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“Make Silence Your Friend”

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I’ve made a deal with my students that I will perform a piece at a local poetry slam on May 26th. Even writing that down here means that I have to follow through with my promise. Then again, even writing that down here makes me nervous. I’ve written the piece that I want to perform, and it’s heavy. The subject matter is not suitable for everyone, but it’s very honest, and after watching a few slam poetry events, I know that it fits in with the overall feel of what people have been performing. I think I’m more nervous about the subject matter because it’s opening myself up to some of my students, and that’s an odd line to walk at times.

The other hitch in my proverbial giddy-up is that I suffer from social anxiety disorder, and while I stay fairly medicated, it doesn’t mean that standing on stage, and performing a piece about my world to a group of complete strangers, and a handful of students doesn’t make the lump in my throat go down any easier. It’s funny though, because I play music on a regular basis – live music, in front of a lot of people. In fact, I’m playing a show tonight for 300+ people, and I’ll be perfectly fine. The playing portion is okay; frankly, it’s the getting onto the stage that is the issue. Once I’m there, I feel great. I’m alive. I strum a few chords, sing a few lines, and I feel at home. But I typically arrive several hours early, have a drink to relax my mind, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait for load in, and set up, and soundcheck, and then continue the waiting process until I play. I’ve gotten a lot better over the years. I’m not angry before shows anymore. I no longer hide in the corners. I’ve been doing shows for 17 years, so why does this poetry slam bother me so much?

It’s the waiting. It’s the fact that the only people I’ll know are a handful of students. It’s the fact that I can’t hide behind my guitar, and that the only thing I’ll have as my crutch is the microphone, and my piece of paper – if I don’t memorize the whole thing. I know I’ll be calm once I start the piece. And it’s a very accepting and open crowd. I’ve seen people truly mess up, forget lines, get rattled, voices crack, and the audience cheers them on to keep going, and gives them praise. I know that I can do this.

Taylor Mali’s advice is right on point: If my hands shake, I should memorize my piece. If they don’t, then I need to make silence my friend. Well, my hands don’t shake, and I love making people listen to my words. I thrive off of the silence during a solo set, when you know that every ear is straining to hear each and every syllable. I can do this. It’s just the waiting. Damn you Tom Petty. The waiting really is the hardest part.

The Daily Prompt – May 13th

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Rules:

  1. Use the prompt in the way it’s intended (starting a sentence, the title of the piece, theme, etc)
  2. You may write in any format you see fit (fiction, non-fiction, poem, song, script, etc.)
  3. Post your piece of writing in the comments section of the website to be considered for the prizes given
  4. The winner of each daily prompt will be published on the site in “Best of The Daily Prompt” section.

The Daily Prompt:

Twitter has become a force in the world of social media, allowing celebrities to communicate with their fans, teenagers to leave short messages for everyone to see, and news sources to communicate with more immediacy than ever. It’s crazy to think that 140 characters – including spaces – can be the window to so much information. It can be a very difficult task to write the perfect “tweet.”

You must compose a short story in no more than 140 characters – including spaces.

It is best to open up your Twitter account to make sure that your tweet is the correct length. If you don’t have Twitter, you will need to rely on the character count function on whatever Word program you use.

Oh, You Got a Poem Published? How Much Did That Cost You?

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One of my worst nightmares as a Creative Writing teacher, is the student who comes into class with a hardbound book, and exclaims, “Mr. Margolin! Mr. Margolin! MR. MARGOLIN! I GOT PUBLISHED!!!!!!”. I typically try really hard to not be mean, and to champion the fact that they wrote a poem, but it’s incredibly difficult in the end, when I look into their glowing eyes, and ask the questions: “Oh, you got a poem…published? Um… how much did that cost you?”. Immediately, I can see their defenses draw up, and their eyes get a nice mix of anger and mist. The conversation then goes like this:

Student: “But I got published. I submitted my poem to this company/contest and they wrote me back and told me that I was accepted and that all I needed to do was send them a check for $49.99 and they would put my poem in a hardbound book and that I could pay an additional $29.99 for every other copy for my family and my mom and dad and grandma are all really excited that I bought them all a copy for Christmas and I got published!” This is typically followed by some jumping, or arm waving, or some hefty exclamations of greatness.

Me: Sitting down on a desk in my room. “I’m really proud of you for writing a poem. It’s good that you enjoy doing that. I’ve got to be honest with you though, you didn’t actually win anything. You’re in that book because you paid for it – just like everyone else who is in that book. I’m really sorry you had to spend so much money. It’s cool that you’re in a book though. I mean, you’ll have that forever now.”

Student: This is wear the anger turns to tears. “But, but, but… I … they… it’s…it’s… I got published. They wrote me the letter and everything. I’ve got it in this book. I… I don’t… ” and then they storm out of my room before I get a chance to say anything else.

Yes, it’s true that some journals charge for submissions to their poetry contests. It’s also true that no journal worth their literary integrity would charge for submissions to their poetry contests. Small press journals do not have a ton of money. Some are better off than others, and can award a monetary prize for publishing your pieces. Most publications can afford to give you a couple of copies, or a pat on the back, or a subscription. Paying them simply means that you are funding their publication, or that you are paying to have your piece published – especially in the case of the “hardbound scam” that has been going on for decades.

If you truly want to submit your pieces for publication, take a look at Writers Market, or Poets and Writers, or Writers’ Digest, and start to send pieces to reputable places.

Look, I will always be proud of the student who simply writes a poem; I just don’t want that student to believe that they are a published author because they put a check in the mail. If it was really that easy, the world would be filled with a lot more poetry.

I Hope the Talking Means They’re Stealing Conversations

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Class

Part of this is a test to see if my students are paying attention. Part of this is me, slightly annoyed that I’m hearing more talking than typing. Miles Davis – at the request of the mo-hawked kid on the left – is playing over the speaker system, and a good majority of the students have replaced the smooth sounds of jazz with ratchety hip-hop, or Madonna, or whatever they can slam into their ears fast enough to avoid the subtleties of the Quintet era Davis.

This is my Creative Writing II Class. They are supposed to be the ones who are proud of their work, and working hard toward a piece that will be submitted for publication to a small press journal prior to the end of the school year. For the most part, these kids truly want to be here, and more than that, they are working incredibly hard to perfect their pieces as we move toward the final due dates. I’m proud of them. Those that are slacking off now will catch up; they did the last term. There are only 14 students in this class – some of whom are not found in this blurred photo – and each of them have talent. This was the right grouping of students. The random computer scheduling got it right with this one.

Unfortunately, today is a Tuesday that feels like a Monday, and they aren’t quite working as hard as I would like them to be. Some are checking out this website – some may even comment – and others are looking at prom pictures, or random assignments that don’t belong in this class (I actually had to pause while I typing just now to remind a student that this was a writing class, and not a web design class. Funny how the two are confused).

There are a handful of students in this current group who I could truly see going on to a career in writing. I hope to read their names in the big name quarterlies one day, and smile, knowing that maybe, just maybe they learned something while they were talking, and not typing. As we all know, the best writers are conversation thieves.

Save Your Quarters and Dollars.

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Suicide’s Note

The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.

-Langston Hughes

A poem simply needs to say enough to leave the reader thinking. Langston Hughes’ poem “Suicide’s Note,” has long since been my favorite poem. It’s subtle beauty allows the reader to grasp the meaning of the piece, and yet still ponder why such a dark experience can feel so peaceful.

When my students work through their poetry unit, I try to remind them that a poem doesn’t need to say more than what they mean. It’s so easy for poets – especially high school poets – to feel as if they need to include these obtuse metaphors, when in reality, the most honest, simply worded pieces, are the most engaging.

My poetry professor always used to tell us to use nickel and dime words, instead of quarter and dollar words. No one wants to use a dictionary to read through a poem. Keep them clean, and the reader will come back for more.

Do you have a favorite simple poem?

QOTD: What the Hell Do We Do Here?

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We’ve been at this whole website thing for a little over a week now, and we’ve amassed over 500 followers. That’s incredible. This little thing that started as a classroom project, has turned into three old college friends who have finally decided that they were ready to give their all to this mess called writing. We want to inspire people to write, to read, to think, and to talk to each other about what they are writing, reading, and thinking. But, how the hell do we do that?

We think our posts have been pretty good, and it seems like enough of you have found something to enjoy on the site so far, but we’re still trying to find our groove, and figure out the exact direction of The Poetry Question.

We truly need your help with today’s question:

What the hell do we do here? What would you like to see on this site?

If You Love Education, You Don’t Need Higher Education.

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I don’t remember ever having the choice, or thought process, that I would do anything other than go to college after high school. There were moments where I wondered about some other possibilities, but the reality was simple: I was going to college, and I was going to get a degree, and a job within that area of study. My mom was a teacher, and ever since I can remember I was helping with lesson plans, and with her classroom set up, and tutoring students, and working with her during summer school. I enjoyed teaching, and around the age of twelve, it became obvious to me that I was going to be a teacher. I think for a moment I thought about psychology, and for a longer moment about being a rock star, but teaching was in my blood, and I’m stubborn, so that was my final decision.

I hated high school. I did well enough to keep my parents off my back, and to allow my teachers to understand that I definitely didn’t lack intelligence, but not well enough to ever earn honor role, or ever pretend like I was going to be one of the super smart kids to head out to an ivy league wasteland of snobbery and excess. By my junior year, I had figured out how to work the system. I missed 87 days of school because I “had mono, and just never really recovered.” At least that’s what I told the attendance lady, and since I was her 1st period aide, I was able to avoid the parent phone calls, and snag a few pads of excuse slips in order to assure that I would never get caught. I was bright enough to call my teachers and ask for my homework so that I could keep my grades above sea level, and I made sure that I never missed more than two days in a row. It was important to at least attempt to keep up appearances. I was just bored in my classes. It wasn’t that I was skipping school to go do drugs, or drink, or party, or do anything stupid. In fact, I skipped school to hang out at Powell’s Books, or Django Records, or the library. Sometimes I would even let my boss know that I was skipping school, and work a few extra hours. I just didn’t see the point in wasting my time at school if I could do the homework, get decent grades, and still do the things I wanted. I got through junior year just fine, and had taken enough night school and summer school classes – all by choice – so that when it came to senior year, I only needed a few classes, so I was done with the school day by 10am, and ready to move on with life.

The rest of the story is pretty basic. I went to a Pacific University on the weight of my perfect ACT scores, and my college entrance essay. I enjoyed my college experience immensely with all the normal college kid things, graduated with honors, and immediately enrolled in Pacific’s MAT program so I could get my grad degree and start my life as a teacher. How drab.

Somehow, I now teach the youth of today, and most of those “yutes” (Come on! You’ve seen My Cousin Vinny!) don’t give a crap about college. In fact, most of them would turn out to be incredible industrial workers, or carpenters, or mechanics, or Boeing engineers, or any hands-on type of worker. Unfortunately, the school system doesn’t see it that way. Unfortunately, students are forced to sit through classes they don’t care about, don’t want to be in, and frankly, don’t need for their future. But with the current system, if they don’t pass their classes, they can’t get that piece of paper, and walk across the stage, and figure out which junior college to attend before using absolutely none of those skills to do the job that they want to do, and waste several years getting to the job that works for them – and some of them getting so lost along the way, that they never return to their original goal. It’s sad.

I’ve never been a “college-or-else” teacher. I don’t think it’s necessary. I wish students were allowed to leave high school their sophomore years and begin apprenticeships in things they actually care about. Those who want to stay in school and work toward a degree in arts and letters would stay in high school, and venture to college, but beyond that, what’s the point? We’re wasting our most valuable resource – teenagers.

I know this website deals with mostly language, so I’ll end by bringing it back to that. Today, a student of mine named Andrew, brought this beautiful poem to my attention. It’s by a slam poet named Suli Breaks. It was just one more reminder that my students – even those who aren’t paying a ton of attention to the normal educational system – are truly paying attention to the education that they want to have. The school system is broken, and as a teacher, I feel that it is my job to fix it from the inside out.

Here is the poem, by Suli Breaks, called “Why I Hate School, But Love Education.”

Are You Digital or Traditional?

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While at my parents’ house a few weeks ago, I noticed something vaguely familiar on the kitchen counter: a floppy disc; It’s faded green label, holding the scribble of my childhood signature. My best guess puts this artifact near 25 years old, I would have been six, and so it probably contains my earliest writings. Unfortunately, it won’t work on my PC disc drive at work, and I don’t have an Apple II anymore, or an apple that can run a disc drive, so I have no way – at least not yet – to know what treasures it contains.

In my home office I have every notebook, scrap of paper, metacog-log, written-in novel or textbook, and printed copies of the majority of my middle school, high school, and college papers. While some of them may now be crumpled and faded, un-filed, and in no particular order, they are at least readily available. The pieces on that disk, are not.

Over the last ten years, I’ve transitioned from notebooks and scrap paper, to computers and cell phones. I can’t remember the last time I picked up a pen to write in a journal. Instead, I type, hit save, close the application, and assume that everything will still be there when I return. Sometimes I bank it up to a thumb drive. Sometimes I store it in “the cloud,” but most of the time, I simply leave it on a device that could crash at any point, and lose my hard work. In fact, I’m currently thumbing out this piece on my iPhone, while sitting in a plane heading back to Portland. How does this new found technology not scare me? How am I, like the majority of writers, now leaving things to chance, or the hope that someone at the Apple Genius Bar will be able to recover my files?

What happens to this generation’s version of the floppy disc, when next generation’s i-whatever comes along? Time to hit print on those thousands of pages, file them away, and hope there’s never a fire, flood, or magic shredder looking for your valuable words.

The Poetry Question of the Day: Traditionalist or modernist?