Workshops on the Run

Posted on January 12, 2005 in Poetry The Orange

Quite without notice or expectation, I gave two poetry workshops tonight. The first I planned and delivered as I do on the second Wednesday of every month. The second, I gave to a pair of friends after the Ugly Mug reading using the same poems by Jane Kenyon and Kim Addonizio.

I don’t give up on people. I have witnessed too many times how others do rhythm and cadence better than I. I know that in every suffering heart there is a lover of the breast feathers of the egret, a stylist who has her or his own way.

As a teacher, I feel it is best to show people good poems and say “Now you try these tricks in your work”. That is how I teach myself, too.

Two of the poets — who delivered their work in brilliantly syncopated tandem — were excellent. The other poet, a young Cuban-American, struck me as an excellent performer but a child with no heart. He looked at Cuba and blamed them for having Castro. He looked at Watts and blamed them for having drugs and no jobs. He played well to the crowd of white boys and girls who didn’t deserve the credit for being born to affluence. But they took it anyways. In the end, I did not clap for him. I wrote in my notebook “This reading is now pure Orange County.”