"Lying in a Hammock at William Duffys Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright : The Poetry Foundation

Off Indiana Rt. 1, near Angola

Here's a revised version of an earlier post about James Wright's "Lying in a Hammock."  Several works about fall, directly or indirectly, are just too good not to post twice, or more.

After I read the poem for the first time, I threw the book across the room and stayed away from Wright for over a year. How dare he spring that last line out of nowhere. Yes, a poem is a journey, a discovery, for the poet, or at least his speaker; but there's discovery and there's snake oil.

On the other hand, does that last line come out of nowhere?

Peer pressure—in the form of anthologies that insisted on including the poem—kept me going back to it. Finally, I used it in a class to see what would happen. Of course, some students are all too happy to hate any poem, especially work that seems dishonest, interested in tricking a reader or leaving him in the dust for no reason better than illustrating the poet's intellectual superiority.

Off Indiana Rt. 1, near Angola

But soon enough students and I began to see the earlier lines more or less prepping for the final boom (or is it a thud? a whimper? a flash?).

“Lying in a Hammock . . . “ is now among my favorites, and in my most reckless moments of outrageous bravado, I exclaim that no work better illustrates the nature of epiphany. Take that, James Joyce.

My experience with "Lying in a Hammock" also illustrates a great line from E.M. Forester, who said, “How do I know what I think till I see what I say?”

Near Jonesville, Michigan

When I risked sharing "Lying in a Hammock" with students before I was sure what I thought about it myself, I had to say things and let them say things that eventually led us as individuals and groups to what we thought about a significant poem with a compelling idea (or a few) at its core.

No, we did not all agree about every part or the whole; some conversations and some individuals were animated, yet we didn't kill each other and no one shouted, "You lie!" (I was glad I'd kept my book-throwing to myself).

Off Indiana Rt. 1, near Angola

Pedagogy: experiences like those class discussions amount to one more reason I blast off about rigid adherence to rigid lesson plans, which lead to rigid, stultifying classes, aimed at mere coverage, not inspiration, discovery, pleasure, or meaningful interaction with others. Clocks and calendars must bend; coverage has to happen, but we don't need to be its whipping boy. 

I propose that calendars and clocks and A.P. exams and admission to any of the several Harvards out there must take a back seat to the enjoyment of learning, which includes polite but frank discussion and debate, in which "You lie!" will usually be an unacceptable comment, and "Let me re-think that" or "Maybe I was wrong" are essential statements that every student and every teacher (and every Congressman) must learn to embrace.
 

I've probably already bitten off too much for one post, but let me add this link to a Warren Buffet idea about Congress, which connects to my point about honesty informed by civility:

https://www.facebook.com/kellyannejulinforrester/posts/2508974365521

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota by James Wright : The Poetry Foundation

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Education: Some Modest Proposals

John Frederick Peto, “After Night’s Study,” Detroit Institute of Arts







I’ve been debating whether to bother you with this. Well, thanks to Ohio River Life last Monday, July 12, here it is — concerning schools, some Banjo-Think.

For education to occur, whatever else there might be, there must be the following, in this order of importance (also, notice the adjectives—not “brilliant” or “perfect,” but “willing” and “well-intentioned” people):

A. a willing student.
B. a laboratory—which may be a book, a computer, a forest, a frog, or test tubes and the like.
C. a well-intentioned teacher as guide.

Everything else is optional.

I don’t go around preaching that, but when I do offer it, I get looks that say, “Isn’t he quaint? He hasn’t even mentioned my Special Interest Group.”

Here’s the junk, the hullaballoo, everyone else seems to find essential to education:

Interfering parents.

Governmental exams written by politicians (who may or may not have been educators at some point in their lives).

Political action groups, often as bodyguards for students or teachers.

Educational supervisors (bosses) who look more at lesson plans than lessons — actual classroom experiences or other teacher-student interactions, which include the personal baggage of teacher and student.

A schoolhouse culture that endorses instructional logorrhea, a teacher’s talking at students at the expense of open discussion and other kinds of lab work.

Fear of discipline, lest you anger a parent or political group who themselves lack discipline.

Packets of rules, volumes rumored to cover every eventuality.

The Surrender of thought to local or regional sensibilities, including the
Left-ness, Right-ness, or trendiness in syllabi and curricula.

External experts (“consultants”) who seem important in a field but may or may not have useful, practical information.

Teachers’ attendance at conferences. Teachers' talk about how many conferences they've attended.

Theories about education or subject matter.

Faculty meetings in which bosses or colleagues drone on about the obvious or the irrelevant when all involved could be preparing, grading, resting or having fun with family and friends.

Which conference, meeting, or packet demonstrates to teachers The How of mixing compassion for and expectations of students? Or The How of QueenBees and Bullies? Or The How of comfort with your different drummer? Who's got the instruction manual?

Teacher publications, lectures at conferences and other trophies that bring glory to the school are mistaken for merit in the classroom.

Trophies for students. No trophy = no self-esteem. Hence a trophy epidemic, trophy-inflation and students with holes in their middles. Trophies as charity? Listening to students, respecting students, encouraging and sympathizing with students are vapor that cannot be measured or advertised. Students need objects, tangible currency, not love.

Teachers who think “academic freedom” has no limits.

Teachers who see the classroom as a soap box.

Students who have surrendered.

* * *


What riled up a Sleeping Banjo? At the July 12 Ohio River Life
( http://ohioriverlife.blogspot.com ), the blogger presents a troubling situation at the University of Illinois. For details, you’ll need to go there or elsewhere, but in a nutshell, a student has taken a professor to task for his views on Catholicism, homosexuality, and the broader issue of academic freedom. For now, it’s the Illinois professor who is on the hot seat—what a surprise. But my sympathies are not as predictable as you might expect.

It's an outrage that comparative religion cannot be taught in some (all?) public schools. Aren’t religions right up there with wars as one important way of understanding a culture? But apparently neither teachers nor the citizenry are up to the task of scholarly inquiry or the spirit of curiosity. Everybody's got a pamphlet to sell and alleged sensitivities to protect.

No, I was never personally victimized by the factors above, but I resent the defensiveness I found myself developing after a few years of teaching.

Paranoia? Maybe. But if you can't bring joy to teaching, there's little point in entering the building. In addition to your subject matter, you're teaching (and modeling) a passion for ideas, intellectual curiosity, the proverbial life of the mind. Yes, even in high school, even in the sticks or the inner city. You are the alternative to what is.

But there are thousands out there who want to make this a Left or Right propaganda affair, rather than a Why and How journey. They listen only to each other, they cluster like trendy teams of germs, and insert themselves into the classroom (phallic imagery intended) with little regard for what they are replacing, such as other people actually listening to their child, young people listening to each other, creeping forward . . . "Society creeps ever forward on the backs of its neurotics" (source unknown) -- and on the backs of youth who have been jarred out of their prior indoctrinations.

An interest group behind every pillar means that well-intentioned students and teachers—the majority—are screwed. Am I talking to that Illinois prof or the students who are after him? I don't know. Probably both. But somebody needs to shut up and look in the mirror.



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Kim Addonizio, "The First Line Is Deepest." Shredding.

The First Line is the Deepest by Kim Addonizio : Poetry Magazine [poem/magazine] : Find Poems and Poets. Discover Poetry.

Watch it Shred!: "The Monster"

You might want to skip the first minute of the video, though the whole thing is only 2+ minutes. Am I just odd for seeing connections among the parts of today's post: Addonizio, Shredding, Teaching, Condescending, Catching in the Rye, and more? (Addonizio's poem is full of witty allusions. We could have a contest to see who catches the most).

Maybe I am taking Altadena Hiker’s recommended video too seriously. But try to imagine how much professorial arrogance I've witnessed as a student and teacher. The stories I could tell. I'd like to think I haven't been part of it, but no guarantees.

I think it’s easy to kill writing for a kid who has interest and potential, but also some problems and pretensions to work through. I'm fairly sure there's one response to that I don't buy: if he's a real writer, he can't be stopped.

People can be stopped. Not all, I’m sure, but enough.

It is not the right of a (temporarily) hotshot writer or teacher to kill in a beginner an activity that might serve him well through his life, even if it's "only" journal-keeping or painting water colors in the city park. Or blogging! How many bloggers drop this line to a photography blogger: “That’s the most trite postcard picture I’ve seen in years, Wally. Bad day at the office?”

Producing art of any kind is a naked adventure. Your zits show, and you know it, but you probably feel you must cover up. So a developing writer/artist grows into one defense or another—most likely arrogant bravado or defiant, sullen, dramatic withdrawal or terminal, genuine shyness.

So when I see (temporarily) successful writers sniggering at the kind of stuff they themselves used to, or still do, produce, I want to smack 'em, or at least tell 'em to get off their high horses and pick on someone their own size.

I must say, I wonder how many of them could/would engage in a project of showing their youthful, disgraceful stuff. I have looked at my youthful crap a few times, and I'm not sure there's enough money on earth (especially in recent months) to pay me to show it. It's a fun idea, but I guess I'm not mentally healthy enough to indulge.

Back to my paragraph one above: let me add that the few dozen writers I've gotten to know (just a bit and only professionally, as visiting writers, or at conferences and such) do not seem to follow the model of "look-at-the-alienated-deep-greatness-of-me" (ADGOM?), established by, say, Hemingway or Plath. As a crowd, the writers I’ve met in the last twenty years or so have been friendly, down to earth, and eager to help young people. They've also tried to be socially comfortable at obligatory tea or beer gatherings, which would make me cringe if I were in their place. In fact, I cringe on their behalf.

It's almost disappointing. Hey! Where are all the mean but brilliant psychos I read about in college?

Then a mean psycho shows up, of course, with or without the brilliance. But it's rare, at least in my experience. Of course, I'm seeing them in contexts where they could establish nasty reputations they wouldn't want, now that readings, mentoring and guru-hood are so lucrative. In any case, they show up and behave. I think they acknowledge the loneliness of the work and are glad for any kind of companionship and recognition. A couple of them have said so.

How would Hemingway have fared on the college circuit?

Yes, I wonder if they are the same, kind, well-adjusted folks they seem, and I doubt it. I’ve probably never met a well-adjusted adult, according to my definition. But that's not the topic, and that’s not where art comes from.

These professional settings are all I've got to go on. And I can think of only one time when a celebrity writer made an ass of himself by scoffing at a student-something, a question, a comment, or student writing — though some of those comments and questions might have deserved a metaphorical slap in the head.

Maybe the kinder, gentler America has arrived, at least in writerly circles. I doubt that, but in any case, I’m not going to applaud the inflicting of middle-aged issues, or the issues that come with (temporary) success, upon the earnest young.

The arrogant young? That’s another story.

*

WHAT MAKES IT GOOD?

Left: CAGED SKYLARKS




Maybe I hate golf. At least I’m uninterested in it. How can you make me care about the game in general or your particular interest in it? What makes three or four hours on a golf course worth a story? Worth an essay? To some withered nerd of a skeptic?

Soon I’ll be back in the classroom, teaching Basic Composition. In an attempt at a unifying, useful, thought-provoking question for the course and for the rest of our days, I’ll probably offer this to the students: “What makes it good?”

Whether we are evaluating a golf outing, or a blog, or a poem, or the architecture of a building, or a car, or a C.D., or an assist in basketball (only assists and defensive moves are interesting), or a strategy for starting up a business, or choosing a prospective date, or approaching her or him, or finding a restaurant or movie, or decorating a home (dorm room or house), the question arises, “What makes it good?” Isn’t it possible that there are at least a couple of answers that would apply to any human endeavor?

Surely the question of what is good might also include, "What makes it beautiful?" Or, "What makes it functional?" Must it include those? Surely it would include the question of what is important.

Or would it? Is there something I’m not seeing about the question? Or the nature of eighteen-year-olds? How much would, and should, answers change according to age, gender, ethnicity, and background (suburban, urban, small-town, farm), or region (Northeast, South, Midwest, West Coast)? And those factors don’t even take into account, as they might, parts of the world other than the U.S.

Have I gone totally pie-in-the-sky to think this is, and should be, more interesting than golf? Or brands of beer? Or models of cars? Far, far beyond a course in basic composition?

And if all this sounds elementary or condescending, if you’re thinking I should just re-take Dormitory Bull Session 101, please think back to conversations or other social situations (like poetry readings, concerts, golf outings) you’ve recently been involved in. Were you a participant, an interested spectator, or a victim? Why?

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