Feeling That Seaside Need

This is sort of a follow up from my previous Seaside reveries.

Haven't been sleeping well.  And when I'm trying to relax at night, convince my lungs to expand and admit cleansing breaths that extend throughout my body, I visualize the beach in Seaside, Oregon.  My healing place, spiritual fountain and mind blank place.

More photos and memories.

Emily Dickinson and Tucson's Big Read

Many of my classes will be participating in one form or another in The Big Read, sponsored by Kore Press and NEA.
The Big Read is a program through National Endowment for the Arts, and this year the featured poet is Emily Dickinson.  Many other organizations are partnering up throughout the fall, including the University of Arizona Poetry Center, to put together an incredible run of events.  Teens may be especially interested in Logan Phillips' Slamming Emily writing and poetry slam workshops.  Logan visited my classroom last year, and really connected with my students and inspired them to write some great poetry.

Emily Dickinson at age 16

Many students are totally unfamiliar with Dickinson's work, and others may stereotype her as an old maid and a hermit writing old-fashioned poetry, but Emily Dickinson was a pre-modern poet, bending and breaking the rules of the poetry of her time. Though she lived in 19th Century Massachusetts, her voice is modern and always surprising. Together with Walt Whitman, she is credited with helping develop a truly American poetic voice. However, I see her as having a more individual voice, especially seeing that her poetry was not widely recognized until the middle of the 20th century.

Below, find a list of some poems which may help engage you with her work. Her poems are categorized by number and title.  The poems were not originally titled, but are conventionally given a title using the first line. The capitalization and punctuation of the titles is true to the original-- Dickinson was known for her unconventional use of punctuation and capitalization. In early volumes of her work, editors changed the capitalization and punctuation to their tastes, but the poems are now treasured for these idiosyncratic details.  Below the poems is a list of Emily Dickinson resources I've collected.

I will continue to revise this page as I find new resources.

 

Selected Poems:

I measure every Grief I meet
Because I could not stop for Death
I heard a Fly buzz
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
There's a certain Slant of Light
The Soul unto itself
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--

Fantastic Video:
Emily Dickinson – Her True Self from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

 

Emily Dickinson Links

Emily Dickinson Links

Writing in the Margins

Thinking about my role as a teacher after the news that yet another of our students committed suicide over the weekend, a freshman. Not one of my students, but it just as well could have been.

Writing in the Margins

I try to write in the margins
not sprawl purple ink on your precious words
and I'm not saying precious with a snarl
What I am skirting around is the truth
that whether or not you will ever be literary
or grammatically correct
or well-organized
is really irrelevant
although I do kind of fall for the literary types
they are my favorite, I won't lie
as long as they are open to feedback
those and the truly witty jokesters
and the strong girls

But where I am headed here is that...

Your words are precious
You are precious
Too precious to allow the words or thoughts of others
to have the power to destroy you
So long as you use words
you are human
and you are vital
the moment your voice goes mute
whether by noose, pills, force
or silent withdrawal
you lose the power to save yourself
to save others
to discover what you cannot save
to hope to save
to love
to let go
to free yourself

you lose it all
and we lose you
and, really, we need you
the world needs you
you have a place within it

I'm sure there is a metaphor
that will say it better
but listen
I'll leave it to you
to critique this poem
suggest more figurative language
talk back to it
write all over it
I don't care
I'm sure it has greater possibilities
but so do you.

Teacher Angst

Agggh!

Working on National Boards this year, I feel like this is one of the first times I have really made the effort to COMPLETELY do my job since I gave birth to my children.

Don't get me wrong, I work hard every year. I try to be creative, hold to some level of standards, get to know my students, try to stay positive, be a resource for them. I try, but when you have your own kids that level of commitment to the late nights, the crates of papers coming home for the weekend, it just changes. It has to, and overall it is a healthy change.

But now I feel compelled to be the best teacher I can be, to show myself what I have really learned about how to teach students to read and write after 16 years, and to give my students the best experience possible.

And, I am finding that my deep-down belief that our jobs may truly be impossible within the time we are given here on earth, and within the time we are given with each student, may indeed be true... Holy Cow, when you really try to do it all, it really never ends. But I'm trying. I really am. And it does make me treasure my students all that much more.

Signing off from school at 6:00 after a very long day, encouraged by the lovely photo writing of my creative writing class...

Stay tuned, folks.

Thoroughfare

Thoroughfare

Passing Marana I covet a farmstand watermelon
alongside the frontage road
they are lined up on a board, all sizes
green rinds filled with quaint black seeds
summer's last bursting bounty
large white sugar spots
I glance them as they glide by at 75.

The storms between me and the mountains
mediated by miles and mechanization
tresses falling from the sky, not virga
but lavishing from the clouds
flinging themselves passionately to earth
but in slow motion
savoring the seduction
they offer all of themselves
sweetly, generously they
give and give.

The generosity of the storms
pulls me toward them,
their perfect dark clarity
their turbulence beckons from afar
water, everywhere, falling from nowhere, lovely
I think, to lose myself within them
like the thirsty desert and
thieving farmland, to absorb
their flood of what is good.

These meditations are punctuated by
thrills of lightning, light not muffled within the heavens
but bright white against the deep gray of the storms
immediate
sudden
gone
possibly fictional
a sideways glance from a would-be lover
from an unpredictable corner
leaving only a longing
possibly another
later
again.

But I am on the thoroughfare. There are no side streets
no intersections to carry me there.
I drive at seventy-five
toward home

and then, after one long straight curve,
suddenly,
past acres of industry
and the suburbs
there it is.

I find that the storm is home
Hail, wind and water
awaiting my return
offering up all its bounty
within sheets of sudden rain.


Poet's Muy-Post Post-script:  This poem is dedicated to my husband.  As I was driving, watching these unbelievably intense and visually incredible thunderstorms sweep across the desert, I thought about how in life, sometimes you yearn for something you have already won... or earned... or coaxed into being, or whatever.  And sometimes you don't even allow yourself to realize you've asked for it, and yet in that strange sort of yearning yet not-quite-daring to ask you've already moved the universe to grant you what you need.