On poets and poetry

 This morning I sunk into reading Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin edited by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. I picked up this collection of poems about Black life by Black writers because it has a poem in it by Camille Dungy, and I'm working on a paper that refers to her work. (The paper is not going well. I struggle with writing academically, which is somewhat ironic since I'm a composition teacher and work in a writing center giving feedback to undergrads and graduates on their academic work.) I could not pull myself out of it until I had consumed the whole volume.

The book was published in 2016. While these are poems of protest, they are also poems that celebrate life and art. Each poem is preceded by a black and white portrait of the poet and a short essay about why they write poetry. It's a beautiful book, and the poems and the reflections about the love of language, the possibility of connection, the power of words reignite a longing to consume the pages, the ideas, the people, out of desire, love, a hunger to contain it all.  There it is in print - what gives us meaning and puts us in relation with one another and transforms pain into poetry and protest. How does poetry contain it all? How can we contain all that poetry? 

Some selections from the essays: 

"I relish the alterable space of a sentence along with words' inherent satellite meanings, shaped and hammered to rhythms in my head. Their force and propulsion feel like lifelines shared with friends. Many poets show the way and what we pray for is a passage into the living: song, prayer, coverted conversations."  - Major Jackson, p 96

"I write because I accept my responsibility as a witness, and because I believe in the trasnformational power of art." - Francis X. Walker p 196

"I write because I cannot stand by and say nothing, because I strive to make sense of the world I've been given, because the soul sings for justice and the song is poetry" - Natasha Tretheway p 189

"When you realize you are in the world to create, to be in love with Truth and Beauty, then only death becomes the thing that stops you."  - Lamont B. Steptoe p 185

"Amid the sorrow and upheaval of saying goodbye to a parent, I realized that poetry was helping me process and artculate my sense of loss and grief - indeed, that poetry was what would help me navigate and comprehend my life." - Tracy K Smith p 180

"Carlos Fuentes wrote: 'We only hurt others when we're incapable of imagining them.' Cruelty is caused by a failure of the imagination. The inability to assign the same feelings and values to another peson that you harbor in yourself. So I help people to imagine, me, Black women, men, and children, in all of our beautiful and terrible selves." - Sonia Sanchez 162

"I grew up seeing the world as filled with hyperbole, irony, metaphor, simile - and slightly 'off center.' ... The words keep dancing inside my head, the sounds an dvoices keep coming, and so I keep writing. ... There are moments when language still gives me a thrill, makes the hair on my arms stand up, takes my breath away. As long as I still fieel that, I'll still be in love with poetry. " - Reginald Harris p 85

What a gift words are. 

On friendship

 I am so grateful for friendship. 

Tonight an old friend and I lingered over an extended dinner in the corner of a little Italian restaurant downtown and left longing for more hours. My friend is here on a work trip and leaves tomorrow, but I am so thankful we were able to carve out time to meet tonight. I left behind work and responsibility for a few hours, but what a blessing to share a really deep conversation about challenging topics and feel lifted up by the freedom to be open and understood. I don't see my friend often anymore - and honestly, we never lived close, so we've always only visited on occasion, but those occasions are causes for celebration.  I have a handful of friends that satisfy that deep longing for connection when we reunite, however briefly, however rarely. What is the root of that cor ad loquitur cor? Whatever it is, I am grateful. 

New school year

       I had a goal at the beginning of the year to try to post weekly again, but poor August received one measly post. This is because I began my new job as a middle school teacher three weeks ago.

Here is a paragraph I started to write back at the end of July when my new job was three weeks in the future (I edited that second sentence):  "I'm still questioning my sanity at saying yes. I have a hard time telling people that this is what I'm doing, and when I look in the mirror, I think how did I get here.  It's a baffling to me. I always said middle school was the grade I'd like to teach least. Where was my mind when I said yes?"

Dare I admit I actually am having fun? I laughed out loud when I was reading some of the kids' letters to themselves. I cried inside when I read others. I already like these kids.

And I like the other 7th and 8th grade teachers. They are kind, thoughtful people who care about these students, also. I enjoy seeing them each day. I want to talk in the hallway and during dismissal, too! Of the 7 7th and 8th grade teachers, five of us are new. One of the veterans is a Dominican sister who is loving and gentle and thoughtful.  Her presence is immediately calming.  She is beloved but a little feared by the kids, even though she rarely raises her voice. She doesn't put up with nonsense.

What I don't like is all of the bureaucracy. On Friday we were handed a few more duties. We already have meetings clogging up prep time and home room time. And I just spent almost 8 hours grading today, and I'm STILL not done. Granted, I'm slow and writing each kid a personal note because this is their first writing assignment, but still. This may be part of the reason 5 of the 7 teachers left last year. They were overworked and underpaid. 

The other thing I miss is the freedom to travel on Fridays. I do get 10 paid days off, but I feel I need to plan them. We had an invitation to go away next weekend, but I feel tied down by prep, grading, and not wanting to use a PTO day. 

So the verdict is still out whether this will be a career or something I did to help out. Sometimes I think of it as a mini-purgatory I can offer up for my lack of gratitude for the jobs I had at the community college and the other college and subbing at the high school, as well as the lack of judgement we showed in purchasing this large, overpriced house whose value keeps falling in a place that hasn't seen temps under 101 for WEEKS. IT IS HOT HERE.  I mourn the passing of a plant each day. The grass is crispy. At least the last few days the heat index is down, and the mornings are cooler. Welcome, September!

Happily, I look forward to "going to work" each morning still. My fourth grader loves, loves, loves that we are at school together. She tells me almost daily. I worry I'm not keeping up with the senior enough, but she is always socializing or studying herself. I am prepared for February will be hard. But I'll let that arrive when it does. In the meantime, I've got some paragraphs to read about "something that symbolizes me."