The Gift the Guest Artist

This month we celebrated National Writing Day at our school with a special guest, an alumna, Kristin Bair O'Keeffe, who had just given birth to her first novel, Thirsty. It was a great time for our students and aspiring writers.

It took me back to times when writers visited the high school I attended as a youth. I recall hanging on their every word as they described the writing life. Once, I read James Weldon Johnson's "The Creation" from God's Trombones. It's a poem, the cadence of which sings from the Negro Spiritual. I let the rhythm carry me as I read, but I did not fall in to parody. I didn't realize this, though, until the visiting artist (whose name I can't recall) told me so.

That one moment of critique has stayed with me ever since. I consider the praise and its inherent admonition whenever I practice a recitation of poetry before my students. Having a guest artist is such a priceless gift to students. Now how wonderful your teaching, a guest has the novelty to capture your students rapt attention for a day or two, and their memories for a lifetime. They have clout of experience and an authentic voice to say "good work" completely detached from scores.

O'Keeffe gave our students many treasures during her fleeting visit: ideas, stories, hints, and tips. No doubt some of these gifts will be as lasting in the students' hearts and minds for many years hence.

If you haven't experience the magic a guest artist--a writer, a poet, an actor, a musician, a painter, a dancer--then now is the time to figure one or two into your schedule. For your students' sakes, and for yours.

Image Credit: "Tiffany Gift Box." By Jill Clardy. 26 May 2008. Flickr.

We Have Poetry

April has been a cruel month. First, we suffered seasonally low temperatures, nor'easters, and then chilling killings in Blacksburg, Pittsburgh, and Houston. Two bomb threats brought troops of police and dogs and weapon detectors to our school's campus and set everyone on edge. It's not been the time for exploring new technologies.

Rather, we struggled all week to have a poetry workshop to celebrate National Poetry Month. About 40 students worked throughout the week with local coffeehouse bard Brad Yoder, crafting poems and riffs, mixing spoken word with tunes, music with lyrics. And on Friday, April 20, Brad led a Poetry Cafe in our school's media center. Students came from several classes throughout the day to enjoy drinks and snacks provided by our lit mag staff and participate in a poetry-slam-music jam event of words and music. Featured were our school's very own talented song and wordsmiths.

After the past couple of weeks of insane events, coming together in the heart of the campus--the media center is positioned centrally among eight classroom buildings--and enjoying songs of love, friends, hometowns, school life, teen life, and life in general, seemed to be a great antidote to the craziness in the world. It seemed a good break from "breaking news."

Planned a year in advance, our Poetry Cafe had nothing to do with this month's incidents. It simply came at the right time to create sanctuary amidst what T.S. Eliot called the "cruelest month." The power of poetry, whether spoken or sung, remains one constant to give us context for thought, feeling, and experience.

In an NPR Fresh Air interview following 9/11, then poet laureate Billy Collins noted that "poetry stands up very well" in times of grief and searching. (How many times have reporters asked an unanswerable "why?" to the events of this past week, how many times have we heard weak, babbling attempts to describe the senseless.) In times of tragedy, we have a need for poetry. Collins notes:

"I found it interesting, in a time of national crisis. We don't turn to the novel. You know, we don't say, "well, we should all go see a movie--that would kinda make us feel better."

Poetry, despite its reputation as "the sort of poor little match girl of literature, . . . stands up very well" at times such as these. In the interview, Collins reminds us that poetry is a place for the grief to go. How many times have poems added meaning, laughter, solace, a sense of our humanity, and a sense out of our humanity!

Imagine if our media could give us this this sort of poetic expression and sense--not some sophomoric or banal treatment, but something truly representatively human. Well, perhaps they can't. Nor shouldn't. Media and technology more often than not fail to make us more human. Lately, they have seemed only able to add to our fears and loathing rather than ease our stresses. Despite all of the outlets hears only one note.

Does Web 2.o offer with its read/write functionality offer more promise? Will its collaborative, open structure to allow content to be sent and received more democratically lend itself to the poetry of being human. We'll see.

In the meantime, and the mean times, we have poetry.