Thursday jazz: more of the stellar sounds of Dexter Gordon.
1. Over at the Billy Collins Poetry Broadcast today, Billy Collins gave his persona as a poet a rest for most of the half hour. Billy Collins is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York's Lehman College. Today he acted as our professor and talked about his high regard for Emily Dickinson, assuring us that although he wrote a poem about undressing her, she is much more to him than the fanciful subject of a single fanciful, playful fantasy. To assure us of his Emily Dickinson cred, he calmly and reverently read from an introduction he wrote for the Modern Library Classic's edition of The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson and he told us about lectures he has given about her poetry around the world, including a talk in Rome when he was introduced to the audience by an Italian astronaut speaking live from the International Space Station, with the blue marble of earth visible over the astronaut's shoulder. Billy Collins was blown away by the introduction, but gathered himself and delivered his lecture.
Toward the end of the half hour, he read one poem from his book, The Art of Drowning, "Philosophy". He introduced it calmly, professorially with a brief tutorial on philosophy and the genre of topographical poetry.
For Friday, August 14, Billy Collins' plan is to look closely at two Emily Dickinson poems. I look forward to both his reading of the poems and his explications.
2. Until today, my head to head team, the Kellogg Johnniez, has performed pretty well in one of the fantasy baseball leagues I participate in. Today, though, I could have benched Chris Paddack. He is on my team, a pitcher for the Padres, and was facing the Dodgers tonight. I didn't bench him, though. He got routed and racked up a lot of negative points, costing me dearly in my match this week against Gaylord's YellaDawgs. The Johnniez are not insurmountably behind going into the weekend, but the odds of the Johnniez winning this week's matchup are not very good. No problem. I'm having a blast!
3. Having Billy Collins turn his poetry broadcast into a 20 minute seminar on Emily Dickinson got me thinking about the contrast between Billy Collins' relaxed, low key, confident, and wry style of teaching and presenting himself in these broadcasts and how I used to do things in the classroom. As a teacher, I was rarely relaxed (I was animated, too much nervous energy), rarely low key, was always fueled by varying levels of lack of confidence, and I don't think I was particularly wry. I am so much quieter now than when I was younger. I'm much less pumped up, much less stoked by adrenaline. I wonder, from time to time, if I were to return to the classroom (very unlikely), would I be able to pattern myself a bit after Billy Collins and settle down, work with my students with a calmer manner, or was I just cut out to be demonstrative and animated as a teacher? Today, I thought, for a little while, that it would be fun to find out -- until I realized how out of practice I am and how odd it feels to even think of myself as having been a teacher.
So I dropped that subject.
Today is National Kool-Aid Day and Stu marks the occasion in this limerick:
How much of this stuff didja drink?
Mixed with sugar, pitcher filled in the sink.
Lime, Grape or Strawberry,
Lemonade or Black Cherry?
Glass of that and you’d feel in the “pink”!
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