amy loves books

show me show me show me

I've always struggled with finding ambient music to play in the classroom - mostly because my students have such a wildly different musical landscape than I do. I am not a huge fan of classical music, jazz was distracting, new age-y stuff like Enya was okay, nature sounds were okay. I am personally not able to work/concentrate with music that has words, the language is a distraction that I can not tune out.

But I've stumbled on ambient nirvana with Rockabye Baby. No matter how unfocused my students are, five minutes of lullaby renditions of The Cure and they are totally mellow and zoned. I'm not kidding. Even after lunch. A little Plainsong and in minutes they are all quietly writing deep poetry.

alas, no circus peanuts

I thought this was a silly little article unil I got to the last bit about people who hand outTwizzlers on Halloween. Too funny.

Personally, I hand out Milk Duds - which I think probably shows that I'd like to live in a world that does not really exist.

confessions

1. I once bought a desk just because it reminded me of the desk that I imagined that a character that I loved might have owned. I sometimes put my hand on the surface of the desk when I walk by and whisper "hello" to him. This makes me smile.

2. I read the ends of books first but if I really love a book - I will leave two pages towards the end unread so that I don't ever have to finish reading it.

feet books

When I worked at Barnes and Noble, I came up with a rule for myself. My rule is simple; I refuse to read a book with feet on the cover. My aversion to books with feet on them started with the novel The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LaBlanc, which features a pair of feet with red toenails propped on the rim of a bathtub. I am not sure exactly what this book is about, but I would bet that it tells a very heartwarming story about a Southern gal with guts and an eccentric friend or sister or mother who finds both her authentic self and true love when she begins playing her beloved dulcimer in public, or takes up watercolor painting, or reads a pack of old letters (found in the attic of her childhood home), or looks through a scrapbook that belongs to someone who is either dead or in the process of dying.

After this book was published (and became a huge hit), lots of books began copying the “feet on the cover” look. Evidently, some marketing whiz decided that women must really love to buy books that feature cover art of a pair of feet that have just received a pedicure from the local strip-mall nail salon. There is, I suppose, something about that image that we (as women) are supposed to gravitate towards. It is as if we will look at that cover and realize that this book is about a woman just like us. A woman who gets her toenails painted a cute shade of persimmon at the Asian nail salon and has spunk and sass. A woman who is just - well - misunderstood. A woman whose problems would all disappear if she just move or return home to some idyllic small town where she could find a way to indulge her inner creative genius and who would then find out that her long-lost first love had actually been pining away for her all these years and had built a gazebo or a summer house or a sailboat from scratch - just for her and just in anticipation of the day when he would be able to take her to that gazebo or boat and tenderly make love to her (with a gentle breeze blowing) and afterwards (as they sipped hot chocolate from a thermos that he had packed) he would pledge to her his eternal fidelity.

The proliferation of these books bothers me. Somehow, they have managed to transcend the “romance” genre and they get packaged in nice trade paperback editions - with a 14.00 price tag and a non-Fabio photograph of feet on the cover. These books are categorized as “literature”, and they are shelved right next to Faulkner. I am not too much of a literary snob. I have been known to read a trashy novel or two. Trashy novels have their place. What really bothers me is that these “feet” novels are masquerading as semiserious literary offerings. As the public develops an appetite for them, these novels get published and marketed and displayed (and thus purchased and read) at the expense of artistic and thoughtful literature. “Feet books” are the equivalent of reality tv. A few reality shows are an enjoyable alternative, but once the market is glutted with them, people begin to lose access to quality, scripted television.

When I worked at the bookstore, we put up a corporate-mandated display table for women’s history month. The table had a big sign that read “Women’s Literature”. The table was full of “feet books”. I complained to one of my supervisors about the lack of actual literature on the table, but was told that the display titles had been included in our corporate bible (a.k.a. “The Daily Planner”). Still, when no one was looking, I would surreptitiously replace large stacks of titles like Confessions of A Shopoholic, Good In Bed, and Thoughts While Having Sex with stacks of novels by Toni Morrison, Edith Wharton and Margaret Atwood. Vive Le Resistance!

re-runs

I am in the process of moving old posts that I liked from my old site to here. It's probably stuff most of the people that know where this blog is have already read, so please accept my apology for the "re-runs". Soon, hopefully, all the old stuff will be neatly tagged and in a nice archived space.

the power of words

In high school I did not fit in. My only friends were drug addicts. We shared bond of the addicted. My drug of choice was poetry. I craved it. I inhaled it. Poetry woke me up in the middle of the night and distracted me during the day. I wrote mosaics of poetry into the frame of my sleeping loft. I scribbled poetry furiously during lectures. I covered my notebooks with it. I bleached it into my clothes with Q-tips dipped in Clorox.

Our lives were allusions. There was so much more than the words written on the page. Sitting in a VW bug late at night with the front wheels rolled down the boat ramp and into Lake Jackson. Music from the Heart of Space would be on the radio and we would turn on the headlights and watch the mist roll off the water and swell over the hood and my best friend would be high and transcending and I would be sober and watching and letting the moment turn into a single image that would haunt me until I wrote its poetry down.

I dated a boy who was not a poet but who wrote a poem about me anyway. He was very proud of how deep his poem was. In his poem, he said that I was a white picket fence. Do you get it? He could explain. See, I was not a wall because I had slats and spaces a person could look through to catch a glimpse. And of course, I had a gate - a gate that would be opening for him. When I found a box ( a BIG box, a Sams Warehouse size box) of condoms in his glove compartment I said “I hope these are not for me” but I knew that this was what he meant by calling me a fence with a gate. I broke up with him. It was not that simple.

The thing about poetry is this. The poem does not symbolize meaning. The poem is the meaning. If I was a fence - if I had a gate there was not an explanation. A gate is not a vagina. A vagina is a gate. You can not write poetry with reverse engineering.

When I was addicted to poetry, it was because there was no other way to record reality. There were no explanations for the things I did or the way I felt. When I read stories or papers that I wrote as a young adult, I am often embarrassed by the immaturity or pretentiousness of them. There is no truth in them. I was not a sentence with correct capitalization and subject verb agreement. My life was not an organized and well written paragraph that supported a thesis. When I read over my old poems, it is like looking at a photograph. They are what I was. I am there - between the words and inside the metaphors.

I wrote my last poem a few weeks after my husband and I started dating. Somehow, my metaphors lost their truth. I have found that I am more comfortable now writing essays. I am comfortable stating a thesis and supporting it with structured details. I find it easier to express my thoughts using complete sentences with subjects and verbs. I am a noun. I can be modified. There are definitions and rules. The rules are usually followed.

My children are the poets now. My daughter says to me “You are the best mommy I have ever had”. This is her truth. I tease her. I say “Really? Am I better that all your other mommies?” She looks at me with complete understanding and she answers simply: "“Yes"”.

cinematic

I choose the school-wide vocabulary words of the day, write the sentences, and edit the definitions; and while I try to more-or-less move alphabetically through the New York Times list, I remain selective and biased, skipping potentially helpful words like adjourn (boring) and including instead charlatan.

I tend to like words that sound better with a southern accent.

In class, I am even worse. I teach all of my favorite words: archaic but lovely words like penchant. I give extra points if they use the words I like. I make them spell schadenfreude. I ask my kids how they want to insult people, and we look up fabulous synonyms for the put-downs (this is how I found the word scrofulous, which actually means ugly on the inside and outside). I often accompany the words with a story, or I sing a few lyrics from a song that reminds me of whatever the word happens to be.

These words will probably not ever show up on a test, and unless they happen to read Michael Chabon, they'll probably never see them in context.

Today's word was cinematic - which is not a particularly difficult word, but it's been rainy and autumnal and I've been in a cinematic sort of mood.

I have always loved words, the elemental nature of them, the sound they make in my mind. Like bits of shell or glass washed upon the shore, words carry with them the essence of places and lives lived long ago and worn smooth by use or neglect. They glisten, just waiting to be picked up and slipped in a pocket for the journey.

x

Sometimes I wonder if the only mark my generation will make is to have made the music used in commercials really, really cool.

I also wonder if listeners under thirty-something will realise how much the new Iron and Wine sounds like David Lynch music, and how it's making me miss the soundtrack to Twin Peaks (which I owned on a cassette tape).

I saw Stand By Me in the theater one afternoon because I wanted to go see Blue Velvet but got carded. A guy had exposed himself during the movie and it was all over the local news - so it was branded a DIRTY MOVIE, and they started to restrict who they'd let in. Later, I went when my friend Lori was working and she snuck me in - so I did get to see it.

As a result, David Lynch reminds me of railroads and River Phoenix.

catcher

Last week, I was brought into the middle of a situation with a kid I've never taught. Basically, I was asked to recommend her expulsion from school. Her list of offenses is staggering, and she is out of district. She starts fights constantly.

I was probably being set up when the administator asked me to intervene, because it's not a secret that I have a soft heart and remain idealistic with these kids. They say I believe every kid can be saved; but that's not really true. I've been around long enough to know that they don't all make it. I do believe, however, in trying. And so, I said I want to try to let this kid - this kid on the fast track to expusion and most likely jail - take her class alone in my room, where there is nobody left to fight.

Good luck with that, they said. They warned me that, if I was lucky, she'd just get mad when she was isolated and walk out. She'd probably lose her mind and curse me out. Resource officers could be waiting if I requested them.

I said I did not think that would happen. I think, I said, she'll be really nice and compliant with me.

On Wednesday, I brought her into my class. She was mad. She was not yelling or walking out yet, but she sat silently raging with her head on the desk. She wanted to be in her other class. She did not want to be with me. She promised for the thousandth time that she was not going to fight anymore - that this time she meant it.

I spent most of the period talking to her.

The next day, she came back. I was waiting with Catcher in the Rye. She read the first chapter and we started to discuss it. I asked what her first impression of Holden was.

I think he's mean, she said.

I was caught off-guard. Holden is mean? Holden is so not mean. I asked her why she said she thinks he is mean.

I guess it's the stuff he says.

And, I suppose, he does come across as mean. I told her that she was right, he does seem mean until you get to know him - but that he's not mean. He may act mean, but his heart is not a mean heart; he's just hurt.

So, I re-read the chapter out loud and we discussed it. She wanted to know, if she came back, could we have class like that every day - reading and discussing. I told her we could.

It will take her just eight more weeks to earn the credit. She's months away from graduating if she avoids another expulsion. I can't say what I think will happen; I don't know. I know it's a brutal sytem that does not work for a lot of kids, and that there are so many external factors that come into play that it's impossible to know what will happen to any of the kids I teach. I know I've got former students in college and in jail.

At the end of the period, she was talking about her best friend; she said that her friend was the only person that really understood her.

People say I am mean, she said. But I'm not mean, I'm just hurt.

I nodded.

This is why I teach English.

fall

Biography of Fanny daughter of Mary Wolstencraft, half-sister of Mary Shelly

The Shepherd's Dog