his name correctly so he was choosing the middle name, thinking it would be easier for people. Having changed my own last name partially from the same motivation, I understand the value of naming and how it impacts identity and self. I wonder if anyone else is honoring this young man's choice? I wonder if he articulated that he made a choice to anyone but me? I wonder if he was surprised when I addressed him by his chosen name rather than his given name when I saw him again this week?

Another boy asked me to hold his book for him last week until our next class two days later. Distracted with dismissal  procedures, I agreed but then did not know where the book came from so I left it on the shelf in my host teacher's room, making the erroneous assumption it would stll be there upon our return or, if it had been one of her books, we could read from it again. The teacher saw it was a library book and returned it. The boy came into our session and asked for his book and then my error in our communication was revealed. The boy felt betrayed and showed me quite graphically in a series of pictures he drew. He captioned me as a liar. We exchanged drawings as our way of working out the affront and I have saved the paper as a reminder of how simple actions can violate trust. I also prayed on it. I did not acquiesce fully but I heard him. He heard me too. I hope  he learned as much as I did.

Yesterday, one of the boys ran to me when I arrived, proclaiming that we had to make the day the best ever for one of his classmates. This girl has been my greatest challenge from day one. But there is something under her tough and tumble tomboy exterior that is sweet and yearning. I  asked the boy if it was the girl's birthday and he said, "No, today's her last day."  I asked if she as leaving the program and he said no again, she was moving away.

I quickly went to the young lady and said, "You are leaving me?! I am so sad. Where are you going?"

Then my heart became broken and some of my assumptions about this child were confirmed. She shared that her  father was murdered a number of years ago and  the family had to move because the person responsible was back on the street. The family was leaving the state.

We did our best to make her departure a good one. I did my best to let her know that I cherish her  being. I did so without being gushy. She would never approve of that. But I did  stand by her side while she waited the last time for her bus. I did repack her backpack, which was akwardly jammed with papers and notebooks. I did wish her luck and tell her I love her. I meant it.

She says she is keeping the small note commending her I left folded by her hand, that she will put it on her bulletin board in her new room. She showed the note to her friends before putting it in her pocket.

Driving home, I held back my tears. I will never see her again. I will never forget her. I will never forget her. I will never forget her.

Next week I will walk back into class and try to engage the remaining children in my group again. 

Catching Up...

It is already December. I am feeling out of connection with so much of the swirl around me. This was the year I was going to create, witness, experience a turnaround. This was the year that the doors would swing open and opportunity would be prevalent. This was the year I was going to settle soundly into my consulting and do great work. I was going to be offered all sorts of gigs and I was going to be safe and rewarded. It was also the year that I was going to be consistent with my blog, tracing my steps and sharing my thoughts.

It was going to be that year but somehow 2012 forgot to comply with my expectations and prayers.

Nearly 15 years ago, I starting on my journey as a teaching artist in a program for 3rd - 6th graders in an inner city school in my city. It seemed like it was going to be a brilliant career choice as I moved from secretary/administrative assistant to reclaim my path as poet, with teaching as the way to make my way in the world. Of course, I have never taken the traditional path to anything. I am also very guilty of self-sabotage. But the idea seemed good at the time and I believe in my dream, even now. I am just so very disheartened because it has been such a rocky trek and takes so much energy to balance all the projects that somehow still fail to meet my monthly budget needs.

That first program was a disaster, and much of it not of my own making, in spite of my naive leap and lack of experience. I cried on my way home more often than not.

I did afterschool work for several years, with joys and frustrations. It was the start of my practice as an artist educator and my commitment to sharing what I know about discovery, language, verse, the world around us.

This year, I have accepted afterschool work again. I need the money. This served as my primary motivation. I have been believing that I am good at what I do with students in the classroom. Heck, I even managed to get a book published, professing to be skilled in this work. But a small group of 4th graders have jacked me up.

After my first day with my class, just a month ago, I came home completely frustrated and asking myself if I even know how to do this anymore? Why were the children so challenging? What could I do to rein them in? To engage them? Why was it a battle for the first month of the program? What would they accept from me that would keep them focused and enthusiastic? So far, I have tried so much, with only microscopic success. I have spent hours on the phone with the site director, who is a friend and colleague, and I feel embarrassed that I am struggling with the children. What is different about them? Or have I just lost my ability, am I completely out of touch?

The other evening I was speaking with a friend who has known me since before I took the bold step to leave the day job, the health plan, the 50+ hour weeks of clerical work, to pursue that self that I felt was trapped inside, the poet I am. I was sharing my frustrations and bemoaning that the children were making it harder on all of us, if only they would trust me and go along for the ride. After all, I am a lot of fun, right?! I had a much deeper conversation about the same issues with another friend, support, guardian angel just days before, a person who works with challenging young people often classified as "youth at risk." What a catch phrase. She reminded me that we cannot save the world. We can only offer something authentically.

Then it hit me, why should these children trust me?! The same issues that I have questioned before became quite clear. They should trust me because I expect them to do so. That is what many of us in the world of adults and especially in education have come to believe. But their life experiences may not really be such that it is that easy. The children in my group have built astounding walls. Why should I be surprised? I have constructed astounding walls myself too. But I also open up with the slightest provocation. I am that eager for connection and love. The young people who I am spending Monday and Wednesday afternoons with are eager for connection and love too. But it comes at a high price, I suspect. 

Another obvious elephant in the living room has to do with not just my adulthood but, frankly, my pale skin. I can only surmise what the children I share Room 201 with on Mondays and Wednesdays know of trust, of adults, and of white people, since they are predominantly children of color. I could most likely be very wrong in any of my suppositions. But truly, why should the young ones before me trust me just because I tell them I expect it from them? Absurd notion at best. 

I realized the other evening that I must earn the trust. I don't know if I will be successful. I will do my best to present to them experiences, conversations, and activities that illustrate that I am trustworthy and safe. I can only be me and authentically so. In return, I would hope for a relief from the behavior problems and chaos that we have experienced together. I am not sure if I will get it but I will try again, in about 45 minutes. I will keep you posted.

 

It's My Birthday - Here Is This Year's Birthday Letter

October 16, 2012

Here it is again, my birthday. As has been my habit for some years now, I write to you, my dear ones, before I head out into the world of commitments, busy-ness, distractions. This solar return marks 59 years on this earth, in this body. As my dear friend Cathy Gibbons would say, I am basking in my late 50s.

It is the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which I never really connected with my birthday before today and it seems oddly relevant, though I am not sure why. And this morning I woke with a beautiful Black Labrador Retriever named Enza sleeping on the floor at the foot of my bed. Enza came to live with me yesterday. She is a mature and lovely, well-trained girl and I think it will be a remarkable addition to my home and my life. After the death of my dear Butch cat 2 years ago, I have been missing companionship in the house. Butch was very much a dog in cat’s clothing anyway so this adjustment is no stretch. Enza seems to have already fully accepted me and I am quite delighted to have her here.

It has been another challenging year but when I start to get too involved in my freak-out mode, I have to remind myself that I have achieved my major goal set forth in a simple declaration in August 1994; I have a life completely centered around my identity, my life mission, my passion for poetry. This is a remarkable blessing. The only drawback, that which often instigates freak-out mode, is that I have had a number of setbacks due to the economy that still make my security tenuous but if I remember the greater truth, I have to dwell on the miracle and blessings much more than the fear. Things are looking more prosperous with many opportunities unfolding for later this year and early 2013. I will make it…

A year ago, I was given the opportunity to work as the Workshops Coordinator at the Downtown Writers Center, to which I have been dedicated for its 11-year history so it was a good step forward. I love the work and have learned a great deal in the process. I am able to use many of my skills in the position and am involved in developing new programming as well, most especially the Young Authors Academy, for middle and high school writers, a dream actualized.

I applied last year for several residencies and fellowships, the most significant being the Guggenheim award. I proposed to complete two of the book projects that I have been slowly working on for the past 7 years. I was optimistic that the panel would see the need for support and that I would be given the time and funding to focus on my writing before any other priorities. Unfortunately, the panel did not select me this time. This is not uncommon but it did sting. My main point in my application was that of the difficulty for writers who are not sheltered and supported by the academic system. Time equals money and if you are in a day job or self-supporting, affording the time and money to do nothing but work creatively is a significant obstacle.

But this is the deal: I did not get it. There is no crying in baseball or requests for funding. You just move forward. And so I have, with one of the two manuscripts nearly completed so I can mail it out for consideration for publishing. I am nearly halfway through the second that I proposed and I have another third of a book also in process. I will move on and keep reaching. I have applied for a VCCA residency for next year and who knows, maybe they will gift me with a month of retreat.

I had the honor, along with my coauthor Quraysh Ali Lansana, of being nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Excellence in Instructional Literature this year for Our Difficult Sunlight. We were in an elite group of five nominees, including Rev. T.D. Jakes and Tavis Smiley. Again, we did not walk with the trophy but we did walk the red carpet. The deeper confirmation was that more than 40 of my dear friends and family members sponsored me financially so I could have the experience of going to the award events in Los Angeles last February. Were it not for the generous outpouring of my community, I would have been unable to make the trip. I am so very grateful for the love and respect for my work that these gifts expressed. I was given the opportunity to see myself through a different lens with this as well. I had to acknowledge the environment of love in which I dwell with the magnificent people who surround me and believe in me, my work, my life. These people provided a mirror that I now keep close at all times.

I have witnessed the illnesses and challenges of many of my dear ones. I have lost several friends and colleagues. I have also welcomed several new lives into the world. I have struggled within my own mind and heart over the course of the year, but I have also paid due attention to the marvel that the honor of life is. How is it that we are given consciousness in this grand mystery of life in the universe? We cannot truly answer any of it but we can witness it, experience it, honor it all, without answers. Maybe that is the real point. Maybe stopping the need to have explanation and rational reason for any of this leads to peace.

I have great concern for our world and, as you all know, I have my opinions about it all, particularly the political tone in this election year. But I also know that the moon is marvelous and I have no idea how many more full moons will beam in my lifetime. I anticipate a long life but none of us ever really knows. I just want to do well in sharing my talents, be a positive force in the lives of others, and an asset to community. I also want to remember to relax, be peace, and keep writing.

Thank you to each of you who reads this most recent of my birthday missives. You are the mirrors of the quality of my life and, without you, life would be empty. I smile because I am supported by a community of loving, caring beings, each with individual talents and value. Thank you for choosing me. I toast to you all. And take note, you have a year to get ready to revel with me when I turn 60!

Much love and light…Namaste!

Georgia

Every Line of Poetry Is Discovery

Over the past year or so in my teaching work, I have found myself most wanting to impart the joy of discovery that writing can be to my students. Writing is an astounding identity, also ripe with reasons to doubt oneself, grow increasingly frustrated, or simply ache for the time to rest within oneself long enough to hear what needs to be captured. Sometimes I feel I am really just catching butterflies.

This afternoon, I finished reading James Longenbach's The Art of the Poetic Line. Longenbach's book is one of the notable Graywolf series of books on craft, genre, and prosody. At a later point in this treatise, he proferred a thought that echoed what I have been attempting to communicate to my students of all ages:

Whatever shape it takes, this kind of movement is what makes a poem feel like an act of discovery rather than an act of recitation - an event that happens on the page rather than a recounting of an event that happened prior to the page. Lineation is a powerful tool for creating such movement, but not because a poet chooses simply to write pentameter lines or syntactically complete lines or no lines at all. What matters within any particular formal decorum is variation: the making of pattern along with the simultaneous disruption of pattern...This kind of movement - the establishment of a formal decorum in which even the smallest variation from it feels thrilling - is what makes the act of reading a poem feel like the act of writing a poem. It is what makes a poem an experience we need to have more than once, an act of discovery that is contingent not simply upon what we learn but on the temporal process of discovering how it feels to learn again what we've always known.
                               [pg. 112-113, The Art of the Poetic Line, Graywolf, 2008]

I repeatedly remind my students to ask themselves, "What is the rush?" There is a lot at stake: the difference between an adequate poem and something that is magical or striking. We must strive for the latter. There are those who are similar to production potters; the goal is to crank out as much as possible. I admire the truly prolific poet but if the goal is to get the poem done in order to take on the next and the next and the next, is the poet truly sitting within the work to discover its fullest capacity?

It is not uncommon, as an editor of a literary journal, to see potential that the poet has missed, that may be accomplished with simple edits as well as looking at different possibilities for line ends, enjambment, tighter language, even reordering stanzas and lines. There is a rush to be done and get the poem out the door. Many poems are close to hitting the mark but this ain't horseshoes.

James Tate once spoke to a group of writers at the Asheville Poetry Festival; I believe it was 1995. Among the indelible comments he made that day was his belief that a poem should take a grand journey that, when over, we ask, "How did I get here?" but in looking back at the poem, the route is completely obvious.

We cannot intend or plan much of what comprises a great poem. Last night with a new class of adult writers, I discussed how I consider our creative work in this way: this is a journey; the bus is being driven by the piece. I am riding shotgun holding the map. The readers will be seated in back, going along for the ride, trusting the poem and me well enough to believe that we will arrive at a destination proving it was worth their time. The poem is the driving force of everything. And everything is important, every choice is critical, right down to the smallest shift in punctuation. No one proved that as clearly as Lucille Clifton in her magnificent, stark poem, dialysis. When originally published, as it appears in Blessing the Boats, the last line, Blessed be even this? is a chilling question. When I heard Ms. Clifton read this poem upon release of the collection, she read it as published and then she read it as she had grown to understand its meaning: Blessed be even this. More than once I have said Ms. Clifton is the kind of woman I want to be when I grow up.

Today, a friend wished me the opportunity for joy. I would love to resume joy as a way of being, the way Ms. Clifton taught by example. In a small step of accommodating that wish, I chose to slow down from everything else to immerse in my own poetry for the evening. I sat on my deck with my work, my computer, my iced tea, the cardinals' shrill chirps punctuating the forgiving hour. I worked until I could no longer read my new edits on poems from 2011 and the crickets were tuning up. I pushed stanzas around like wheelbarrows. I chopped lines like wood to see the rings. I found places to trim and advantageous enjambments. I threw other language from the poems entirely.  I also submitted five poems for consideration, beating a deadline in the process. I was poet first and all the other identities had to wait.

The mosquitoes were hiding around my ankles to escape the bats. It was time to come in.    
   

The Art of Lifelong Learning

I have been working steadily as an educator now 11 years, some of it very frustrating, most of it joyous. I will teach in any setting, will work with any age group, and the size of the group matters not a whit to me. If I can share the information I have cultivated and the passion I feel for writing, language, reading, and learning, I will do it. Often I even am paid for my instruction and that is becoming more and more a precedent, which is a good thing since this is my career.

In school settings, particularly in the one district that I served for 6 years, I was frequently scheduled to work with what I refer to as reluctant learners. Other times, I was placed in "special ed" classes in which students mostly had emotional issues and/or learning disabilities, I assume with the hope (or even expectation) that I would not only address skills needed to bring scores up on the standardized assessment tests but also perhaps excite the students. Now, those who work in education understand the delicate balance of special ed: there is often additional funding to provide the support, even if just a small budgetary asset, so that is a potential plus; the other side of the seesaw is that those students labeled with special needs will test lower and bring the overall rating of the school down (and, thus the teachers who may face evaluation and public scrutiny in the process). This will affect funding, faculty assignments, sometimes even the fate of the entire school. These are very high stakes.

I am not sure what happened with my work in that district overall. There was never any formal assessment of my work, which leads me to believe that there was a certain disconnect with the value of what I was developing to meet the needs of improved literacy as well as English Language Arts proficiency. I had hoped that there would be a tracking of the students, some of whom I met in elementary school, taught again in middle, and then in the high school. I was hoping to not only further develop my pedagogy but prove that it had merit. We never did the pre- and post-tests. There was no step to that higher level of documentation and observation. On the one hand, I had tremendous freedom in my work, often tailoring my lesson planning to specific classroom needs and requests from the teachers themselves so that was the upside. The downside is I have no data to indicate my effectiveness. I can only hope. 

In that district, I worked annually in five schools: two elementary, two middle, and the one high school. Add to this schedule the other districts where I gained contracts, plus my adult education, and a single class at the college level, and I determined that I was teaching an average of 2000 individuals a year. Most of those students were before me for an average of 3 - 5 contact sessions.

I have been observing that the philosophy of lifelong learning is fading over the horizon. Even with adults, the idea of being a learning machine is not prevalent. We are a goal-oriented society much more than we invest in the value of process. In the college level course as well as the adult writing workshops I facilitate frequently, I have discovered an attitude that I refer to as consumer-based education; in other words, "I am paying for this so you have to teach me what I want and the way I want you to teach it." I find this frustrating.

The idea that an experienced educator, or even expert in one's field, would determine how they best can convey the knowledge to the student who does not yet have it is not valued, particularly once one has presented a check or a credit card number to pay the course fee. Often, the student wants to decide how much they can be asked to read, to produce, and how the course should be structured. Just as often, the paying student does not even fully understand the nature of the course he or she has signed up for after reading the 30-word blurb in a brochure but still wants the course to meet some preconceived idea of what they will be experiencing. Additionally, some (albeit a very small minority) can be quite vocal about their perceived needs and expectations, even confrontational.

The word I use more and more often about the process of writing is discovery. I want students to discover what the poem wants to be, to discover the wonder of a great line, or the sound of the vowels, or the subconscious metaphor in their work. I want them to be curious rather than exacting. I want them to be patient in letting the work unfold, knowing that there is no deadline in creating a good piece of writing. Deadlines only apply to homework and publishing.

Racking up a pile of adequate poems is far less important that lolling about with a new work and striving for the best word, the most advantageous line end, a new stanza configuration, all with the goal of creating something magical, or even important. What does it matter if a writer spends an hour rearranging a new piece to see what will be implied in the process? After all, isn't that part of the joy of being a writer, playing with language to discover all its potential and impact?

If I ask a class of adults at the beginning of each session, "How was your week as a writer?" I am suggesting that they take the time from all their other obligations, duties, and distractions to honor that part of their selves, their identities. It is no frivolous query. Yet, sometimes those adult students balk at the question, shy from it, and then complain about it on my evaluations. They are looking to get a particular set of teachings or experience, mostly "What do you think about my poem?" rather than "What can I learn about being a poet?"

I am never complacent about my work. I demand a great deal from myself. I read other poets and read about poetry regularly, I talk with other writers, I experiment, and I push myself to grow, to never believe I know all there is to know about the art. I have determined that I know a fair amount and that I have a certain level of skill that I am now becoming comfortable in, even confident. I know I have a viewpoint that is worthy of sharing. I have also discovered that a classroom full of seemingly cranky 5th graders will often be more open to discovery than any number of adults. This is so in adult writing workshops and in teacher in-services. It is sad that we only want what we think we need. We want praise and a list of "how to's" rather than being willing to let the instructor be the driver and to sit back and enjoy the ride, while discovering that there is a new landscape beyond our own knowledge and expectation.  In the interest of discovery, I rarely forecast what I will be teaching. I am resistant to syllabi, and equally resistant to rubrics.

I teach what I want to learn. I learn more every day so I can teach it better. I love my work but I do wish that every student enters a class because they are more interested in process than product. The product will come. This much I know. Now to convince the customer.