C heck out Scott Adams’ (Dilbert creator) blog post from a few days ago. And then check out the explanation for it. Language is cool, eh?

What does he mean to say?

Outside the Wells Fargo on 82nd and Foster a man in gray paces with his cardboard sign. I can’t see the words but can predict the message: “Hungry, every little bit helps,” or “Disabled Veteran,” or “Lost my job, need help,” or “Wells Fargo took my house” …. I wonder if he chose this corner for its backdrop, if he knew the irony of begging for money outside a bank. For the few seconds that I sit at the light, I think this would make an interesting photograph. As a matter of fact, I think, it may even be more interesting if it was a photograph. But why? I think it has something to do with intention, the idea that someone took the time, the initiative to capture the image. It’s the fact that we get to slow it down and keep it in our minds longer, maybe. The framing of an event like this using technology, whether it be a camera or a pen and a piece of paper (or a blog, for that matter), gives it gravitas. Someone wanted people to see this, you think; it must matter. Like the time, over twenty years ago, when a friend of my mom’s found a piece of folded up paper on the street. It could have been trash, probably would have been ignored by most people, but she picked it up, unfolded it, read it and gave it to my mother. It started like this: “Journel [sic] Rick Gordon, age 34 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 9-7-85 The month is September and Oklahoma is hot as Texas. I’ve been free for about three months now….” The entry, on three sheets of yellow, lined, 5×7″ paper, was brief and personal, written by a man who said he was a fugitive and talked about paying his own rent for a week for the first time in three years, of being clean finally and proud. It ended with a list of questions about whether or not he’s up to the challenge of being free and trying to make it on his own, whether he even wanted to stay alive. And inside the folded pages lay a business card for a pawn shop covered in Rick Gordon’s cursive lists and calculations. Ever since his words ended up in my possession, I’ve wondered about his intentions for that piece of paper. Why did he need to write his thoughts down? Did it make the experience of surviving more real for him? Did he hope that someday, maybe after his death, that someone else would read his journal? I can’t say, but there’s something to this whole idea of intentionality, the idea that someone was behind a thing (a piece of writing, a photograph) embedding their own thoughts and emotions into it hoping for someone else to come by and dig them out.

Portland is supposed to have a substantial literary scene, and I believe it with small presses and literary journals like Hawthorne Books, Tin House, Glimmer Train, Poetry Northwest, Portland Review, and others. But there’s nothing like a book and literary festival to excite the writers in a city enough to get them to come out and be social with each other. Wordstock, Portland’s annual book and literary festival, goes from October 7th to the 10th and includes a book fair, of course, as well as workshops and events such as the Text Ball hosted by the Independent Press Resource Center (maybe one of my favorite Portland finds). This year Wordstock will be graced by our very own Christopher Howell, which is very exciting. The list of authors is long and includes favorites such as Anthony Doerr, Aimee Bender, Kevin Sampsell, Steve Almond, Richard Robbins, and Michele Glazer. The book fair is only $10 for both days (or $7 for one), and workshops are $35 (with deals for signing up for more than one). Dylan and I will be at the book fair for sure and are looking into volunteering so we can get more time at the festival sans dinero. So…if any of you were looking for a reason to visit one of the coolest cities in the country (if not THE coolest), now you’ve got a good one.

I’m on a bit of a hiatus this week because Dylan and I are moving to Portland, so I thought I’d send this quick announcement. Kore Press has extended their contest deadline to August 31st for their first book award for poetry. Basically, you have to be a woman who has never published a full length collection to qualify. (You still qualify if you’ve published a chapbook of fewer than 42 pages and 400 copies printed.)

Here’s a word about the press from their website:

Kore Press was founded in 1993 by the creative efforts of book designer Lisa Bowden and poet Karen
Falkenstrom. Kore’s vision has been to publish and distribute excellent works of literary and artistic value by a diversity of women, including those traditionally underrepresented in the cultural mainstream; to promote those voices; and to educate young people about publishing and literary activism.

I’ve officially climbed out of the tower. I finished my third degree, and I’m done with academia, at least as a student. And I have to say, I kind of feel like I want to give my brain a bath, get all that academic nonsense outta there. Only the nonsense, not the good sense. But sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference.

Example: My boyfriend and I have been writing language arts lessons for a website for pay this summer. The way it works is you write a lesson, turn it in to the online submission manager, and wait. They give the lesson to three reviewers who then give you feedback. You’re supposed to take that feedback and use it to revise your lesson. Pretty simple really. But yesterday Dylan received reviews of his very first lesson. Two of them were very positive, didn’t want him to change much, but one of them was kind of scathing (if something can be kind of scathing) as if this reviewer (who we’ve decided is a little old lady who hates creativity and fun) was out to get him from the start. Everything was wrong, according to this reviewer, the whole lesson a failure.

Unfortunately, this reminded me of graduate poetry workshops. Read more »

Some news from my world: I’ve been hired to teach at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland. I’m incredibly excited about this new development. A couple weeks ago they invited me to give a presentation at their professional development day, which was awesome, so I spent the entire day there last Thursday going to sessions, getting to know the people, and giving my own presentation, and it was great, but I realized something. One of their big challenges, at least in the liberal arts department, is getting these students, who all think they are artists, to write. In session after session, I heard teachers talk about trying to get students to see writing as something they should want to do, something they shouldn’t be afraid of, and for some reason I was a little surprised. I’m not new to students who hate writing, but generally those students don’t see themselves as creative people. Often they see themselves as better at math and science; they’re students who have been put down for their writing by one teacher or another and have given up on themselves as writers. I suppose that can happen to people who are good at visual arts, too, but my assumption, I’ve just learned, has been that words are part of the arts and that artists would most likely have an affinity for them. I was wrong. The teachers at PNCA went on and on about students who think writing is useless and painful and irrelevant. Sigh.

So here’s the question: how is writing like the visual arts? They are both skills that have to be practiced; neither of them are innately learned. There’s one thing. But what about the process? My boyfriend is a writer, visual artist, and musician, and it makes sense to me for all those things to go together, but how do I convince reluctant students of that? Could their hatred come from some learned misconception about what writing is? Maybe these are unanswerable questions until I get in there and meet my students, but I’m curious to know what other people think. If you’re a visual artist, how do you relate to writing? And vice versa? If language really is our most prominent mode of self expression, how do I convince a bunch of visual artists of this? Should I assign multigenre assignments where they’re allowed to incorporate words with images? Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated.

Somehow these two seemed the perfect videos to post together. Science and poetry, science as poetry. Pretty cool.

Symphony of Science — The Poetry of Reality

Storm by Tim Minchin

82-year-old Merwin lives in Hawaii, but now he'll be making trips to D.C.

I know I just posted, but I wanted to share this news with everyone. W.S. Merwin is probably in my top ten list of favorite poets, so to see that he’s going to be our new poet laureate is pretty exciting.

A few links for your perusal enjoyment:

• The New York Times Article that announces the news and includes Merwin’s bio and a couple of his poems,
• Merwin’s newest book, The Shadow of Sirius, is certainly one to check out, and finally
• Merwin’s page on Poets.org where you can hear him read a couple of his poems and you can read several more yourself.

Enjoy!

I thought I’d run out of things to write about this week. (I’m moving after all, and putting all my books in boxes makes me sad and unable to function properly in society.) So I googled “Poetry in America” in a half-ass, smart-ass attempt to come up with something to blog about, and low and behold, what did I find but the Poetry Foundation‘s 113-page report called, what else, “Poetry in America: Review of the Findings.” And it’s fascinating. Here’s a look at what the study did:

Poetry in America is the first national, in-depth survey of people’s attitudes toward and experiences with poetry. The survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago on behalf of The Poetry Foundation. The survey investigated people’s leisure time pursuits and general reading habits, their early and more recent experiences with poetry, their perceptions of poets and poetry readers, their favorite poems, and their experiences with coming across poetry in unexpected places. The survey sample includes more than 1,000 adult readers with varying levels of interest in poetry. Respondents included adults who currently read or listen to poetry, those who have read poetry in the past but no longer do so, and those who have never read poetry.

Read more »

This site has a plethora of lessons, exercises, and activities for K-12 reading and writing teachers.

After reading Laura’s last post about what she learned from teaching third graders, I thought I’d do a shameless plug for one of my favorite websites, ReadWriteThing.org.

(Disclaimer: I write for this site, so I may be a little biased, but I don’t think so. It really is one of the best professional sites for language arts teachers. One reason I’m sure of this is because of the process I go through as a writer of lessons and activities for the site. Everything is peer-reviewed, so once I write a lesson and turn it in, it goes to a professional teacher/writer in the field for review. Then it comes back to me with notes for revision–unless I’m having a really good day and they think my work is brilliant–at which time I make revisions and corrections before turning it in for final approval. It’s quite a process, but it’s worth it because the material on the site ends up being top quality.)

Anyhow, I was also thinking about all the writers in MFA programs out there doing service in schools like we do at Eastern with Writers in the Community. They should definitely know about this site. It’s super easy to navigate, and you can search for anything from handouts and activities to complete units that will last weeks. It’s something all reading and writing teachers should know about, even those at the college level because many of the high school level lessons can easily be adapted for college students. So if any of you are teachers or thinking of going into teaching after you graduate, I highly recommend this site.