1. I eagerly anticipated today's once every two weeks ZOOM conversation at 2:00. Bill, Diane, Colette, and I spent just over three hours talking about all kinds of things. We had a great discussion about poetry and how we read and understand poems. Among us, we said too many fascinating and insightful things for me to detail here. I'll just say, and I tried to articulate this, that my enjoyment of poetry has grown since I retired. I am no longer obligated to come up with a "reading" or an interpretation of poems -- nor do I have to assign students to do the same -- but I can enjoy what's alive in the poem that is alive in me (or what the poem brings to life in me). I can ease into the enjoyment of how the poem creates momentum, how it's formed, the moves of the imagination it makes, and, maybe above all, its music.
Daily, Billy Collins reinforces my enjoyment of poetry in these ways. He rarely, if ever, talks about what his (or any one else's) poems mean. He strongly downplays the idea that poems are a means of self-expression, of expressing feeling. A good poem will create feeling in the reader and it may or may not have to do with any feeling in the poet. Billy Collins emphasizes again and again, I think, the writing of poetry as a playful act, a way of both observing details in the world and of expanding upon those details with imaginative riffs and well-composed lines.
2. We also discussed how strongly we prefer formal education that is cooperative with supportive teachers/instructors/professors in charge to competitive classrooms conducted like something akin to boot camp. Colette has experienced some especially brutal classroom atmospheres in different creative writing classes and workshops she's been in over the years, but is very happy to report that the MFA program at Eastern Oregon Univ. she's currently enrolled in manages, thanks to the approach of the director and the professors, to strike that golden balance between rigor and cooperation, a balance between assigning challenging reading/demanding workloads and proving humane support for the program's participants.
For me, at least, a fun moment in this conversation occurred when Bill pulled out the notebook/journal he kept when he was my Writing I student at Whitworth in the fall of 1977. He read comments I made forty-three years ago in his notebook. To my relief, it turned out that right from the beginning (Bill was a student in the first writing class I ever taught), I worked to encourage, affirm, and support my students. The comments I wrote, at the tender age of 23, about Bill's writing were accurate, heartening, and prescient. About his creativity, artistry, original ways of seeing things, and clarity, my comments were right on in 1977 and are exponentially much more true in 2020. I'm happy to report that Writing I under my direction was no boot camp.
This afternoon we also learned more about the project Diane is working on for Victory Music. She's been doing interviews with longtime Seattle area musicians, like Magical Strings and Tim Noah, about their very first albums. It's a fascinating project and got us talking about the thrilling history of acoustic music and singers and songwriters in and around the Puget Sound. Moreover, Diane let us in on how she approaches writing these articles and on other projects she's published at Victory Music.
3. As if the scintillating conversation Bill, Colette, Diane, and I enjoyed were not enough, I also was a very happy participant in tonight's family dinner at Carol and Paul's house.
I hardly walked in the door and Carol put a cocktail in my hand whose name had autumn and afternoon in the title and featured bourbon, cider, a cinnamon stick, apple slices, and I'm not sure what else! I do know I enjoyed it.
Soon, we made our way to the dinner table. Carol had prepared each of us a fresh and crispy green salad on a small plate to start and the main course consisted of rosemary lemon roasted chicken, smashed Yukon gold potatoes, and tender asparagus spears. For dessert, Carol presented stuffed dates wrapped in bacon.
It was a hearty and delicious meal.
We talked about a lot of things, but what stuck with me is something I'm not particularly happy about in myself, but seems to be the way I am, given my temperament and mental state of being.
Christy serves on the library board and Carol serves on the local hospital board. I admire them for being active in the Kellogg community and making positive contributions to the welfare of our area.
I've been offered the opportunity to join two different boards in Kellogg and turned them both down.
I might be wrong, but I came to believe that problems I was having in my life while I worked at LCC, problems with fatigue, feeling pressure that had a depressing effect on my mental state and that often led to me being moody at home, had to do with committee work in my job and with always having to deal with the ways my work as an instructor intersected with ways our work was being administered at all levels of governance. I promised myself when I retired, that for the good of my health, I would do all in my power not to be involved with committees, boards, and similar bodies.
The odd thing is that I support the work of these bodies -- even if I might not agree with their decisions, I support having a city council, a county commission, and boards like my sisters are on. Being on such boards (or, at school, committees), however, not only wears me out, but has contributed to some serious deterioration in my health. For reasons I can't explain, I simply seem ill-suited to this kind of work or volunteerism.
After our discussion last night and on into this morning, I have been wondering how I might be of local help without it involving meetings. Looking back to when I lived in Eugene, I was able to do this at church. I would be asked to give a talk, teach a class, work in the kitchen, and other things, much of it requiring little or no committee involvement. Yes, I served on the Adult Education Committee before moving away and somehow that was different for me. I can't explain it.
I'm not really looking for ideas or advice. For now, I'd prefer pondering this on my own. I can think with more clarity right now if I'm not getting suggestions, no matter how benevolent the intentions.
If I have a breakthrough, I'm sure it will be a beautiful thing and make its way onto this blog!
Here's a limerick by Stu:
What color’s your favorite to wear?
Do you need to match skin and your hair?
Do you care what folks think,
Blue for boys and girls pink?
Or pick whatever is clean you find there?
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