Five-Question Meme (complete)

In order to liven my posts up, I chose to take the challenge of a particularly interesting meme that David Morgen offered the the first five commenters. I continue, as is the nature of memes, that offer here, so any readers interested in participating should request five personalized questions from me (note that I will have to read up on your blog to form these, but I have been slacking in my blog reading of late anyway). As one commenter noted even before I got there, David gave me only four questions, but I will respond to these and add a fifth when it comes in.

David's questions withmy replies:

1. What do you find so appealing about E. A. Robinson?
My introduction to Robinson was quite accidental. I encountered him in the mid-1980s when my father told me that the Simon and Garfunkel song "Richard Cory" was based on a poem. At the time I just looked it up, read it, and thought how much I enjoyed the music, but I was 14 and not terribly interested in poetry.

I had forgotten about the poem, except that it existed, until the Fall of 1998, when I took a graduate course in 19th and 20th century American poetry from Bob Faggen, who is now the English department chair at Claremont McKenna College (my school, Claremont Graduate University, uses visiting professors from the region, having only two professors now, which is only down one from my day).

Faggen had chosen the topics on which we could each lead class discussion for one hour (we all went over: I, for instance, did two hours on each of two successive days), and the one that most struck me was entitled "Robinson's Tragic Pastorals." Far bee it from me to walk away from so intriguing a topic, so, using the (flat-fee compensated) Faggen-edited Penguin Selected Poems, I dove in.

Having spent three paragraphs rambling, I make no apologies. Here is what I discovered. I am a fan of formal poetry, though don't get me wrong, I love free verse when it is done well. But formal poetry, when managed with skill, strikes me with more force, and Robinson is a master of conversational rhythms. He once described himself as "a fisher of words," and it is evident throughout his work (all of which, save the book-length works, I have read). He is a poet in search of faith, yet a man who could never accept it personally. He loves the hope of success, yet portrays, most often, the failures of his characters. He wants to love, yet he can't escape the darker side of it.

Other poets achieve other effects well, and their work I love for that, but Robinson feels as if he is retelling my youth and making its shortcomings acceptable without excusing them. I suppose, then, that it is personal, in that way, though poetry is always personal when it works for the reader. I feel, leading into the next question, when I read Robinson, that I can write, if not at his level, and say something worth saying merely by addressing those common things around me.

2. You wrote once about taking part in a marathon session of writing and producing a play in 24-Hours: Do you write screenplays in longer periods of time? How much creative writing do you do?

I would love to say that I have the discipline to pursue my ideas for novels and screenplays, but as yet I have lacked that. This is the beauty of the 24-Hour Plays: they demand so much creatively while asking so little temporally. I can engage in a creative exercise without risking the failure of being incomplete.

I did, a couple years ago, take a poetry class and a fiction class, both at a community college in the region. I did this for a number of reasons, but chief among them was that the class put me in a position in which I was forced to write complete works. I discovered that I am probably better at prose than verse, but I have done nothing with either since I last published a poem in a community college litmag in 1994.

I keep thinking of ideas and not following them, or then I decide that they are accidentally derivative of other works I already know, even when they are inspired by others. The most useful resource I have found cost me all of $10. The Writer's Block is a wonderful little book—cube-shaped to make the joke complete—that contains "spark words," writing challenges, images, and stories of writers designed to inspire writers. Flip to a random page and get, perhaps, one of these (vanishes to get the book, returning in no time through the magic of the printed word): debt, write about a parent trying to explain the facts of life to his or her child, bad hair day. Each of these faces a picture that embodies the word or phrase.

Should I write more? Yes. Will I write more? Yes. When? Um . . .

I just came up with an idea Sunday that may get me back into a rhythm: With a friend, I could write a monthly radio play, which then we would produce and edit, using our computers, for distribution. From about age 8 to 14, I used to listen to KIRO 710 in Seattle, the CBS news station (geek alert!), and one thing I loved was Radio Mystery Theater, hosted by E. G. Marshall. This I would do in honor of that introduction to not only small stories but five-day epics such as The Last Days of Pompeii and Les Misérables.

3. What do you enjoy about teaching in the California community college system?

I have to say that this is a bit of a trick question, though David could not know it. I love teaching community college courses, though there are things I will not be able to do at that level. I was a horrid student for most of my life. I never skipped a class until after high school, but I skipped most of my homework, relying on exams and extra credit to pass (when I did pass). I went into the community college system after high school, and there I found my place.

I started working as a tutor in the Writing Lab during my first quarter as a student, despite not having the requisite course history (the director was pleased with my knowledge, earned through years of my being corrected by my mother). I worked in the lab for four years. I spent two years in student government, three years as an officer in the Student Health Awareness Committee, and a year as an editor for Arnazella, the schools litmag.

During my second year as a tutor, I first experienced—I should say I first recognized—a student's "lightbulb moment." I didn't know at the time that others called it that, but it was the only way I could describe the apparent suddenness with which someone comprehended a concept, fully and for the first time. Another student rushed up to me weeks after I had walked her through her paper in search of problems (we only indicated that a problem existed; the student had to tell us what it was); she was from Cambodia and had written about her experiences as a child there and an incident with two armed Khmer Rouge. Brimming with energy, she thanked me for the help and told me she had earned a 3.7 on her paper. I was befuddled that she would be pleased since it had not been a 4.0, but I was immensely pleased that she felt I had done anything worthy of such thanks. I got addicted to teaching.

I teach now in the community college system because that is where I feel my debt should be repayed as I get payed to feed my addiction to teaching. Beat that, corporate America! As for the California component, well that's the trick part. There are few better places to be than where I am now. I am fortunate to have found a department with people I like. It's not that there are such people present so much as that there are no people I dislike or even find myself regarding with neutrality. That's a tough environment to beat. Still, if Bellevue Community College, my alma mater, were to hire me for the Fall (the application is currently under review), California won't even see the cloud of dust as I leave. No school, through no fault of its own, will ever win my heart as BCC has done.

4. Are you considering pursuing a PhD? If so, why?

Yes, though the answer is complex. I am considering it, but what ever may become of that consideration I cannot say right now. I doubt I would pursue work at a university if I had a PhD, though if the right opportunity were to come along I would not walk away. My wife is pursuing an MBA right now, so nothing would happen until that was wrapped up. Furthermore, I will only settle on a PhD program once I know where I am settling with full-time work.

The question of why is, perhaps, interesting to some, though not entirely surprising. It is not about the money, though that would be most welcome. If I return for a PhD, it will be because the program would push me to do more research, more (directed) writing, more learning. What I know of teaching I didn't learn during pedagogy courses I took before abandoning the idea of high school teaching, but rather from being taught. I learned to push students to become better by being pushed. As one who has never fully recovered from his bad study habits, I am intimately aware of techniques that motivate students who need extra motivation (certainly not all, but I have had some grand successes when I have seen my younger self in my students).

Finally, a call back. I want to pursue my PhD because I want that motivation not just to read, to research, and to write, but because I want to focus all of those activities on Robinson. As I noted in an earlier post, I was recently in a discussion with a couple of poets, and as I was preparing to leave, one of them, Robert Wrigley, told me that I needed to go back and get the PhD, doing my dissertation on Robinson because, "he needs to be brought back." I had used the same phrasing elsewhere and with other people many times. Hearing it from a man of Wrigley's stature adds force I cannot express here.

5. You asked a while back about profs using blogs in their classes. Are you plannind to do so next year, and if so how and why?

I am considering it this summer for a transfer-level composition course. One of the things that intrigues me is the possibility of providing the freedom that some have found in using the clicker. The greatest problem in the classroom is not plagiarism or getting students to turn something in, or at least not for me (both are problems, mind you, just neither is the greatest problem). In my classroom, the problem is getting people talking freely about the literature.

In the novel my students will read this summer (a six-week course starting the week of 7/4), there is a scene in which the antagonist, named I-330 (females have vowel designations), tricks the protagonist, named D-503, into smoking tobacco and drinking a something that is, based on the description, absinthe. D-503 crumbles against her, begging her to sleep with him, and she replies by pointing out the time. He must be home in a matter of minutes or face arrest. My students have trouble using the proper language to describe the type of control she exercises from that point forward, much less talking about it. My hope is that a blog requirement will get discussions moving more freely. Oh, and for those who are as squirmy as my students, the word is "dominatrix." If it looks like a duck . . .

Again, anyone interested in having five custom questions from me, indicate that interest in a comment on this oversized post. The first five commenters who ask, win.