Teacher Movies: To Sir With Love

The first poetry class I ever taught at SFCC was about seventeen years ago. They were sprawled on the floor outside the classroom–maybe during a break or small group work.
“You look like hoodlums,” I said.
One student stood up, spread his arms wide, and burst into a rendition of Lulu’s “To Sir With Love.”
As a child, I loved that movie. But I didn’t think I was going to be the Sidney Poitier character–I just wanted to look and sing like Lulu. My fate–to be a short white ordinary looking version of “Sir.” That is, to be a classroom teacher.
Both my parents were teachers. But I think teacher movies influenced my self image as much, or more. Didn’t I want to change hoodlums into students who’d excel? (Insert details here. Charismatic/anti-authoritarian, outcast teacher. Excel at chess, poetry, math, behavior, etc.)
Summer is starting and I’m not in the classroom. So its on to the celluloid one for me. I’ll be posting next, I think, about Mr. P. in the fourth season of “The Wire.” And I’d love to blog anything YOU want to write on the topic.
Tell me what your favorite teacher movies are!

What happened? A VW Beetle sprouts grass.

Danish artist Morten Flyverbom covered this VW Beetle in grass.

Poetic Revision Advice from Lauren Camp

Stop Going and Doing.
by Lauren Camp

There are seemingly endless ways to revise a poem. Another easy fix is to shorten and tighten verbs. Why be “going” when you could just “go” — or better yet, “fly,” “meander,” or “trudge”?
The key to this step is to stop “ing-ing” around. Gerunds (“ing” words) are so kind. They whisper over the reader, with a tinge of apology. They are almost always less effective than a “to the bone” verb. Try to be insistent in your writing. Make those verbs short and strong. Ask them to really do something. Make those changes, then re-read your lines out loud in a big, vigorous, undebatable voice. How does the poem sound now? Different, I bet.
Clearly, you can’t cut all “ing” words all the time, though. Sometimes you’ll need them. Do you know Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem,“I am Waiting”? It thrives on gerunds. They show up in almost every line.
But Ferlinghetti doesn’t have to worry about his poem having tensile strength. The power comes through in his strong political statement. The way he seems to be gently “waiting” for his country to improve gives the reader a little breathing space. Now take a closer look at the poem…  he surrounds the “ing’s” with incredibly vociferous verbs  – wither, sweep, store, destroy, transmit.
So look for a strong and gentle balance in your own work. Be more authoritative than you think you can. The reader counts on you for that.

Read more by Lauren Camp on her blog.

Still Some Spaces in Julia Goldberg’s Intermediate Fiction Class at Santa Fe Community College

Q and A

Hi Julia–I see there are spaces left in your intermediate fiction class at SFCC. I want to ask you a bit about the class.

Is there a particular focus in the class–plot, editing, etc.?

Julia: The class actually touches most of the bases when it comes to the craft of fiction. We work specifically on point of view, sense of place, character, dialogue, plot—the works. With that said, plot tends to be a major focus, as does the editing process. While there is certainly a fair amount of “free writing” in this class, it is geared toward writers who want more tools for the revision process, so that is a major focus.

 
What should a student expect in the class?

The class really emphasizes the craft side of writing fiction. We use Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction book, which takes a hard look at all the technical elements of fiction—from point of view to verb tenses—and provides what I think is an excellent survey of other writers’ views and experiences about these elements. The class has a free write almost every time we meet, and those are geared at practicing some of the techniques that we look at in the weekly readings. And then a major focus of the class is the workshop process. This is a chance for the writers to gather feedback and edits from their classmates and, of course, from me.
 
What is your favorite thing about teaching the class?

I really enjoy hearing the results of the free-writes—I’m always amazed at where they lead, and I love seeing solid revisions come out of these workshops. Many of the students who have been in this class in prior years now publish regularly and read in public regularly, and it’s exciting to see that fairly fast trajectory from classroom to active writing life.

 
What kind of reading?

The Burroway book also functions as a great anthology of short fiction, and we do a fair amount of reading and discussing these stories. I can never resist Ron Carlson’s “Keith,” which is both a great read and an excellent story to look at for craft. And then there’s Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welta, Stuart Dybek…this semester, I’m hoping to work in a story by Ann Beattie, since she’s in the Lannan line-up this spring, and also one of my favorites. Every other year I seem unable to resist including Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants. This might be an on year for that.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Although some people come to the class with manuscripts ready to workshop, this also is a class in which participants can develop material out of the in-class assignments if they are in the mood to start from scratch. We don’t read novels in the class, but students who are working on a novel certainly can workshop portions of it. Each student will workshop three pieces of writing of 8-10 pages (no more than 15) and submit one revision of each.
***
To register: 428-1000
www.sfcc.edu
If you need the pre-requisite overridden, contact Miriam Sagan after January 1 at miriam.sagan@sfcc.edu

What Wakes Us Up? by Natalie Goldberg and Miriam Sagan

What wakes us up?

Curve of a blue door
A gray wet wall on a gray day
When you call and tell me your suffering
When I tell you mine
When I remember my mother, dead for four years, her black curl, her big teeth
Vanilla smell of ponderosa
Corn tortilla crack in my mouth
Sudden light at day’s end
News of Rawanda, Bosnia, Hiroshima, Birkenau
Open highway
The word “Paris”
Coca Cola
Putting a large condolence card in the neighbor’s mailbox in the rain
Drinking tea with a friend as dusk falls and the chatter around us in the cafe fades away
Waves breaking black with volcanic sand
Crossing the hospital parking lot
Sound of the key in the lock
An old letter falling out of a paperback book
The sight of my naked feet
A glass of water
Overheard gossip from the next table
Far off siren
An earring dropped between floorboards
Thinking I understand a foreign language
The right song on the car radio
Biting into a jelly doughnut
Sweeping dust

Friend of the Devil: Damnation on the Installment Plan

Last night we were at the Lensic, watching Gounod’s FAUST–the encore of the simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera. The music was exquisite, the staging glamorous and a bit incomprehensible, the experience marvelous–but it left me with a lot of questions.
I won’t try and deconstruct the opera–after all, it is only recently that I’ve fallen in love with the form, after decades of avoiding it. But the main question is–why in the heck would anyone sell his or her soul to the devil?
Faust, in this production, is played as a nuclear physicist, producer of A-bombs that lead to mushroom clouds. Robert Oppenheimer, of course, comes to mind. He compared himself, after the test explosion of Trinity, to Shiva the Destroyer, muttering “I am become death, shatterer of worlds.” His biographer calls him Prometheus–stole fire (for the good of humankind?) and suffered. Faust the alchemist, trying to change one element into another, seems an irresistible comparison, even if it didn’t quite work on yesterday’s stage.
So, some archetypes will sell their souls for knowledge. The other reason, rather inexplicably, is musicaL genius. That is, the only American citizen I know of reputed to have sold his soul to the devil was the great Delta bluesman Robert Johnson. In Thomas Mann’s “Dr. Faustus” the hero is based very partially on the composer Arnold Schoenberg, who invented the modernist 12-tone scale. Not exactly a Mississippi guitar player, but with the same story.
So…why? And here is my real question–what would you sell your soul for? Let’s regard this as a literary question, to avoid any gentlemen with pointy tails popping up and waving contracts in a puff of smoke. The devil, after all, is nothing if not a legalist.

This Second Hand Book of Mine

My friend, letterpress printer extraordinaire Suzanne Vilmain, just dropped me a note:

miriam

I thought of you and wondered if it’s happened to you
and what a great writing assignment — what if?

suzanne
Used Book
by Julie Kane
What luck—an open bookstore up ahead
as rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,
and then to find the books were secondhand,
with one whole wall assigned to poetry;
and then, as if that wasn’t luck enough,
to find, between Jarrell and Weldon Kees,
the blue-on-cream, familiar backbone of
my chapbook, out of print since ’83—
its cover very slightly coffee-stained,
but aging (all in all) no worse than flesh
though all those cycles of the seasons since
its publication by a London press.
Then, out of luck, I read the name inside:
The man I thought would love me till I died.
“Used Book” by Julie Kane, from Jazz Funeral. © Story Line Press, 2009.

***

So yes, this has happened to me.
Once, in an Albuquerque used bookstore, my friend, a well-known writer, asked the bookstore owner if the store had any books of hers. The owner recognized her and was pleased when she signed books. “Do you have any books by Miriam Sagan?” my friend asked. “Sometimes,” the owner replied and I was duly introduced.
Who has sold my books back? It is disconcerting. I see a letterpress limited edition inscribed something like “To Becky and Paul, thanks for the wonderful day at the ranch and the great lunch. Love, Miriam.” Who are these people? Ranch? Lunch? If it was so great, why can’t I place them and why didn’t they keep my book?
I once got a note from Australia. Someone had bought a book of mine in a second hand store. He liked the book, but wanted to know about the affectionate inscription. Who was it inscribed to? Why had she sold it?
Maybe I am just too gushy. I feel bad if I don’t find my books on the shelf and bad if I do. Next time I give you a book, just say thank you.

And thank you, Suzanne, for asking!

Millie Ho on Writing Dangerously

Would you ever put yourself in a risky situation just to have something to write about?

Most writers in the 21st century write more through passive observation than active participation. On a general scale, we have more protection from external conflict than ever before, so it stands to reason that much of our understanding about unfamiliar situations is more intellectual than visceral.

But does that make our writing authentic?

This brings me back to a quotation a high school art teacher with really expressive eyebrows once told me: “Art imitates life.” Cliché, but true. Who wants to read fifty pages describing how you got up in the morning, made your bed (addendum: the protagonist is not a college student), brushed your teeth, got dressed, put water in the kettle for coffee, checked the clock to see if you have time to eat breakfast…

Do you really want to put people through the ho-hum of their daily routines?

I am not an advocator for self-harm, nor am I interested in inflicting harm onto others. But I am certainly not risk averse. Would I knowingly put myself in a situation—with a high degree of failure or adverse outcomes—simply to be more affiliated with the subject so I can write about it “authentically”?

I’ll leave that to you to decide.

Like Neil Gaiman said, “Go out and get your heart broken.”

Just come back and be prepared to write about it.

millieho.wordpress.com

What is the music played by a silent oboe?

http://www.myraburg.com

Writing About Someplace I Haven’t Been–Iosopa, Utah

I tried to go there–I chickened out. I wrote about what I didn’t see. Perhaps that gave me room to write about what I imagined. What do you think?

Iosopa

I exit south
and try to drive
the remote road
off 80
to Isopa

not that there
is much there
mostly a story

of Hawaiians, converted
who came, Mormons,
to Utah
segregated
from Salt Lake

an incongruous marker
of a Polynesian
king or warrior
in a helmet
and a lone mountain
that oddly
looks like him

a limestone slab
carved with palm trees, sea turtles, and sharks
and a welcome sign
Aloha Iosope
tropical blue
against the Utah sky and mountains
(outrigger canoe dark in the oncoming wave)

how did they manage
building a fish tank
farming
leprosy, a graveyard
and a return
to an island
where Latter Day Saints
have built a temple

this is the kind
of thing
I really like
people
somewhere they ought not
to be
and consequences

but I’ve been alone
for a week
and need to recover
from vastness
turn back and head
for a hotel–
T.V., room service, a bed–
at the Salt Lake City airport.

Residents in 1914: