Pearls, Swine, Hoodies and Converse

Dear Candi, Thank you very much for doing the week of poetry work shops with us. You really helped me learn how to write poetry better. I especially liked the poems with dialogue. They were fun. You were good about giving us a way to write our poems but we could write about anything we wanted. Thank you very much again! Sincerely, Kaci

The last day I taught Kaci's class I had them write dialogue poems with two characters: me and them. The could call me The Poet or Candi. The result was shocking for me. Maybe for them too. 

One boy wrote a conversation like this:

"Candi!"

"Hey, how you doing?"

"Not good! My Mom is holding a knife to my neck!"

"Really you look fine to me."

"No, Candi, don't go! I'm not lying!"

"Then why are you laughing?"

"Because I'm trying to keep from crying."

Then his Mom stabbed him and fed him to pigs.

The class laughed loud before I was even done. Because I read it like it was happening for real. I think the poet and I were affected with the adrenaline in the poem. The audience was reacting with a typical defense mechanism they use when things get suddenly heavy. Ha! Fed him to the pigs! Did you hear that? 

They forget the childlike pleading of the poet to me to save him from his Mom. I judged him by his face instead of his words and turned away. 

Is that big T truth? I did cancel two more classes due to rain and anxiety the next week. Did I look in their faces and then turn away? 

I feel like I'm still looking at them. Sitting there in hoodies and Converse shoes. Making eye contact with me as I rock them from one side to the other. As I read poems to them I walk the room. I've gotten really good at reading a script cold. 8th grade handwriting and texty misspellings. I usually avoid saying the hidden cuss words and drug references. 

I'm looking right at you! The pigs will not crunch your bones on my watch!

Her Favorite Part Was That I Came Back

Dear Candi, Thank-you for coming to our class even when you live in [where I live--30 minutes away]. My favorite part of it was that you came back Monday and we wrote more poems. Not that you came I know the meaning and how much fun writing poems are. My favorite poem that we wrote was the one the we had to write "dear wholy pants" or something like that. that was my favorite. Well this morning I was in my car and the thing that we did yesterday I did it with my dad. He was very confused. But he didn't get it. Well thanks again from coming. Sincerely, Rebecca

I'm not exactly sure what she said to her dad in the car but I think it has something to do with the excerpt I read that day from Don Delillo's White Noise where the dad and the son have a crazy discussion in the car about whether or not it's raining and the son refuses to say yes even though it's raining. 

The character is 13 or 14 just like the kids I was teaching. So they thought the parental banter was subversive and funny. And they are right! 

So the son tells the dad that he heard on the radio that it was going to rain later. The father says but look it's raining now. The son says no they said it would rain later. Then the father falls into the funnel of words and truth. The son never does admit it's raining.

Of course, Rebecca's "dear wholy pants" deserves mention here too. I had the class write formal letters to an inanimate object of their choosing. This girl wrote to a pair of pants. Wholy is her spelling and I refuse to say "sic" in brackets because it seems too good. I know she meant Holy or Holey. But Wholy. Spelled wrong. And so it's right. Correct. True with a big T. And so I'll write to my own wholy pants now...

Whole Me Pants

Dear Pants, 

Why do you hold me?

I am so unholy.

The holes in your knees

are not from praying.

It was Fun But Not Fun Too. Anyway It Was Fun Though

Dear Candi, Thank you for coming and doing the poetry work shop. It was fun even though I didn't do the 1st poem and the last poem. But the letter to an object and the "now space" poems were fun. My favorite poem was the letter to an object. The now space one wasn't really that fun. I couldn't put myself into it. I mean it wasn't really me. Anyway it was fun though. Sincerly, Noah


This note cracks me up so much. On the first day I taught this year (beginning year five of teaching poetry at this middle school) I made a new decision. I was not going to spend extra energy on the kids that refused to write. I decided that they were listening during the lesson and sitting there quiet while all the kids were writing (you sit for 15 minutes quietly and see what your brain does). They were having an important experience too. So I did not go to them during the quiet writing time and have inane whispered conversations about "come on, what if you wrote, [whatever was on the top of my brain] and then went with that?" They would look at me like "yeah, let's keep talking close and quiet like this for a long time." But they would say, "I just can't do it. I just can't get started. I don't get it." It was awful and I was so exhausted by the time the other kids were done that I could barely enjoy the end of class where I perform/read the poems they wrote back to them.

As I read each poem I turn into Sir Lawrence Olivier. Stage voice and Silent Movie expressions. Big hand gestures. When do I get a chance to act like that? I mean, without the other adults around getting scared and suggesting shrinks. Sometimes they choke me up.

Or the teacher does. Jill, the first teacher I worked with this year, had just returned from having cancer. And her good friend and fellow teacher had just passed away from cancer. And she had just gotten married. On a Blue Moon on New Year's Eve on the end of a pier with umbrella fireworks overhead. She wrote a poem in each class I taught for her. Twelve classes. I told her she was well on her way to having her first poetry manuscript ready to publish.

So anyway, I didn't walk around while the kids wrote this time. I just stood at the podium and wrote in my journal and then looked at them when they talked too much with my be-quiet look. It was much better and I got just as many poems out of the kids that way as the other way. And I didn't have to do some weird emotional role-play for the apathetic ones. They were getting good energy as it was. The other can get murky because I would feel helpless. This way we all win.

And if you are reading this and happen to publish books or represent writers wishing to publish books, then it's very nice to have you here. Won't you have some coffee? I fixed it with local honey in an earthenware mug. It'll stay warm for a long time. Here, browse my old posts. I'll have to busy myself when you get to certain months (you know-PTSD triggers and all) but you'll certainly have warm coffee while you read. Do you like jazz? May I suggest Sonny Rollins through these purple headphones? You comfy? Good. Oh, and just so you know, I'm looking to get a book deal with which I can shower my family with money. Instead of my anxiety. You know. Money is better for them than my anxiety. You know? Right?

No, Not This

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Reclusive author J.D. Salinger, who has died aged 91, was a giant of American literature whose seminal novel "The Catcher in the Rye" lent a voice to the angst and despair felt by generations of rebellious adolescents.
One of the most admired and influential US writers following the success of his 1951 novel and its laconic anti-hero Holden Caulfield, Salinger published nothing after 1965 and had not been interviewed since 1980

Pat, you didn't get to interview him yet...No more Holden...

I Know I Just Moved Here

Dear Candi, Thnk you so much for coming. I know I just moved here, but when I wrote my first poem about what might happen I opened up to my friends and family. At [xxxxx] Middle School, we didn't learn about poems. Then I came to this school and heard that we get to learn about poems and write them. I was excited. Thank you for showing me how fun it is to write poems. I feel more confident about my friends, family and myself. Sincerely, Destiny

Her name is Destiny! I can't get over that part. That day I asked her if she knew how to get to her next class she told me that the office had assigned another student to show her around but she said she would be fine on her own because she's moved alot. She smiled as she said this with a joy that was not in the actual words. She had a poetry stoke! So confident.

I'm staying busy today because yesterday was too hard. Therefore: I walked Sunny to school with Mona and when I got home I drove to my Dad's to return their car (I was borrowing) and he took be to breakfast at a great Cajun restaurant. I had Eggs Sardou. That is two artichoke bottoms sitting in a pool of spicy spinach sauce with poached eggs in the "cup". Hollandaise sauce on top with chili/cajun pepper dusted. And green onion garnish. Side of grits--but spicy not sweet with green onions too. And a melon slice. I had roasted chicory instead of coffee. Honey instead of sugar.

Now I'm just waiting on a friend to come and take another walk. She'll be here in a minute she said. Then it will be playdate time when I walk to pick up Sunny from school. My heartrate should be pumping nicely in the lead of my brain. Heart before head today.

You Really Made Me Think Hard

Dear Candi, Thank you for coming to our classroom and for helping us to perfect our poetry. I would also like to thank you for spending time with us because poetry is a hard subject for me. You really made me think  hard while I was writing. I think a lot of us are better at writing poetry including me. Thank you for all your help. Sincerely, Andrew

"I have an ocean of sorrow inside me and it never stops hurting."

That is the very sentence I said to my best friend during my 10 AM hard time. Guess what. It's a true sentence.

But it's only true. It's not anything else.

Last night Sunny had a difficult time with her roller-coaster emotions. I watched helplessly as my genes repeated themselves in confused tears and a quickly and uncomfortably fluctuating emotional maturity level.

"You are all talking like your mad at me!"

"Nothings going right for me!"

"It's all of us! Not just me!"

That last one hurt deep. For a minute. I quickly realized the truth. Our family is not sick. We three people are doing a very very very very decent job of loving each other above all else. Our priorities are smack dab in the  big-P Present.

Sunny went to the dentist this morning so we got to laze around just a bit after waking up. She built a castle of bricks and developed a delicate defense system of twist ties to impale any dinosaurs brazen enough to climb Queen Dora's castle.  I was snoozing/listening/memorizing on her bed right next to her. She popped up and said "Spider!"

I'll be darned if it wasn't a fat-backed and sassy Black Widow. Climbing with a bounce in her step over the carpet jungle toward the dark closet. She was cruising. I smashed her with Pat's shoe.

Sunny said she walked out of her blocks. Below the lower case "g" and the green rectangle.

"Why didn't she come out of there before I played with them?"

Sunny doesn't dwell in the same fear out of which I'm slowing mucking my way. Thank God.

And God, about that book deal? Can it come with lots of money for my family? That would be great. Thanks.

Are Inner Poet and Windpower Drawing

Dear Candi, Thank-you for teaching us how to use are inner poet. Also thank-you for teaching us cause it was fun that we got to hang out with you when  we could of been doing a real class. Plus sorry yo had to wake up so early. Sincerely, Jesse [sic]

Today I went to the hardware store at 8:30 AM. I stood in the aisle with art supplies and stared at the sharpies. $9.99 for eight markers. Ugh. So hard to spend that money. And so I froze. I stood there reading the sharpie price tag and realizing how many people were walking by the end of the aisle surely getting ready to call the cops to come take away the frozen artist. She can't be up to any good. Why is she in the art section at 8:30 AM? Doesn't she have a job? Should she be spending $10 on sharpies [see how this jerk in my head rounds up]? "Get a job Red!"

I called my best friend and she told me that the sharpies were my anxiety medicine and I obviously needed to buy the markers. And then I found a pad of paper called "Windpower Drawing". Just like a poem. It reminded me of Sunny telling me yesterday that she is a "power shifter." She has superpowers that let her shape shift and run so fast she disappears. So, yeah, we've been watching some anime videos since getting rid of cable.

I've been recording songs on my new computer with my xmas gift microphone. The new mac my mentor gave me to start this new era of my life (the one where I stop pretending not to be an artist) has Garage Band on it!!! So I've been recording myself singing old 1930's ballads and then layering my voice so there's a breathy choir of me. I think I scared my friends Dan and Megan with it on Friday. But I did some songs yesterday that might be more palatable to the mainstream audience (you people not listening to 1930's music).

I'll be posting all of those here when I figure it out. Stay tuned. I might even begin a poetry podcast here. Then I'm going to get a book deal and make a ton of money for my family. Really.

You Have Inspired Me to Keep Writing

Dear Candi, Thank you sooo much for coming to teach us. You are an amazing poet and I hope you can teach us again. You have inspired me to keep writing and I definately will. I loved the subject where we had to write a conversation with you. All the poems made me think more about the world, life, friends, basicly everything! Thank you, again. Sincerely, Amanda [sic]

Amanda in turn inspired me to keep writing on a day I might not have felt worthy of the keyboard under my hands. On days where my anxiety is at eleven my self-worth is equally lowered.

Apparently I need to have a sort of mandatory art therapy exercise everyday at ten AM. That is precisely the hour I start to call and text my friends and husband with strange comments and requests because I'm scared and lonely and feeling like an abandoned child.

Today Sunny watched the sunrise from our front room window. Every few minutes she would yell, "The sunrise is not done yet!" And I would bustle in the room from wherever I had been bustling and list all the colors: Pink, orange, purple and yellow.

When the sunrise was "done" the other windows offered equal wonder. The window by the dining room table showed the orange-brown neighbor's roof in the foreground with pine tree sentries on either side in the near distance. The high tided estuary held some of the pink of the sunrise and moved blue like saran wrap all over. But the far far sky held the nicest surprise. The haze made horizontal stripes like airbrushed spearmint candies in heaven. White and blue floaty fuzz instead of a horizon. Good. I didn't really need to see the horizon just yet.

Right before marching Sunny to school we sang and danced to a They Might Be Giants' song that goes, "oh no, oh no, I'll never go to work!" It's a days of the week song. But we have enjoyed the subversive quality of singing it on the way to school (Sunny's "work").

We took Mona and Sunny held the leash. Mona ignored her and tried to trip me with her surges of joy. Now she's napping soundly. And snoring soundly.

Friday was the last official day that parents' are encouraged/welcome to hang out in the kindergarten classroom. Easing the goodbye blues for those little dervishes. Today we kissed at the gate and Sunny ran like a candle (gold hair flowing. see?) to her class and hugged the first kid she ran into. Mona and I sighed really big and walked home. We noticed everything on the way home.

Strange that anxiety can still get me after something transcendant like this morning. But, it is a burrowing tick. A parasite that can be pulled out by the host. The host looks at the squirming body and thinks, "I've done it! I got the scummy bugger!" but the head remains inside.

So, did I mention that I'm going to get a book deal and make money for my family? Just wanted to reiterate that fact. No, I don't know any details. It is not mine to know the day or time of its coming. But I will be ready.

Armegeddon Storms Hit The Anxious Poet

We moved in to our new house! It's a secret magic hideaway. I cannot say enough to emphasize the mystical swirls protecting my family and pets in this old building. This blue 1930's bungalow by the Audobon Estuary Lookout sign. Yesterday during the third row of wind and rain I saw a group of medium-to-large white sea birds swooping in Esther Williams synchronicity. I pulled the blinds on the picture window all the way to the top and sat down on the floor to watch them practicing their uniform direction changes like dominoes in the sky. Soon I was crying. Again.

It has been storming out of the clear blue sky this week. I haven't lived in a thunder storm for more than ten years now and it turns out that storm fear can infect even the older seasoned storm lover. I have been terrified. Indeed, I've texted the word "terrified" to my best friend twice in two days this week. Mostly about having to drive in 70 mph winds and Vietnamish monsoon rains on a curvy mountainous highway so that I can teach poetry to a hungry group of eighth graders. I missed them twice this week because I was unable to travel. Unable to travel due to my anxiety. My thundering and flashing and flooding anxiety.

But let's not forget the first week I taught poetry without anxiety. Yes, another miracle. I taught one day of poetry and went zooming around my life telling everyone I had to teach poetry! I had to share this teaching miracle! How can I teach poetry?! The consensus among my loved ones was this: You Are A Poetry Teacher Already. Oh yeah. I AM a poetry teacher!

Day two of teaching poetry without anxiety I told the head of the English department that I wanted to offer my poetry workshops for free because they were healing me from anxiety and making me want to live. And the lessons prove so moving for the kids it didn't seem fair to them to wait to teach them when the school could afford to pay me. Why pay me? I need it. They need me. Great!

But Jill, the English teacher and member of the enrichment committee (responsible for subsidizing the school's arts program...which is me), said that she didn't want me to work for free. Then she told all the teachers at a faculty meeting about what I said. And about what she was seeing in the classroom (yes, another miracle) and the next day I had contracts waiting for me to sign promising steady poetry teaching for me through March! Paid! Yes! Another Freaking Miracle!!

To just kick it up one more miracle notch, next Tuesday I am teaching poetry in a Science class. We are going to write heredity themed or genetic-ally themed poems. Bizarre! And so cool. I can't wait to see what crazy things the kids say about their ancestors and if they are happy with their DNA or not.

I got a stack of about 100 thank you letters from that first group of students I taught. One of the boys said, "It is so cool to see a person fofill there dream, not a lot of people do that." [sic]

I'm so in Love with teaching poetry to those kids at that school with those teachers while I live in this house with this husband and daughter.

And guess what? I'm going to write about all of this and get a book deal and make a bunch of money for my family and get to travel all around teaching kids how to write poetry. That's right.

I don't even care if it hails golf balls and the neighbor's fence slats fly off and hit my chimney or the window casings leak enough to make a soothing fountain out of my venetian blinds.

We Are Moving Out of My Parents' House Today

But I think instead of packing and moving my collection of rare ancient footwear I'll just donate them to the Victoria and Albert Museum in England.














If I wore these shoes I would wear them all out walking away from painful things. Clip clop I would walk and walk. Until my bare feet were touching the ground again. Silk brocrade and leather and wood. Not enough to take my weight.

Now...I'm going to turn on my comments again. Ok?

Yellow Gold At the End of the Tunnel

This Would Happen To Me