The Waiting Room Reader

Among the many reasons I feel very fortunate to have the next collection, Losing Season, published by CavanKerry Press is their commitment “to broadening the audience for poetry to those who most need it–particularly the under-served and those burdened by emotional and psychological stress (that includes all of us and everyone we know, doesn’t it?).”

Here is a description of their latest project under the leadership of founder/editor Joan Cusack Handler:

“Until now one piece of the dream remained unrealized. That involved bringing poetry to patients in hospital waiting rooms–those barren, lonely places where we are held captive, often for hours, with nothing to distract us but People, Us, and Golf magazines.” With help from the Liana Foundation, an anonymous donor, and The Arnold P. Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine, CavanKerry Press has published The Waiting Room Reader: Stories to Keep You Company. Copies of the anthology are now available in various hospitals starting in CK’s home territory of New York and New Jersey. As funding becomes available, they will continue the distribution to hospitals throughout the U.S.

To request copies of The Reader, contact:

joan@cavankerrypress.org
or
sgold@gold-foundationorg

For information about CKPress, you can go to their website at www.cavankerrypress.org
or write
CavanKerry Press
6 Horizon Road
Fort Lee, NJ 07024

Imagine

Here’s an email from former student, Lara Wagner, who is teaching at Loyola U in Chicago. If you teach, you will connect. And if not, you will get an idea of “what this part is like.” Lara is a remarkable writer and student of literature. What a delight it would be to be one of her students!

______________
Dear Jack,
Strangely, you have retired from teaching the same year that I am finally starting! Now I know what you mean about walking into a classroom, nervous to the core. Thankfully, I’m teaching a freshman composition class and they’re all pretty nice kids.

Oh goodness, Jack. How did you do this for so long? I love it, but I want SO MUCH for them and I’m running myself into circles trying to come up with creative ways to help them out. I know they can see and appreciate my effort, but I wonder if the effort will actually affect the product. How?

Today I came home with a stack of essays I had them write in class–the first thing they’ve written for me, just something small so that I could “get to know them in writing.” It sat on my desk during my office hours. I stared it down during lunch. Now I am back at my apartment and it’s waving at me from across the room. Never in my life have I been so afraid to read anything. It’s like I am about to start an archeological dig; I am thrilled and elated and scared and nervous and, most of all, without a clue what I will find beneath the soil.

Some part of me wants to put it off for the entire holiday weekend. Wouldn’t that be nice? No reading, no red pen, no comments to make. No evaluation of faulty logic, no absolute, ice-cold fear at thoughts like, “What does this need?” and “How do I help?” No back strain and squinting and spending too many hours extracting a response that comes from my heart and may very well never be read after the student sees the grade.

I guess the flip side is that then I’ll never know them, never see, never help, never prepare, never learn. No encounter with another person’s imagination. And even though this first week has been full of doubts, I kind of love teaching already. The first day of class, I overestimated how long it would take to go over the syllabus (how dry does that sound?) and scrambled to make use of time by having them write any questions or comments they had for me on scrap pieces of paper. One person wrote, “I love this class already,” and I thought, “Wow! I must be excellent at reading syllabi. Have I got the skills or what?” Hee hee. Honestly, I have no idea what prompted a response like that from that student, but it made me grin and think maybe I could somehow convince eighteen eighteen-year-olds that it’s worth it to roll out of bed for an 8:15 a.m. class about writing, writing and more writing.

I just looked at the top paper on my stack. The first sentence in her paper is “Imagine.”

Isn’t that nice?

Lara

Jack’s on the list…

Somehow in the kerfuffle and excitement of learning about CavanKerry publishing “Losing Season” next year, we neglected to mention a terrific honor Jack received, and how much it both tickles and warms him. The International Institute of Sport named Jack one of the 100 top sports educators in the country. The list is impressive. Jack’s been getting a lot of mileage out of being on the same list with, well, all of the others. At any rate, we got the word on the same day that we received word of the book, and the two are so connected, that we’ve conflated the news in our heads. What we think, more than anything, is how much Pop-Pop (Buzz Ridl, Jack’s Hall of Fame basketball coaching dad) would have loved this news. It’s a great honor, and Jack’s been having fun talking to writers and reporters from far and wide about sports education, his Dad’s record, and the little-known genre that is sports poetry.

“Retiree” Returns to Work

Well, this “retiree” is back at work! I’m teaching the Intermediate Poetry Writing course this fall I have a great gang of poets in there including my philosophy professor pal Jim Allis. He enables me to say things like “Oh, that ontological move you made from the Aristotelian assumption of reality to the Platonic reality of reality which then implies a Buber-influenced relational reality just blew me away!” And the students with their affirmation of one another’s work have taken a conventional classroom and have transformed it into a safe and creative space. We get to hang out and talk about poems.

The second edition of Approaching Literature (Bedford/St. Martin’s Press) that Peter Schakel and I wrote will be out soon along with a new edition of our 250 Poems. Approaching Literature, we think/hope, is a richer book than the first time around. I’ve loved working with Peter. We’re a great good team, able to bring our very different strengths to the book. It was funny—at first, I kept worrying that I was having all the fun while Peter was doing the work I would not enjoy. Then we found out that each of us was concerned about that for the other. We were able to harmonize what each of us brought to the project. We always signed off our emails to one another with “On we go.” And on we went until, after two years of all but daily work we met the deadline.

Here’s something cheerful: You should all check out Julie’s knitting blog: knittingjuju.wordpress.com what she’s designed and knitted are now showing up all over the knitting globe, and I do mean globe. Wait’ll you see the sweater she made for me. I’ve reached the age where I could live in autumn in that sweater all year.

Summer Workshop Roundup

Have I ever been lucky this summer, getting to lead poetry workshops at The Far Field Retreat for Writers, at Interlochen’s first annual writers conference and at Ox Bow where I was surrounded by artists.

I highly and whoopingly recommend all three of these opportunities. They are so well run, never a bump in the road, everything moving along as if they are running themselves when one knows that behind the scenes, those in charge– Mary Ann Samyn, Anne Marie Oomen, and Jason Kalajainen–have made sure that we are in a writer’s paradise. What a joy to work with attendees ranging in age from 19-83 each carrying life stories abundant with sorrow and hilarity.

Julie and Charlie dog went along to Interlochen, and Charlie was in heaven each morning as he dashed out the door of our home on Green Lake and headed to the shoreline to roll in a dead fish. Ahhhhhh. Hmmmmm, maybe there’s a metaphor in there about this life in poetry.

Our class visited Mike Delp at his fishing camp, where Charlie tasted the life of a river dog.

Next up: A week long seminar in poetry that I’ll be leading at Hope College, July 30-August 3. Come join the good time. Just contact David James at Hope College — james@hope.edu

Then on August 5 at 2:30, I’ll get to read with Jackie Bartley at the Fenn Valley Winery. Come join us for poems and for tasting, sipping, downright imbibing in wine and one another.

Note from backstage…

Hi folks. Julie, the help, reporting in. We’ve given Ridl.com a new home and an upgrade through WordPress. (Bless WordPress. I love WordPress.) And that has enabled a really nice linking feature, which means linking to pals and buddies with blogs and pages out there in the world.

But Jack hasn’t kept careful records of all of his friends with web destinations. So if you have one, and you don’t see it on the list, would you let him know, and I’ll add you to the Friends’ links list soonly.

Onward…

What a thrill

Julie here again, posting for Ridl….

What a thrill:

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2007/04/30/index.html

Thanks, all you almanac folks.

And then, today Jack received notice that Broken Symmetry is a co-winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award for poetry for 2007. Jack’s blinking. This award covers work published in 12 states, and the past winners include Ted Kooser, Jim Harrison, Carl Phillips, Alice Fulton, and Richard Jones.

Recent Readings

The reading at Alpena was a gem. Meridith went along. We’d not had a Daddy/Daughter trek in some time.

We got there just fine, Meridith navigating. We missed a turn coming back. Everyone at Alpena was so good to us. They welcomed us in our room with flowers and Dove chocolates, took us out to a great dinner, and the company was so stimulating to talk with, the fellow diners being from NYC, California, Texas and now loving living in Alpena and trying to talk us all into moving there. And the audience had the best questions following the reading. And the library! Talk about a library that cares about people. Great place. Go.

Then this past week I got to read with former student Chris Dombrowski at Michigan State. That makes two readings this year with former students. What a joy! Chris’s mother is our agent. She was instrumental in setting this up. And the people at MSU were incredibly welcoming. Chris and I recorded an interview prior to the reading. The old guy and the new kid on the block blew the roof off the joint. Chris is writing remarkable poems and essays. He read both at the reading and I kept having to push my jaw up. Sue Poppink who was a student of mine in the 70’s was there and brought me water! I’d not seen her since ‘79. She has her doctorate and teaches education. And Chris’s wife, Mary, also a former student was there rooting us on. And another former student, Sara Lamers was there, too. Sara has a new collection out from March Street Press. Its title is A City without Trees.You can access the interview and the reading by going to

http://www.lib.msu.edu/vincent/writers/index.htm

Nice Review by Sarah Jensen

Sarah Jensen, a fine writer and columnist I met at the Ludington Poetry Series, wrote this lovely review of Broken Symmetry on her company’s book blog. I think I’ll go back and read it 20 more times…

Detroit Historical Museum

Julie and I drove over to Ann Arbor on Saturday, December 2, hung out there and felt politically correct, wandered in real bookstores, and ate good. Then on Sunday we headed over to The Detroit Historical Museum for a book signing. After signing a book, we went out to eat with Sarah and Mollica from the Wayne Press, their friend Brooke and former student David Soubly. That was a great time as we celebrated Sarah’s birthday even though it wasn’t her birthday. It was a delight to see David and learn about his survival at Ford, his continuing to write–he’s working to finish his second novel–and his family.

Look for David’s first novel titled SANTA, CEO. You can check out the novel at www.santaceo.com or obtain copies at www.booklocker.com. And while mentioning former students, I recently learned that Jill Thiel who went to Hope College in the 70s was at the reading that Sally Smits and I got to give at IUSB.

What a joy to hear from good good her! Here’s wishing one and all the very best of these holiday times.