Professor J's Place

This morning at Upward Bound, we were doing revision workshops on the personal statements my students are writing. One of the young women began to read her essay. I stopped her. You need to speak louder and read slower. Your words are gold. She looked at me quizzically. You need to read as though what you have to say is important, precious--not "this is just some shit I wrote." And then I remembered. High School.  These kids are in high school and I'm talking like a sailor. Of course, R--, the boy who wants to become a writer, giggled and said, "I love you Miss Jensen." But I should behave. Back to the girl. Her words were gold. Her story inspiring. And she could barely read for the fear and the shame. Gah! The return of the fear! I don't know how to teach against the fear. Except to keep saying, "your words are gold, they are precious; you have something to say." Lucy Calkins is talking to children in this video . Let's...

My darling friend Bluebird at Bluebird Blvd. was writing about poetry recently. It's something she often does, bless her heart. It got me thinking, as her posts are wont to do, and I wrote to her about the first poem I memorized. We decided it would be fun for both of us to write about the poems of our childhoods, so that's what we're doing today!   This is the book I grew up with. First published in 1959, The Golden Treasury of Poetry was compiled for an audience of children, but not once did it talk down to its audience. With delightful illustrations by Joan Walsh Anglund and poems that ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime, this book was my introduction to the joy and music in language. When I teach poetry, which I seldom do, I talk about how we are hard wired for poetry. What do children like to read and have read to them? Poetry! It's the heart beat, I think. The rhythm in our blood.   I, like most children was first attracted to poems that rhyme....

I stole this from Lanie Painie who stole it from Grammar Snob. Copy this list and Bold those you’ve read. Italicize books you have started but couldn’t finish. Add an asterisk* to those you have read more than once. Underline those on your To Be Read list. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights The Silmarillion Life of Pi: A Novel The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick * Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre A Tale of Two Cities The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex Quicksilver Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West The Canterbury Tales The Historian A Portrait of the...

Well, I have finished The Blind Assassin . Wow. What a book. If you haven't read it, I strongly suggest it. Now I am reading Prodigal Summer and Blink . In the car, I'm listening to Love , by Toni Morrison. This evening, Susan and I were talking about discipline. Actually, I was talking about the need for me to become more disciplined with my writing. Everybody says that's what you should do--make writing a priority. I get caught up in working and in collapsing in front of the television. I tell myself I don't have time to read or write or think big thoughts. And, I am learning that I believe what I tell myself. I am going to start telling myself that I have plenty of time to work, grade papers, play with the dogs, exercise, spend time with Susan and Morgan, play cards, write poems and essays and short stories, and read. Other people seem to find the time. Well, I have enough time, too.

My f2f (face to face) World Lit class is reading Gilgamesh . I first read this when Mom was dying of cancer. Every time I reread it, I am at another level of the grief. Someday, I think, I will write an essay about Gilgamesh as an instrument of measuring grief. My online World Lit class is reading The Tempest . Sometimes I don't know what to do with the constant complaints about how difficult it is to read Shakespeare. This is especially difficult in an online class where I cannot show a video; it is so much easier to read the play after you've seen or heard it. So I am left wishing we could get beyond talking about the difficulty and get on with the issues raised. In the car, I am listening to Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin . It is difficult to follow listening because it is not linear. But now that I have got the hang of it, I must say once more how I do love Atwood. It is clever, funny, and devastating. My "in line" or "waiting" book is...