Another roundabout story, but I think that it leads to the interesting topic of how poems fall into becoming a few lines of posey sprinkled about with little deference to the original.  Or understanding. 

And, is that for the best?

When listening to Public Radio International’s sports program “Only a Game” sports writer John Fienstein told of how he ended his anthology “Going One on One with Sports’ Greatest Athletes.”  Years before he had written a book about the Army-Navy football rivalry and had kept in touch with many of the players.  Faced with the tragic death of a former player serving abroad, and the suicide of another player’s wife due to depression, he was comforted by the lines:

I’m wounded not, but I’m not slain.
I’m brusied and faint they say
Just let me lie and bleed awhile;
I’ll not be long this way.

With this, he ended the anthology.

I tried to find the original poem from which these lines came, but that proved difficult.  A page on the Poetry Library site offered a little, but pointed in the direction of John Dryden.  These were the lines people on that site said came from the poem:

I’m wounded not, but I’m not slain.
I’m brusied and faint they say
Just let me lie and bleed awhile;
I’ll not be long this way.

My Spirit’s low and my eyes flow.
My heart is sad and sore;
But when my pen’ent tears are gone,
I’ll stand and fight some more.

I’ll bind these wounds; I’ll dry these tears;
I’ll close this bleeding vein;
I’ll not lie here and weep and die:
I’ll rise and fight again.

‘Twas yesterday I bowed so low,
Was weak from tears and pain;
Today I’m strong; my fears are gone;
Today I fight again.

A dead end.  No poem with a line from this and the name “Dryden” appeared in my search.  One of those bits of misinformation mentioned the “Child Ballads” while another mentioned Andrew Barton (written as Bartin in the ballad).  After several false leads and a trip through Wikipedia, I tracked down the ballad.  Nothing I can find attributes it to Dryden; it seems to be a classic ballad.  Perhaps it’s two poems with similar lines, or that one influenced the other?

What intrigued me was that, at the Poetry Library site, so many people had heard the lines in reading about American politicians and presidents.  One person wrote that Ronald Reagan had it inscribed on a plaque that sat on his desk (Note: I’ve heard of about ten quotes inscribed on plaques that once sat on Reagan’s desk).  Another mentioned Nixon saying he thought of it as he left office.  Someone recalled Adlai Stevenson having used it.  If this is true, then two presidents, a major political figure and several service academy graduates used a completely misquoted poem.

My question is: Does it matter?

In the United States we have little need to know who Andrew Barton is.  It is in an outdated local vernacular, which makes an archaic historical tale even less accessible.  The spelling alone is a distraction. Is this misquoting actually better–better art–than the original in this day and age?  What makes a poem, versus a slogan, in this day when Frost is used to advertise a bank or Whitman to sell blue jeans?  And, what of extracting just the good lines?

Or, is there value in returning to the original?  Of slogging through verse after verse?  Does that extra barrier add more to the meaning by having wrestled with it, even as those who lived then would have accepted it without flinching?  Does time add or subtract? 

You can find the entire ballad of Andrew Bartin here, referred to as The Child Ballads: 167. Andrew Bartin.  Zip down to the 63rd stanza (167.63) to find this part:

The Child Ballads: Andrew Bartin
Anonymous

But att Sir Andrew hee shott then;
Hee made sure to hitt his marke;
Vnder the spole of his right arme
Hee smote Sir Andrew quite throw the hart.
Yett from the tree hee wold not start,
But hee clinged to itt with might and maine;
Vnder the coller then of his iacke,
He stroke Sir Andrew thorrow the braine.
‘Ffight on my men,’ sayes Sir Andrew Bartton,
‘I am hurt, but I am not slaine;
I’le lay mee downe and bleed a-while,
And then I’le rise and fight againe.
‘Ffight on my men,’ sayes Sir Andrew Bartton,
‘These English doggs they bite soe lowe;
Ffight on for Scottland and Saint Andrew
Till you heare my whistle blowe!’
But when the cold not heare his whistle blow,
Sayes Harry Hunt, I’le lay my head
You may bord yonder noble shipp, my lord,
For I know Sir Andrew hee is dead.

In a meeting where we discussed when we were going to have other meetings and what those meeting agendas would be, our administrator mentioned getting together as “data teams”.  I laughed, thinking he had said “dada teams”.  For a good ten seconds I actually imagined what that was before I realized I had misheard it.

For those who have yet to be crushed by the current wave of assessment generated pedagogy, data teams are groups of teachers that try to make sense of all of those assessment scores we gather about students (as one book I read stated: there is no lack of good data, just a lack of people who can use it well).  I love data–embrace it!  Yet, there are a lot of ninnies not in the classroom who seem to exist to muddy the statistical waters.  They cannot read it very well, yet generate action plans based on data.

After realizing my mishearing, I wondered if I had closer to the truth than I thought. Our coordinators and literacy leaders and the host of people I know by email only at the supervisory union level are all good people, but I sometimes wonder if they see the absurdist theater they perform at meetings and in-service (if Dada came via Powerpoint).  If only they wore bowler hats, or a monocle.

Note: I had never thought of wearing a monocle, but here’s a place where you can buy one easily and inexpensively.  I’m on the fence, but you might be ready for it.  The excellent Warby Parker site has this, and other 1950s poet glasses, here.

Perhaps our data team should follow Tristan Tzara’s method of “chance operation” and see the results (it sometimes seems like we do).  For those who have not tried this poetry method with students, I pass this on.  Chance operation is creating a poem through random selections. In one section of Tzara’s “Dada Manifesto on Feeble & Bitter Love,” he offers the following instructions to make a Dadaist poem:

Pour faire un poème dadaïste

Prenez un journal.
Prenez des ciseaux.
Choisissez dans le journal un article ayant la longeur que vous comptez donner à votre poème.
Découpez l’article.
Découpez ensuite avec soin chacun des mots qui forment cet article et mettez-les dans un sac.
Agitez doucement.
Sortez ensuite chaque coupière l’une après l’autre.
Copiez consciencieusement dans l’ordre où elles ont quitté le sac.
Le poème vous ressemblera.
Et vous voilà un écrivain infiniment original et d’une sensibilité charmante, encore qu’incomprise du vulgaire.

Tristan Tzara: Part VIII of “Dada manifeste sur l’amour faible et l’amour amer”, La Vie des Lettres, 4 (April 1921), 434-443. Reprinted in: Oeuvres complètes, Vol.1, Paris, 1975, p. 382.

My little Dada joke.  Here it is translated from the original French by Barbara Wright:

“Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are–an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.”

The kids like it because it’s random and easy.  The results are often funny.

What I hate about such poems is not their form or content or lack of content, but it emphasizes the idea that students already have in their mind that great things are random, and luck and talent is ultimately the engine that drives success. Everything I have read in the past few years states that hard work and practice is the key (read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” and Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code” for some good stuff, especially the latter).  Writing poetry is hard.

Still, some random whimsy is always appreciated.

Discuss if, in the end, this matches a poem they like.  From there, have them discuss form and the work that goes into creating something worth reading a second time.

Random is fun…. for a class.

Then, turn to the results of hard work. 

To further the discussion, have your students try what Jackson Mac Low did with the work of Gertrude Stein.  He discusses his method after the poem, but he basically threw a Stein poem into a blender.  In doing so with their favorite poem, your students might get an appreciation for it by seeing a) the importance of word choice (this does not change) and b) how important structure is (this changes radically). 

At the very least they will have been more intimate with a good poem as they take scissors to it.

Note: It is difficult to determine the enjambment as I transferred Low’s work here.  In the spirit of “chance operation” I left it as it fell, but you can see my source here.

Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair
Jackson Mac Low

A feather table: reckless gratitude.
It is that-there that means best.

White the green grinding trimming thing!
The disgrace, like stripes.
More selection, slighter intention.

Rosewood stationing is use journey: curious dusty empty length.
Winged cake: the cake, the plan that neglects to make color certainly.
Time long could winter: elegant consequences monstrous.
So much and guided holders garments are–and arrangements.
Staring then that when sudden same time’s necessary, that circular
same’s more necessary, not actually aching.

And why special?
Not left straw, the chain’s the missing, was white winningly and
occasion’s entirely strings.
Reason is sullenness: it’s there that practices left when six into
nothing narrow, resolute, suggests all beside that plain seam.
Pencils, mutton, asparagus: the table there.
There reddening is not to change that in such absurd surroundings.
Considering clearly, a feather’s large second heat is there.
There that thing which smells that whistles that there’s denial,
difference, surfeit-dated choices–everything trembling
imitation.

Imitation?–imitation is a joy gurgle.
Best bent, likely disappointed.
Cake season’s not more than most.
That cake makes no larder likely.
Not a single protection is even temporarily standing.
Sugar and lard there are sudden and shaming.
That single set comes orderly.
There the remarkable witness made no more settlement than
blessing.
Increase the way steak colored coffee.
Wheatly that music half-noisy.
Reason’s decline is not a little grainy.

This means taste where toe-washing is reasonable.
Salmon carriage?–action hanging.
Scene bits and this nervous draught don’t satisfy elevation,
There is no change.
Much was temporary behind that center and much was formerly
charming.
Then the then-triumphant showed their disagreeable hidden worries.
The chair asked the speech be repeated, supposing
attention-resemblance.
It is just summer.
Another section has a light likeness to pedestrianism.
Which is light?
That used this there.
The chair’s justice: nothing-colored mercy.
No, perhaps some is likely.

That is not a genuine bargain.
There preparation so suits white bands’ singing and redness that the
same sight’s a simpler splendor.
No, not the same.
Wishing the same is not quite the same as a different arrangement.
Any measure washed is brighter than an occasional string set.
A precocious nothing discolors that extract sooner than showing its
starting.
A bag place chain room winningly reasons with shining hair.
What with supposing without protection, no wound is sudden.
Coloring sullenness rushes bottom reason in gilded country.
What if it shows?
Necessarily, the whole thing there is shining.
Is that anything?
More single women stitch tickets.
To show difference exudes reliability.
Inside that large silver likeness, Hope tables thick coal.
Coal makes morning furnaces darker,
Joy and success are exceptions.

Four suggest a sadder surrender.
Pretence and cheaper influences are staining tender Pride there.
Sort out that little sink.
Why is the size of the baking remainder something that resembles
light more than cutting?
This cheese is more calm than anything solitary.
It is still an occasion for bottom anticipation.
Reason’s season cracked that which was ripe.
Nearly all were neglected by blessing, not without nervous actions.
He’s readily beginning to seed the cheese and estrange the Whites.
The celery curled its lashes at the slam.
Not-so-heated reason will be little able to satisfy another.
This was formerly much used as a charming chair.
Pedestrianism showed itself triumphant and disagreeable.
That which was hidden worried them.
They asked that her speech be repeated.
Summer light bears a likeness to justice.
Then the light is supposing attention.
That section has a resemblance to light.
Is it a likeness of the justice chair?

Author’s Note:
Eight strophes initially drawing upon the whole text of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons.  I sent the entire text through DIASTEX5 (Charles O. Hartman’s 1994 update of DIASTEXT [1989],  his automation of one of my diastic text-selection procedures [1963], using as a seed text the fifty-third paragraph of the book (exclusive of titles, etc), which begins, “A fact is that when any direction is just like that, . . .” I selected the paragraph by random-digit chance operations using the RAND Corporation’s table A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates. (The Free Press, 1955).

My source and seed texts came from the first edition of Tender Buttons, issued by Donald Evan’s publishing house Claire Marie (1914), as posted online in The Bartleby Archive (1995) and The New Bartleby Library (1999), both edited by Steven van Leeuwen, with editorial contributions by Gordon Dahlquist. However, I incorporated in my file of Tender Buttons fourteen corrections written
in ink in Stein’s hand, which Ulla E. Dydo found in Donald Sutherland’s copy of this edition, now owned by the Special Collections of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

I “mined” the program’s output for words which I included in 117 sentences (several elliptical and each one a verse line) by changes and/or additions of suffixes, pronouns, structure words, forms of “to be,” etc. and changes of word order. Initially, in making these sentences, I placed lexical words’ root morphemes near others that were near them in the raw output–in fact I included many phrases, and even whole verse lines, of unedited, though punctuated, ouput, mostly in early strophes–but I was able to do this less and less in the course of writing the poem.

While composing the 117 verse-line sentences, I divided them into eight strophes that successively comprise numbers of sentences corresponding to the prime-number sequence 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19.

I enjoy the path that brings us to things.

Looking for another article on Wired.com I clicked a few end-of-the-year lists: My cynical nature had me click on Alt Text: Top 10 Things Nobody Cared About in 2011 before being hyper-linked to Best of 2011: Pop Culture’s Tastiest Bits. In the latter, they listed as the “Best Techno-Doc” the documentary, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.”  In it, filmmaker Adam Curtis argues that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have “distorted and simplified our view of the world around us”.  As I am planning on teaching Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″ beginning next week, I was intrigued.

But before I looked into the film, I found myself in love with the title.  It reminds me of Charlie Kaufman film title “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, which was taken from Alexander Pope’s “Eloisa to Abelard”. Perhaps it’s the mix of religious terms (Eternal, Loving Grace) and science terms (Mind, Machines)?

The title is from a Richard Brautigan poem, a poet I know little about. I have read snippets about his life, from time to time, but that West Coast, Pacific Northwest style never quite captured my imagination; that Ken Kesey and Tom Robbins style leaves me cold. Everything about it should interest me, but I have too much New England in me. Too puritanical, I guess.

Here’s some background from Curtis’ documentary, with a Brautigan voice recording of the poem.  Click here to get to the page, with a wee tiny video window.  You can also hear his reading the poem with this link: YouTube of Audio of Brautigan Reading

Which brings me here. The poem is great. It is exactly where I would start the discussion on the machines that have invaded our lives. My students have told me they are tired of dystopias, but perhaps it is because they feel like they are too close to the bone?

Two areas to focus on, beyond content:

First, the repeating refrain of “I like to think”. How does that work in the poem? Is it as wish, and if so, why doesn’t he simply wish it? Is the poet an expert? What makes him think that this future is waiting?  Why does his think it is good?

Second, how do the parenthesis work in the poem? Read it out loud. Do they hush their voice in the parenthesis? Pause? Grammar and language are fascinating.  Point that out.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

This is a theory about learning to read I’ve held for a long time, but Salon’s article “Why Kids Need Solitude” by Alice Karekezi prompted me to put it out in the blogosphere.

Theory: People only learn to read when they are really, really bored and have nothing–NOTHING–else to do but read a book.

I’ve spoken to a lot of peers, adults and parents about the moment they became readers; not when they learned to read, but moved from passive reader to hungry and passionate reader. Without exception, each described a day in which they had nothing to do, so they picked up a book and read until it caught fire.

My own case was a rainy day in fourth grade.  I remember reading a Scholastic biography on Sam Houston (I have no idea how it wound up in our house; Sam Houston is not mentioned as a historical figure in New England schools). Picture a dull blue Scholastic title from the early 1970s, a blonde haired kid laying in the living room in front of a fire. Then, after Houston, I read some horse book my older sister Nancy used to read. Then… I don’t remember, but there was more as the day turned to a greying evening.  After that day, I read a lot. The public library became a regular stop, and it lasted for years. Never one to hole up in corner, I still looked to books for the answer to whatever popped into my head.

My sister mentions a long car ride and her second grade son moving from decoder to fluent reader thanks to a “Calvin and Hobbes” treasury. Long, dull weekends in ski lodges with boring companions pushed some. A number of adults and some students mention unsafe households, where bedrooms and books afforded a modicum of safety.

As a teacher, I’ve begged kids to read. We have played the “find the right book” game, and scheduled plenty of sustained silent reading (SSR). They are expert avoiders. The report “Evaluating Sustained Silent Reading in Reading Classes” by Chow & Chou indicates that six months of SSR is necessary to break through that wall. Why? My theory is that non-readers can stare at an upside down book, miss class, beg off to the library and pass notes for only so long before confronted with the boredom that is SSR without the reading component of the acronym. Interestingly, five months, Chow & Chou find, has no effect. Six.

My theory is that we need to play the game with finding “just right books” (admission: I want to retch when I’m stuck in an inservice and they trot out the Goldilocks method; it’s a good reminder and cute metaphor, but the presentation is too much for my cynical heart) and work the other angles, but at the end of the day the kid needs to just “Sit down, Shut-up and Read” (SSR). As teachers, we need to inflict a long amount of boredom with a book that begs to be opened.

As I said, this is a theory. In one of Nancie Atwell’s book she speaks about classroom teachers becoming researchers (and how their findings are often not accepted by mainstream researchers, although that may have changed, in no small part of Atwell and her ilk). I would be interested in any teachers can support or disprove my theory.  I’m close to creating an experiment myself, but science is about redundancy.

Finally, before he was the host of “This American Life” Ira Glass did reports on Chicago’s public schools. He mentions it at times, and uses some of the old material in a few pieces, but in this episode he revisists a school, Washington Irving Elementary School, that was a model of reform.  You can hear how it plays out here:  Two Steps Back.  It was reform with little cost, with SSR as one of the centerpieces. The first part of this story is worth a listen, if only to be inspired to “waste” class time with SSR. I’ve been battling with our schedulers for years over this issue.  (The second half, about the dismantling, is less inspiring).

As break turns into boredom, think about what your own students are doing.  Is “Call of Duty” keeping them from picking up “Ender’s Game”?  If so, mention that, and this theory, at your next IEP meeting or parent conference.

While jogging I was listening to Bill T. Jones’ pick Schubert’s “Winterreise” for NPR’s “Winter Song” series. The song is beautiful, and haunting, but that is not what inspired this post. Instead, it was Jones’ talking about a scene from his childhood.

Jones is a dancer and choreographer; a black man who grew up poor in the cold of Minnesota. His is a tale of a father and a son. Listening to many stories and a lot of NRP, they tend to sound very much alike, even in their copycat originality, but this one is different. I can’t really explain it–Schubert haunts the background of this telling–I can only encourage you to click the link above. You can find the Schubert here.

Perhaps the opening to William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is a bit flip, as NPR is talking about the season while Gloucester is using winter as a metaphor. But I thought that Jones’ story, while about a cold winter scene, isn’t really about the temperature. This soliloquy is then spot on. For a background on “Richard III” check out this synopsis on Wikipedia; it does an excellent job introducing this opening.

What makes this soliloquy is Richard’s physical deformity. A discussion of physical image is perfect for middle school, and how we judge and pre-judge others. It is a lesson that can be extended into media studies and even comic book heroes and villains (see the movie “Unbreakable”), and even “Harry Potter”.

Of course, Shakespeare’s Gloucester is as dark and evil in in his soul as his body is ugly and twisted. This is stagecraft! Theater! As is media and comic books. Can we get beyond this? Can your class generate a list of movies, television shows and books that go against this portrayal of good and evil?

How does it play out in the classrooms and hallways of your school? Who are the favorites!

As with any poem or Shakespeare (because, although beautiful, this is not a poem in the strict sense) the tangle of words and lines, and untangling the snarls and traps, is part of the fun. It is essential for a middle school student to do this. Success here means success elsewhere.

Read it aloud.

Now is the Winter of Our Discontent
(from Richard III)
William Shakespeare

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes.

My files are officially confused.

Much of what I created in my early career was on paper; computer printouts literally cut-and-pasted exactly how I wanted them, then photocopied, originals put into manilla folders with some of those copies. I took notes and backward designed units on yellow legal pads when I was supposed to be listening in meetings, neatly folding those pages and putting them in other manilla folders. All of this was then placed in hanging files, with handwritten slips slid into plastic tabs, all of which followed me from school to school, program to program, until I landed a permanent job at my current school.

We are on a two year cycle, so I only crack a drawer every once-in-awhile. Some files miss a cycle, as a skip this book for that, or forget to use a poem. In many of my poetry files are overheads. I am too thrifty and nostalgic to throw them away, even as our supply of projectors has dwindled in the face of LCDs and Smartboards. I keep thinking I might need them, and part of me wants to drag out the projector.  Those files created long ago–files of books read by seniors in high school which my students would never get, much less enjoy–I hang onto because they represents my creation at one point. And I occasionally think of returning to the high school level, even though I was enjoy it for exactly one day.  So, even though these files never see use, I have them.

Hey, you never know.

And now, so many of my documents are electronic. Kids change. My curriculum changes. I tweak.  Now, I call up old electronic documents and tamper with them on a screen. No need to pull the paper file. No cut nor paste in real space.  I even print, when I print (I sometimes email them as attachments, leave links on my webpage, or share them as Google Docs), I print them straight to the copier from my desktop.

But sometimes I need my notes. This week I began “Dead Poets’ Society” and I needed my notes from… before there was a Wikipedia page that had much of the same information. A folded yellow legal paper has names and quotes and poems used and everything I could get online, but at one point, long before middle school, I took notes and infused them with meaning. I needed them now.

They were nowhere to be found.

In the back of my Language Arts drawer, behind the hanging files for “Big Mouth and Ugly Girl” and a dozen poems, was Sharon Olds’ “Rite of Passage”.

When did I use this? I asked myself.  I pulled it out.

My older son is nine, and his recent encounters with other nine-year-old children reminds me of Jerry Spinelli’s book “Wringer”. I hate that book. Brutal.  Couldn’t get into it, but the first chapter when his “friends” come in for his birthday party…. Oh, God, as a parent I hate it and I can’t read it because it is so raw. And this poem is more of it.

Too good.

You can find Olds reading it herself here.

Sharon Olds reads “Rite of Passage”

Here is a class project, mixing student reading with images. They read a bit fast, but perhaps your students will be inspired.

Rites of Passage

Do your students agree with the images? What others might they choose?

As for the poem itself, I like to talk about the perspective. How do kids talk about things with other kids? What is maturity? Do we grow out of these ideas, and do ideas such as “killing” have any value? Freewrite!

Let me recommend the first half of “Raising Cain”. When I had my first son, everyone gave me this and “Real Boys” as a “gift”. I did not like either, but the DVD of “Raising Cain” is actually quite good. My students are really interested in it, especially the girls. Here’s a link to see it, but I bought the DVD myself.

Raising Cain PBS

Rites of Passage
Sharon Olds

As the guests arrive at my son’s party
they gather in the living room–
short men, men in first grade
with smooth jaws and chins.
Hands in pockets, they stand around
jostling, jockeying for place, small fights
breaking out and calming. One says to another
How old are you? Six. I’m seven. So?
They eye each other, seeing themselves
tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their throats
a lot, a room of small bankers,
they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you
up, a seven says to a six,
the dark cake, round and heavy as a
turret, behind them on the table. My son,
freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,
chest narrow as the balsa keel of a
model boat, long hands
cool and thin as the day they guided him
out of me, speaks up as a host
for the sake of the group.
We could easily kill a two-year-old,
he says in his clear voice. The other
men agree, they clear their throats
like Generals, they relax and get down to
playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

I began reading mystery novels last spring. Well, perhaps a year earlier when the Robert Downey, Jr. movie “Sherlock Holmes” came out; I didn’t much like the movie (I wanted to, but so many wasted opportunities) but I was inspired to download a few of the A. Conan Doyle originals to read in the dark on my iTouch while my kid fell asleep. Then I read more, and more, until I had read the whole Holmes canon. (Side note: The modernized “Sherlock” series on Masterpiece Theater, available through Netflix stream, are amazing).

Still, that was Doyle.

Not an entire genre.

My only other enjoyable foray was John Mortimer’s “Rumpole” series, which is classified in our local mystery section because they don’t know what else to do with it.

Last spring our local library had a display of mystery titles, including Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Swedish “The Laughing Policeman”. I still cannot explain why I picked it up, but I really enjoyed it. In fact, I read the preface by Jonathan Franzen and he captured the reluctance-to-read-this-book/joy-of-finding-the-series perfectly. So, I read the few other titles from the series our library had. Then, I bought the rest (there are ten novels total in the Martin Beck series), used, through Amazon.

I was sad there were only ten.

Last summer, as I planned to go to Iceland, I saw Arnaldur Indriðason’s “Jar City” on display; same library, different display. Long story short, Sjöwall and Wahlöö turned me onto Scandanavian mysteries. I like the pacing; Martin Beck often takes months to solve a case, and the cases aren’t often serial killers but simple revenge killings. Indriðason’s Detective Erlandur is much the same, and he cemented my interest. There is also something to be said for the sparce settings and hardscrabble people. Other series, less even in their writing, include Henning Mankell’s Inspector Wallander and Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole (very uneven, but engaging at its best).

I’m running out of authors and titles. I hated the first “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” book (I don’t know where to start with my criticism of it, although the Swedish video adaptation of the book is pretty good), and I can’t warm up to American authors–either too tepid, cliche, or gruesome.

And then I bumped into Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus series.

It’s not Scandinavian, but the Edinburgh weather is horrible and Rebus completes the checklist of detective cliches (drinking, smoking, ex-wife, loose cannon, unreliable car, etc.) while still keeping it fresh.

Poetry? What does this have to do with poetry?

I spent the past twenty-four hours reading my third Rebus novel. In the end, an ex-RAF pilot quotes from this poem–the first four lines.

The point? You never know where your poetry is going to come from, but you should go with it. I’m reading Scottish mysteries because…. I don’t really know, but I’m enjoying them. And from this comes Yeats.

Here is a video of him reading the poem.  It’s creepy animation; only use it for audio because it’s creepy and it’ll derail any lesson you might want to teach.  Seriously.  But I like to have it come from the horse’s mouth, so to speak:

As for teaching it, talk about balance. It is easy to write about what we love and what we dislike, but Yeats talks about measuring the trade-offs. It is not that war or killing is bad, but that the cost of this war is not worth the benefits. It is about injustice. When your students talk about fairness, what do they mean?

One of the concepts students have the hardest time with, I find, is making a choice. When I start the day with a simple question–”What’s your favorite drink?”–I will get qualifiers and dual answers (In the morning I like… but sometimes I like…). They can’t decide. More important, they have never done cost-benefit analysis of their choices. Instead, they want it all and then are surprised when they don’t get it. In the end, they become fatalistic instead of empowering themselves with choice.

There is always a choice.

In fact, this year I have been focusing on laying out choices and then reminding them of choices when they complain; it stops the complaining. We begin our discussions about where they are–poor or rich, oldest or youngest, struggling student or not–and then look at the choices those people might be faced with. Have them inventory choices they make daily.

Then, according to cost-benefit analysis, when did they make the wrong one?

See what Yeats is getting at?

Now imagine a life was in the balance.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Y. B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

My discussions in Social Science about the Great Society led me to Alex Kotlowitz’s “There Are Not Children Here.”  Langston Hughes’ “A Dream Deferred” and the fourth stanza of this poem by Longfellow serve as epitaphs.

What I appreciate about the poem is that I sense an underlying….  sadness?  cynicism?  It’s like an old man watching children play, who thinks, “Live it up; you’ll soon be old like me.”  I imagine Longfellow writing it and then letting out a long, quiet sigh.

Sigh….

I, too, find myself with a clawing sense of regret, but when I break it down I realize that there is no reason I can’t do that thing I want to do still.  Often, the reason comes down to the reason I haven’t done it in the first place–paying the bills, or some other excuse.  And, as I tell my students, excuse is the word.

It is an old saw, but I like this poem because it makes me wonder which way Longfellow went; live in regret, or embrace the energy of those children he wrote about?

As you students if, they had to sing it, would they do so chipper or as a kind-of dirge.  Try it both ways!  Then, talk about the mood music creates.

Children
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

COME to me, O ye children!
For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,
That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows
And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
In your thoughts the brooklet’s flow,
But in mine is the wind of Autumn
And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
With light and air for food,
Ere their sweet and tender juices
Have been hardened into wood,—

That to the world are children;
Through them it feels the glow
Of a brighter and sunnier climate
Than reaches the trunks below.

Come to me, O ye children!
And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
In your sunny atmosphere.

For what are all our contrivings,
And the wisdom of our books,
When compared with your caresses,
And the gladness of your looks?

Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said;
For ye are living poems,
And all the rest are dead.

This post is about teaching: For poems, go back one or look at the Poems tab above.  I’ll do another poem in my next post.

Last week in class, students played a series of games in a discussion on game theory, which tied into my lessons on economics, The New Deal, The Great Society and our current economic situation. I had hoped by simulating choices in a game with clear options and weighted consequences, students would better understand the American economic marketplace and the choices the powers-that-be are weighing.  The games were a balance of cooperative and individual win/lose scenarios, all of which can be found on Wikipedia (along with analysis).

While half of my day was spent discussing player options and consequences, the other half was dealing with low level behavior that hints at big things to come. The weather had turned cold, Halloween was next week, and the holidays were knocking; all harbingers of things getting worse. On my drive home, thinking about student behavior and classroom management, I found myself understanding it–and how I should react–through a simple matrix we used throughout our theoretical discussions.

Let me explain….

Note: For those Language Arts teachers who laugh when the thought of math and/or data is mentioned, give yourself some credit and stick with this. Let’s face facts; an essay is nothing but a logic argument on par with any geometric proof.

We were playing Prisoners’ Dilemma. The scenario, from Wikipedia, reads as such:

Two men are arrested, but the police do not possess enough information for a conviction. Following the separation of the two men, the police offer both a similar deal- if one testifies against his partner (defects / betrays), and the other remains silent (cooperates / assists), the betrayer goes free and the cooperator receives the full one-year sentence. If both remain silent, both are sentenced to only one month in jail for a minor charge. If each ‘rats out’ the other, each receives a three-month sentence. Each prisoner must choose to either betray or remain silent; the decision of each is kept quiet. What should they do?

In short, if the student trusts the one across the table from him/her they are best off being silent. Otherwise, rat.

Here is a matrix showing you all of the options.  The top and side are the two players, Rat and Silence being the two options each player has.  The numbers are the number of months they would receive from their choices.

Example PD payoff matrix
	Rat	Silence
Rat	3, 3	0, Year
Silence	Year, 0	1, 1

So, if both rat each other out they get three months, etc..  Or, looking at relative values it comes down to this:

	Rat	Silence
Rat	lose-lose	win more-lose more
Silence	lose more-win more	win-win

When we played the first round, it was a mixed bag based on what students thought they knew about the other student they were playing against.  I had purposely partnered them with random people to stop friend-play  and general foolishness.  Those playing against a “nice” kid assumed they would stay silent, while those known miscreants were assumed to rat.  The results were mixed, because reputation did not often match game play, making it a great community building experience.

Then, we kept playing.

Wikipedia says, “If two players play prisoner’s dilemma more than once in succession and they remember previous actions of their opponent and change their strategy accordingly, the game is called iterated prisoner’s dilemma.”  So, we played “iterated”.  As experience with the game trumped assumptions about the person, patters began to reveal themselves.  We kept playing and playing, with students not knowing when it would end.

For the most part, they began to cooperate.  In most of the later rounds, students began to remain silent for most of their turns, which benefited both players.  This has proven true in controlled experiments.  In our debrief, the main factor that caused players to rat their partner out was boredom–cooperation got boring, and they knew it was “just a game” with nothing at stake.  Otherwise, ratting others out was used when a person felt paranoid that the truce of silence would not last and panicked.  In the following round, the squealer usually returned to silence only to have their partner rat them out, known as “tit for tat” in game theory parlance.  Once that “tat” was done, the game then returned to several rounds of silence-silence.

Then, I told students we were going to do one round.  That was it.  How much do you trust your partner, now?

Nearly every pair ratted each other out.

Knowing that there would be no chance at “tit for tat” they chose the greedy offer.  As one student keenly observed, “there’s no real downside–it’s either three months or you walk.”  He knew silence had a real risk, and not much more of an upside.  Both theorists and controlled experimental data agree: When your timeline is short, being selfish is the best strategy.

On my ride home, these findings clarified what was happening in my classroom, and our school overall.  In the classroom, the prisoners’ dilemma has been mutated.  Let’s look at a matrix I gave the kids the next morning:

	Student Follows Rules	Student Does Not Follow Rules
Teacher As Problem Solver	No “Short Term” Fun Solution Oriented Long Term Happy	“Short Term” Fun No Solutions No Trust
Teacher As Enforcer	No “Short Term” Fun Solution Teacher’s Mixed Happiness	“Short Term” Fun Punishment No Happiness

Along the top is the student’s choices: To follow the rules or not. On the right side are the teacher’s choices: Talk with a student to solve problems, or simply enforce rules and consequences in a black-and-white fashion.

Problem Solvers: Those teachers who have relationships with students, in the long term, find that many of the problems in the class go away.  The problem–both the cause and the effect–are solved.  So, a student might misbehave sitting next to a certain other student, and the solution might be to keep them apart.  Or, at least, the student admits their mistake and accepts the consequences so you can get back to teaching the rest of the class (hey, they are middle schoolers).

Enforcers: They makes rules, enforce with fear, and are only as strong as the consequence.

Note: I am assuming that both sets of teachers are clear in their expectations, and follow through when those expectations are not met.  Problem Solvers are not assumed to be weak pushovers, and Enforcers are not uncaring fascists.  Let’s assume both are kind, caring souls who teach for all of the right reasons, and are good at their jobs, they just possess different philosophies.  Full disclosure, I am a “problem solver” but secretly wish I had more of an “enforcer” in me (although my students think I’m a tad scary).

What’s interesting is that when the trust of the Problem Solver is breached, it pushes that teacher into a tit-for-tat scenario.  Remember what happened in Prisoners’ Dilemma: No one wants to be pushover, so were forced to react before things settled down again.  That teacher might work for solutions, in the long term, but might also feel they have to be more of an Enforcer.   In both Prisoners’ Dilemma and the teacher’s, after being burned a few times that trust gets thin and they rat the other person out more and more.  A student who takes advantage of a teacher trying to work with them to solve problems will find themselves no longer being trusted, and miss out on a great opportunity for long term happiness.  Off to the office with you, kid!

The student’s abuse of the system, in the long run, hurts them.

The day after playing all of the rounds of Prisoners’ Dilemma, I put the matrix above on the board.  They got it, and even added a little it to it.

It got really interesting when we discussed Unified Arts teachers and substitute teachers.  Like the Prisoners’ Dilemma played for one round, everyone ratted each other out.  In the case of classroom management, there was no long term relationship to maintain.  Students see our UA teachers infrequently throughout the week, and substitutes even less.  There is little incentive, other than fear or empathy, to behave.

For further theory, John Kenneth Galbraith lists the five types of power as: 1. Threat, 2. Reward, 3. Expert, 4. Heirarchy, and 5. Respect.  In school, Reward is slippery, built on relationships and easily outstripped by the Reward of your peers laughing with you (which also piggybacks with Respect).  Expert, too, fails during, say, hallway transitions and fire drills.  Yet, a long term relationship can promote Reward, Expert and Respect for the teacher, school and system to the top.  In fact, Respect is the most powerful of the five.

Yet, infrequent adults–subs and the like–rely only on Heirarchy (I’m a teacher and I say so, which is the weakest of the five types of power) and Threat (to the office!)

Now, much of this may be a “duh” moment for you, but I was impressed how this modified Prisoners’ Dilemma predicted classroom management in classrooms that have relationships vs. those that rely only on titles and consequences.  I like things quantified and charted, because I can then predict future events and change how things are done.

For example, getting UA teachers more involved with students at a relationship level–outside the classroom, with teams or TAs–might help at our school.  They are kind, caring individuals with vast depths of knowledge in exactly the things my students want to know more about.  Having permanent substitutes that are working with students daily also builds relationships.

At the very least, create consequences that will instill fear, or at least second thoughts.

I get excited by anything that helps clarify what I can do better, and that makes decisions predictable to a certain degree.  Next post, I’ll go back to poetry.

In his heartbreaking Autobiography, John Stuart Mill wrote about his inability to “feel” the economy. “I was in a dull state of nerves,” Mill said.

This from Stephen T. Zilak’s interesting article “Haiku Economics”, which you can find here. I found Zilak attempting to find a poem that helped explain the current economy.

Lately, I have been reading numerous articles bemoaning this crisis’ lack of a Dorathea Lange, Woody Guthrie or John Steinbeck. If this recession is second only to the Great Depression, where are the new artists who will document as well as they did? Where are the folk songs? The photographs? Why has no one been able to capture the public mood in popular culture? Several great movies and books have come out about Iraq and Afghanistan, but nothing I can see about this Great Recession.

Thinking about this, I wondered why we still had to rely on Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” to discuss the idea of the American Dream. This morning, my wife and I discussed the dearth of new literature in the high school canon. In my generation, everyone across the country read “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Death of a Salesman”. At the time, they were a mere twenty years old. The authors were alive and kicking; contemporary. For some reason, they did not need to be old to be considered classics.

Yet, thirty years later, students still read the same texts. This is not to condemn the canon–Shakespeare is still important–but to point out that no new writer has swept in for those students sitting in front of us. After a brief brainstorm, Sandra Cisneros’ “House on Mango Street” is all we could come up with (my wife offered Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” as common, but I’m not convinced it’s so universal). Both of these are from the ’80s (1984 and 1988, respectively), nearly thirty years old.

Has no one had anything to say about the American Dream since Arthur Miller? Is there a Willy Loman for the digital age? I know adapting texts for the curriculum is fraught with issues, from the concerns of the school board to nudging teachers entrenched in their curriculum, but that NO single text has made it in seems odd. My betting soul puts its money on Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain”, and I’d love for Daniel Woodrell’s “Winter’s Bone” to get tapped, but I don’t know.

In middle school, we’ve enjoyed more of a renaissance, in part because the “canon” of middle level literature was so thin, and those that were recognized as Literature (Capitol “L” as in Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, S.E. Hinton) were often deemed too controversial for universal inclusion. Then, in the 1990s, the genre took off, and we now have an embarrassment of riches. Literary crap has pushed content, so that “Gossip Girls” have made risky lifestyles acceptable independent reading, allowing great Literature like Laurie Halse Anderson’s “Speak” to be a common classroom text. “Hunger Games” has somehow slipped through, with twenty-four teens in a death match being offered to fifth graders as a page turner. While Peck and Paulsen classics still see their fill of controversy, teachers can point out the hundreds of school systems that have adopted them as a defense for them being culturally acceptable. Lois Lowry’s “The Giver” is well adapted, if controversial, with few students being able to claim having avoided it.

This overabundance of books has muddled the already tenuous understanding of what Literature (capitol “L”) even is, and why it’s important. While high school teachers adhere a bit too much to the canon, not allowing in anything fresh, relevant and new to the UNIVERSAL canon (if there is any worth adopting), middle school teachers are adopting pulp and linking it to classroom worthiness.

Which brings me back to my original discussion of trying to find an artist who captures our current economic situation, one who is truly great Literature (capitol “L”) and who could be adopted universally for classrooms.

That, I think, comes down to feelings. While the struggles of Margaret, Jerry Renault and Melinda Sordino are personal, and emotional, and connect with students in a very real way, they say less about the larger culture or political times they live in as Scout or Willy Loman do. What can you say about Melinda Sordino and the American Dream, beyond the theme of rape and voice (hugely important, and I understand nothing is more political than one’s body, and safety is part of the American Dream, but it’s not socioeconomic)?

Only some of the dystopian literature gets at the political issues, but many are not particularly deep or even well written. Where can we feel poverty without it being written off as history (“Man, it sucked being in the Great Depression, but we’re okay now”)? The future, for all its warnings and lessons, is just as distant (“Man, that will never happen.”)

If Basho did indeed say of haikus, “less is more, and more is better!” than this post is the anti-haiku. More being less? That so much was inspired by three lines….

Besides the economics, focus on feelings. Reading Zilak, get ideas, and run with it. What does poverty feel like? Get your hands dirty.

Then, write a poem.

Invisible Hand
Etheridge Knight

Invisible hand;
Mother of inflated hope,
Mistress of despair!