A Master Class

The "Master Class" is something I associated with acting, but now there are ones on many of the creative arts, especially online. In his MasterClass on "Reading and Writing Poetry," Billy Collins covers some of the basics like subject and form, rhyme and meter. But you can tell (even in this excerpt) that he's more interested in the pleasures of a well-turned poem.

Collins is one of the best-selling contemporary poets in the United States. That works for and against him with critics who sometimes see his persona and humor as almost "too accessible." I think they are wrong.

Besides being called “America’s Favorite Poet” by the Wall Street Journal, he served two terms as U.S. Poet Laureate and is also a former New York State Poet Laureate. He’s been honored with the Mark Twain Prize for Humor in Poetry. He’s taught at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and for much of his life at Lehman College, and is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York.

The MasterClass syllabus reads:
• Using humor as a serious strategy
• The fundamental elements of poetry
• Billy’s writing process
• Turning a poem
• Exploring subjects
• Rhyme and meter
• Sound pleasures
• Finding your voice
• Using form to engage readers
• The visual distinctions of poetry

There are other MasterClass offerings that might interest poets: Neil Gaiman teaches The Art of Storytelling, Margaret Atwood on Creative Writing, and even David Lynch on Creativity and Film.

Of course, these classes have a cost, but there are lots of free "classes" online too. Just staying in the Collins section of YouTube, you can hear him on the great poets.

Five of Collins' poems were the inspiration for animated films, which might seem like an odd way to look at poetry. Here he talks about the films in a TED Talk.

If you're like me, any good poetry reading is a kind of class. I always find myself inspired and making notes at readings of things that I should try to write about in my own poetry.


Here is a full reading by Billy Collins at the Strand Book Store in 2012 at the time of his collection Horoscopes for the Dead. If you have never had the chance at hearing Collins live, this is a good alternative. I think you may be inspired to write.

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Summer School Poetry Class

You might not have taken an AP (Advanced Placement) English course in high school, but on the website edsitement.neh.gov you can "study" 21 Poems for AP Literature and Composition. These are poems frequently taught in AP English Lit and Composition classes. 

For each of the twenty-one poems, there are resources including audio clips and video, primary source documents and photographs, timelines, and, of course, poems.

For example, Robert Frost's “Mending Wall” is one selection, and the site offers The Poem, About this Poem from the Poetry Foundation, On “Mending Wall” from Modern American Poetry, a lesson "Mending Wall": A Marriage of Poetic Form and Content, and more about Robert Frost from Voices and Visions.

School is closed for the summer, but some AP students are assigned summer reading and might be assigned some of these poems. Well, here is some help from the teacher's file cabinet. And for the rest of us, we can do some summer school and not have to worry about tests, homework, or grades.

The poems:  

Matthew Arnold: “Dover Beach

Elizabeth Bishop: “In the Waiting Room”

Gwendolyn Brooks: “We Real Cool”

Robert Browning: “My Last Duchess”

Emily Dickinson: “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” (124)

John Donne: “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

T.S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Carolyn Forché: “The Colonel”

Robert Frost: “Mending Wall”

Robert Hayden: “Those Winter Sundays”

Langston Hughes: “Let America Be America Again”

John Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”

Wilfred Owen: “Dulce et Decorum Est”

John Crowe Ransom: “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter”

William Shakespeare: Sonnets

Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Ozymandias”

Wallace Stevens: “Sunday Morning”

Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night”

William Carlos Williams: “Danse Russe”

William Butler Yeats: “The Second Coming”

Did I Miss Anything?

For the past few years, I have used Tom Wayman's poem “Did I Miss Anything?” with students as part of my start to a new semester. It doesn't matter what grade level you teach, the question from the student who missed your class - "Did I miss anything?" -is a painful one. It is not the same as asking "What did I miss?"  It suggests that there is a good possibility that you missed nothing at all.

Tom's poem offers 6 responses.

Did I Miss Anything?

Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per­cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I’m about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 percent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light suddenly descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring the good news to all people
on earth.

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren’t here

The poem is from his Did I Miss Anything?: Selected Poems 1973-1993 (1993, Harbour Publishing)

The poem is also part of Billy Collins' Poetry 180 project with the Library of Congress. A 180-degree turn implies a turning back—in this case, to poetry. For many American teachers, 180 also suggests the 180 day school year and the poem Collins selected for the site and two anthologies are excellent poems to use in the classroom.


     

Learning Poems by Heart

Caroline Kennedy writes that, “If we learn poems by heart, we will always have their wisdom to draw on, and we gain an understanding that no one can take away.”

For the Poems to Learn by Heart collection, Kennedy chose more than 100 poems that can speak to all of us.

The Poetry Foundation has collected a few poems from the book and offers a Poems to Learn Teacher Guide which includes activities aligned to Common Core Standards for grades K-12.

Sample Poems

Grades K-3“Don't Worry if your Job is Small” by Anonymous
“Some Words Inside of Words” by Richard Wilbur

Grades 4-6
“Invitation to Love” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
“A Blessing” by James Wright

Grades 7-12
“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes
“Bilingual/Bilingüe” by Rhina Espaillat
“If—” by Rudyard Kipling
“Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall

Students, go now into summer

For all of you who toil in the classrooms and are wrapping up another year - here's a poem to send you (and maybe your students) out into summer.


First Year Teacher to His Students

Go now into summer, into the backs of cars,
into the black maws of your own changing,
onto the boardwalks of a thousand splinters,
onto the beaches of a hundred fond memories
in wait, where the sea in all its indefatigability
stammers at the invitation. Go to your vacation,

to the late morning cool of your basement rooms,
the honeysuckle evening of the first kiss, the first
dip and pivot, swivel and twist. Go to where
the clipper ships sail far upriver, where the salmon
swim in the clean, cool pools just to spawn.
Wake to what the spider unspools into a silver

dawn dripping with light. Sleep in sleeping bags,
sleep in sand, sleep at someone else's house
in a land you've never been, where the dreamers
dream in a language you only half understand.
Slip beneath the sheets, slide toward the plate,
swing beneath the bandstand where the secret

things await. Be glad, or be sad if you want,
but be, and be a part of all that marches past
like a parade, and wade through it or swim in it
or dive in it with your eyes open and your mind
open to wind, rain, long days of sun and longer
nights of city lights mixing on wet streets like paint.

Stay up so late that you forget day-of-the-week,
week-of-the-month, month-of-the-year of what
might be the best summer, the summer
best remembered by the scar, or by the taste
you'll never now forget of someone's lips,
and the trips you took—there, there, there,

where snow still slept atop some alpine peak,
or where the moon rose so low you could see
its tranquil seas...and all your life it'll be like
some familiar body that stayed with you one night,
one summer, one year, when you were young,
and how everywhere you walked, it followed.

"First Year Teacher to His Students" is by Gary J. Whitehead, from his book Measuring Cubits While the Thunder Claps.

Writing Your Way Home - A Poetry Intensive Weekend

WRITING YOUR WAY HOME
a poetry weekend intensive
at an English manor house
in Mendham, New Jersey

Join poets Laura Boss and Maria Mazzioti Gillan on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, December 11, 12, and 13, 2009. The purpose of this retreat is to give writers the space and time to focus totally on their own work in a serene and beautiful setting away from the pressures and distractions of daily life.

This writing intensive is open to all writers over the age of 18.

Saint Marguerite’s Retreat House is situated on 93 acres of wooded land with pathways that lend themselves to the serene contemplation of nature and nurturing of your creative spirit. Located at the convent of Saint John the Baptist, 82 West Main Street, Mendham, NJ.

Participants arrive before 6 PM on Friday evening, have dinner, settle into their rooms, and begin to retreat from the distractions of the world.

That evening, participants will be lead into creating new work. After each workshop, each participant will have the opportunity to read their work in the group.

After Saturday breakfast, participants will move into two groups for morning workshops, followed by free time for socializing and exploring the gounds.

After lunch, writing workshops will take place, followed by time to write. Each participant will have a chance to sign up in advance with Maria or Laura for one-on-one help with revision.

After dinner on Saturday evening, participants will be invited to read their poems to the groups, and the faculty will lead another workshop session on how to get published.

After Sunday breakfast, a final writing workshop and concluding reading by participants will serve as the “closing ceremony” to this inspiring and productive weekend. Lunch will provide a final opportunity for socializing.

The leaders envision this weekend as a retreat from the noise and bustle of daily life. They see this retreat as a spiritual and creative break from our usual lives. The setting certainly allows us to take some time to look at life in a new light, to listen for our own voices, and to create in stillness, in quiet, and in community. These are times of contemplation and welcoming the muse.

The workshops will concentrate on "writing your way home" and the way writing can save us, save our stories and our lives.

Participants should bring papers, pens, and the willingness to take risks. Please also bring previously-written work for one-on-one sessions and for the readings.



Teachers may receive 15 professional development credits for attending.

Cost: $375 includes room and board (Deposit by November 1, 2009 - $225 with the balance December 1, 2009 - $150)
Early Bird Discount: Deduct $25 if paid in full by November 7, 2009
Full refund will be given prior to December 1, 2009.
Late registration will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Enrollment is limited. There are people already signed up for this workshop, so if you are interested, please sign up as early as possible.

Questions? Call (973) 684-6555 or (973) 423-2921 or email: mgillan@pccc.edu