poem

Here’s a first draft that popped out:

Negroes have wings

I have seen pictures of two black men
lynched in Duluth Minnesota
by the good white citizens
of 1920.

The men are suspended,
standing on winter air
as thin as white justice,
floating toward black heaven
on wings of hemp and hate.

I have no idea why simply seeing the word “wings” in a book I was reading abruptly made me remember this ghastly photograph in a retrospective published in a newspaper a few years ago. I don’t remember whether it was of two men hanging–there may have been more–or why I think it was winter–maybe it wasn’t, though my memory still tells me it was–or what the date was–1920 is approximate. I’m pretty sure it was Duluth.

With all its possible inaccuracies, the poem popped out whole, the final line as inevitable as any line ever is.

I continue to be mystified and fascinated by the psychology of the moment of composition.

What’s new?

This morning my creative nonfiction class did an in-class speedwrite on the prompt “what’s new?” Here is what I wrote:

“I had a realization last week. I’m never going to be the best at anything. Not even in the top ten. Even that the thought came to me was a startlement. As far as I know, I’ve never tried to be the best as compared to other people. And yet, the thought came.

Is this a male thing? I know men are competitive, though once again I haven’t been one of them, striving to stand out, as far as I know. They struggle to be stronger or faster or meaner or better fighters or better earners or to score more women or whatever other kinds of nonsense, and I have never done any of those things. Never cared.

And yet I thought “I’m never going to be the best at anything.”

Maybe this is the thought of a man in his fifties. It’s too late to start a new lifetime of struggle to achieve–a prospect I don’t want to face. I like what I’m doing and will continue doing it as long as health and opportunity permit. So what am I doing?

I’m a writer. A minor writer. I will always be at most a minor writer. This doesn’t make me sad or uncomfortable; it’s reality and I’m OK with it.

I’m a musician. A minor one. I have an unusual voice and perhaps could have been a really important singer, if there is such a thing, if I’d found the right teacher thirty or thirty-five years ago, but I didn’t.

I’m a teacher. A good one, some of the time. This is what I am truly devoted to, and what I will continue to be devoted to as long as I can function. It’s important work, and I honor it and those who do it. Still, I am one of many good teachers. Not the best. One of many.

Writer, singer, teacher. Not husband, not father, not world shaker, not famous.

Yet as far as I know, I have some time left. My health is good–again, as far as I know–and I’m enjoying writing and singing and playing the piano and, most of all, teaching, so I think I’ll just wallow around in the pleasure of my never-the-best life and have a selfishly pleasant life for as long as I can.”

As I look at this speedwrite from a two hour later perspective, I think it’s about death. It’s the perspective taking that men in middle age do. It’s the thinking I wouldn’t have done when I was twenty or thirty. That may be a healthy sign. I know that writing it felt happy and optimistic rather than regretful.

Tradigm

I made up that word. Traditional paradigm becomes tradigm. It’s a hierarchy, and it has had its uses in my discipline for a long time. It also is being gradually overcome.

Here’s the Christensen take on the Hierarchy of the Traditional Paradigm for Writing Instruction

There are real writers who make aesthetically beautiful work. We label them “Artist”—whether genius or lesser creator. There are unusually intelligent readers who figure out what artists do by examining and describing the artists’ work. We label them “Critic”–whether they are level-headed readers or fruitcakes on missions. These critics are often professors.

Composition teachers, whether in secondary or post-secondary schools, in their endless search for what to do tomorrow and how to justify it to their administrators, turn critics’ descriptions of the writing done by artists into prescriptions for doing “good” writing.
Students follow the prescriptions and produce routine writing, incidentally confirming the critics and teachers in their low opinions of student writing.

This is the tradigm, which might also be short for tragic paradigm. Teacherly zeal mistakenly turns descriptions of that which has already been written into prescriptions for what should be written which also involves proscriptions of what might have been written if the prescriptions hadn’t been made in the first place.

This is where writing teachers like me have messed up. We have tended to think literary critics and literature professors know something about how to teach writing. There is little reason to believe that.

Relief

Today I have met my creative nonfiction II class and my writing methods class and am about to meet my writing poetry I class, all for the first time. What a relief. My mind came rushing back.

I’ve also been chastised for posting so seldom over the long winter break, by a person who doesn’t comment, so I didn’t know she was checking. I suppose there may be other readers out there who don’t comment. Funny how seldom I’ve thought of that.

Tonight, dear readers, whether responders or not, I have my first meeting of the cast of Kiss Me, Kate. This is new stuff for me. Yesterday I had a quick read through of one scene with one other actor and the director. In the scene the other actor, a sexy and pretty young woman, flirts provocatively with me. Reading the script hadn’t quite made me realize that was going to happen. When she leaned her bosom into my chest and batted her eyelashes while saying a sexual invitation I promptly blushed from my scalp down to, well, never mind. Come to think of it, never mind was probably blushing too.

Nobody has ever acted like that toward me. That young woman was so delighted at my reaction that she blew into laughter. Then the blush went beyond never mind.

After that each new line provoked me to a burst of laughter. We will have to practice a lot to get me past that.

A whole lot.

Life without mind

It’s been interesting watching myself wander around without my mind. I wake up and wonder why. I read and drink coffee until almost time for lunch and then I have breakfast. I wander up to the office and see clean desk surfaces and wonder why I am there. I wander around town and wonder why I’m doing that. I wander into a bar and have a beer and then wander out and wonder why I did that. I wander home and have dinner with Mom and that’s OK and then we read or watch horrifying news programs (why ever do we do that? Ugh!) or an old movie and then I wander off to bed.

Is this what retired people do? I can’t stand it. I haven’t the inner resources for retirement if this is what it’s like.

Classes and life begin again Tuesday. Oh blessed day. Worthy work resumes.

I’ve received a suggestion that I try drunken classical karoake as a method of passing the time until classes resume and my mind returns.

I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as classical, drunken karoake. No, not true. I know of drunken karoake. Classical karoake has escaped me. I’ve not seen any karoake singer say to the dj lady or fellow “I’d like Zorastro’s aria from the second act of The Magic Flute, please.” Perhaps such things happen in Utah. Northern Minnesota, home of grumpy old men, where high culture is spelled NASCAR?

Guess I’ll have to get out my ice auger and go sit on a bucket.

Lost mind

So, I’ve lost my mind. Can anyone help me find it? I want to go to work.

I’m sick of winter break. I don’t get to go back to class until Jan. 23. I’ve caught up on all my paper work. I’m practicing my singing twice a day, but I’ve reached the point that I’m not learning anything more while doing that. I need a lesson, which also doesn’t happen until classes resume.

I’ve read countless junk novels. I can’t stand television. I’ve got my syllabi for next term done. I’ve cleaned my office.

Now my mind is gone. It left with the trash I threw out of the office in my last cleaning spasm.

It’s probably in some landfill somewhere, or perhaps it’s part of the ash at the bottom of an incinerator.

I don’t even have anything in mind to write about, because I don’t have a mind any more.

Creativity?

Today I walked into the building that houses most of the arts and letters classrooms and many faculty offices. On a pillar in the first floor hallway was a sign that read “Creativity Conference.”

There was not one other person to be seen or heard anywhere around.

Original, huh?

New Year’s Eve I spent playing the piano accompaniments for four skilled singers as the entertainment at a supper club just outside Brainerd, Minnesota. This was a first for me. The audience seemed to accept that I was actually a pianist, as no one complained. They didn’t know that I’d never done such a thing before. Oh, they let me do three songs myself, too. The audience seemed startled by that. Second basses don’t commonly do supper club stuff.

One of the singers was the principal contractor for this arrangement. He was in the college choir with me all five of the past five years. It developed that I found nearly all the songs, and with his input arranged each set, taught the songs to him and the other vocalists, (most of the songs previously unknown to the singers, who know choir music and opera but not much in the way of pop, jazz, and Broadway) and then followed them as they interpreted the pieces in front of the audience.

I hadn’t known I could do those things. Weird how unexpected stuff develops.

It’s odd, but my non-teaching life seems to be evolving ever more steadily into music performances that I would never have predicted a year ago. So far I’ve sung on a cruise ship on the Yangste River, performed with five trombones arranged behind my ears and a pipe organ behind them, done a solo version of “The Lord’s Prayer” at my own dear friend’s funeral, done three Irish pieces as soloist with a symphonic band, done the New Year’s Eve gig, and have a role in Kiss Me Kate coming up, as well as my usual choir stuff. All this since August.

Maybe the point behind all this is that I’m willing to try new things.

That might be a lesson reminder for my teaching. Good teaching means trying new things. It means constant curiosity. Constant willingness–even eagerness–to learn. As a musician, I am strictly a newby learner; that state of mind is the mind best carried into teaching, even when I’ve been teaching for more than thirty years. A willingness to risk a flop performance, a flop lesson, means opportunity to offer a surprise performance, a surprise lesson.

I have long thought there was a clear analogy between composing an essay or a poem and composing a classroom; now I think there is another such analogy between composing a musical performance and an English lesson.