"a desire to walk into the ocean"

13 October 2020: Quoting from an email from one of my ENGL 301 students that gave me both validation and a hearty chuckle:

"I'd just like to thank you for your suggestion to have other people read a story for a reader-response paper! My theses are pretty much set in stone already. Having a group of average men read 'The Use of Force' was extremely illuminating, and handed me a thesis on a silver platter, unfortunately now I am overcome with a desire to walk into the ocean."

Back at it...

30 March 2020: A rather dizzying day with classes resuming online. Can't complain as it felt good to be busy and getting stuff done--and, most of all, to be hearing from my students again.

Thought I'd share some "This Is Just To Say" poems that my 204 students shared online. (We do this in person every semester, but it worked even better this way.)

“This Is Just to Say”

I have totaled your brand new car

And which

you probably spent all of your savings on 

Forgive me

I got distracted while bumping to Jonas Brother throwbacks 


“This Is Just to Say”

I have the power

to do as I please


And I can take the

"normal"out of peoples lives


Forgive me for I am

the corona disease


"This is just to say"

I have been stuck inside

Looking out the window at the big blue sky

As I stare a bird passes by

And which a tear falls from my eye

Forgive me

This quarantine is whack


I would like my life back

"so sweet / and so cold"

31 March 2014: Best thing about Monday--the thing I am thankful for? That this little teaching trick still works so very well. Back to back classes that were amazingly fun and (yay!) educational.

Tiny Teaching Triumph

(I am borrowing "Tiny Triumph" from one of my favorite podcasts.)

The William Carlos Williams class was awesome, folks! I won't share any of the students' "This Is Just to Say" poems, but let me say that they were so much fun. Some quick observations:

1) They excelled on sex-related poems. No comment.
2) 2012 campaign managers, take note: economics ("Sorry I stole your money...") was the second most popular subject.
3) About half-way through the first class (I teach two sections), I started thinking, "Either these folks have done (or thought about doing) some awful things, or they've had people doing them wrong." I also decided that I didn't want to know which it was.
4) I'll totally do it again.

"This is Just to Say"

I am pretty darn excited to teach a couple of William Carlos Williams poems in ENGL 204 on Friday--even more excited than usual. First, we'll discuss the venerable wheelbarrow poem, but I'm really excited about when we get to "This is Just to Say." After some discussion, I'm going to play this segment from This American Life, which talks about the poem and then includes a bunch of terrific riffs on it. Then we're going to write our own "This is Just to Say" poems. I even found a cool template on the NCTE website.

Yeah, it's not an incredibly innovative plan, but I can't help but look forward to it. Should be fun!