Why Does William Logan Hate Me?

He doesn’t even know me. But I know he hates me. If you’ve read his criticism, you know he likely hates you too. If you haven’t come across him yet, don’t change. This man writes his own poems and a lot of criticism about contemporary poetry and poets. He hates almost all of it and almost all of them. He gets a lot of attention for hating.

Call me old fashioned. Call me sappy. Call me analytically and evaluatively [sic] challenged. But I don’t get it? Naomi Shihab Nye says, “I try to be a friend to all poems.” I admire her for that, and try to be that too. I think that poems, all the arts, can be useful, practical in the most soulful of ways. And this profoundly important reason-for-their-being deserves respect.

Even those poems that will never find their way into the everlasting deserve caring attention and those who wrote them should not be humiliated for trying.

Logan is trying to exterminate what he believes is bad poetry. Gee, Bill, I can take care of myself, thank you. When and how did this “bad poetry,” as you define it, hurt the world? Logan would take the ball away from the guy who shoots hoops in his driveway because he doesn’t measure up to William Butler Lebron James.

There was a time when poetry’s ability to open up worlds both inner and outer was considered magical, spiritual, even animistic. Here were simple markings on a page, and for some reason the way these markings mixed together created sounds and experiences and a kind of proprioceptive feeling, a way of knowing a new reality, the access to which could come in no other way.

Perhaps you have read The Spell of the Sensuous, in which author David Abram describes how before print, the world itself was full of non-verbal languages. There was the language of the landscape, of the plants and animals, of sky, cloud, rain, of look, smell, taste, of pottery and drawing, light and dream. Everything had a language; everything “spoke,” and everyone lived listening and responding to these languages. Poetry was a way of life and grew to be a way of knowing.

William Logan says that he cares about the “state of poetry,” and about forming so-called “critical evaluations.” Clearly, I don’t. I always hope that if we would care about everything else, then the art we make would arrive from that caring. And the way the arts are being judged would  be revealed for what it is: the equivalent of a dog show. Worse than a dog show, but a judging that draws sole attention to the judge of the best in show. To hell with the dogs.

I remember asking the professor who led me to literature, what he was feeling when he retired. “Sad,” he replied. “Not because of retiring, but because of what has happened to what I care about. Literature is being replaced by a way of talking about literature that dismisses the value of the work and merely draws our attention to those showing off what they believe is intelligence.”

I also remember realizing that a poem can be, in the best sense, the end of a conversation because it can lead to a rich and reflective silence.

I trust that the odds are about a zillion to one that Logan ever sees any of my poems. I’m not fond of being defenseless and don’t want to be humiliated. Who does? And defenseless and humiliated is what I would feel if he skewered my wistful verses about my dog or my daughter or my wife or the trees along the creek out back. They each have their language, and they each speak clearly to me when I listen.

I certainly don’t believe when you’ve heard one tree speak its language, you’ve heard them all, when you’ve written an elegy for your grandmother that it’s already been written, that the poem you write when your kid rides off for the first time on a bike has been written a hundred times before. As Paul Zimmer wrote, “God-damn the man who calls this sentimental.”

I hope to keep coming across people who respond to our poems these ways:

” . . . He didn’t look as if he thought

bad poems were dangerous, the way some poets do.
If they were baseball executives they’d plot

to destroy sandlots everywhere so that the game
could be saved from children.”

from “Mingus at the Showplace” by William Matthews

And

“Let us remember that in the end we go to poetry for one reason: so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.”–Christian Wiman

I know that William Logan isn’t going to stop hating me. I’ll have to carry that around. The weight is lifted by a Jim Harrison quote a dear friend sent to me. He said, “I would rather give full vent to all human loss and disappointments and take a chance at being corny, than die a smartass.”

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

It Was Easier to Say, “I’m a Basketball Player” Than It Is to Say, “I’m a Poet.”

–to be published in Fastbreak to Linebreak, edited by Todd Davis

“How’d it go out there today? Did you work on your left hand? Shoot fifty free throws? Tap a hundred off the backboard? Work the key?” Those were the words I’d hear, often hear, daily hear from my father. He was a basketball coach. I was the coach’s kid. I practiced. I practiced a lot.

My father was infinitely patient. I really wasn’t that good. But how I worked. And how I imagined. The clock was always ticking as I took jump shot after jump shot at the hoop fastened to the back of the garage. The “court” was assembled from five by five squares of poured concrete, the cracks about a quarter of an inch between each slab. I knew without looking down where they lurked and could dribble left/right/back/left without hitting a one. When I stepped to the foul line, time had run out, we were behind by a point, and I was shooting a one-and-one. When tapping the ball off the board, I backed my opponent out and stood my ground. And along the sidelines, the fans were cheering or booing, and the cheerleaders were screaming and pushing back their long hair.

It wasn’t until my dreams of playing the point for my father and taking his team to the Big Dance, the Final Four, the NCAA championship had faded along with my jump shot that I realized how much my imagination had kept me going. Like I said, I wasn’t all that good, good enough for high school ball, starting from grade nine on, but never the star and never good enough to play in college and always all-but-terrified. It was my imagination that got me through. I could pretend. I could pretend that I was better than I was, pretend that the cheerleaders wanted to go with me to the dance after the game, pretend that one day I’d be at that foul line with the clock at zero and sink the winning two foul shots, pretend that one day I’d come back and everyone would point and whisper, “See that guy? He was the best guard this school has ever seen.”

But poetry? When Curry Kirkpatrick, then of Sports Illustrated, wrote a piece about my father, he said to my dad, “Something that intrigues me is that your son is a poet. That’s pretty weird, isn’t it? A coach having a poet for a son?” I always wished that my father didn’t have to be asked that question, that the question would have been, “How’s it feel to have your son playing for the Celtics?”

In the late 60’s my father became the head basketball coach at The University of Pittsburgh. When I first thought the crazy thought that maybe I could write poems, I sought out poet Paul Zimmer to help me. He said he would. I had about 50 profoundly sensitive pieces, bad news from the heart. I showed him a couple. He said, very gently, “Let’s start over.” I asked Paul what he would charge for looking at my stuff. He said, “You know what I would really like? I’d love to be able to go to the Pitt locker room after games. Do you think that you could arrange that?” I was floored. Ever since I was a child, I’d all but lived in the locker rooms of my father’s teams. It was time to put away childish things, buy a cape and a pipe and be deep. Zimmer wanted to see the chalk board and listen to post-game talks, watch the sports writers interview my father and the players, see guys celebrate or mope? This was definitely not deep. “Ok. Sure,” I said. Zimmer then added, “I have one little thing about the way I’ll work with you: I’ll tell you when I think you’ve written a poem.” That was fine by me. I’d already spent about a year writing songs, trying to push Paul Simon off the charts, and I already had the 50-some poems, even though Zimmer said we’d start over. This “one little thing” seemed only right to me. Why wouldn’t he tell me if I’d written a poem?

Four years later, he told me I’d written a poem.

Several times I asked Paul if he thought I should quit. He always answered, “That’s up to you. If you want to, you can.” Why didn’t I quit? I really think it was because I was and still am and always will be a coach’s kid. You practice. For years, you practice. And you practice without ever knowing you’ll get there. But you practice dreaming that you will. And you take it from the coach. You take it and you take it and you take it. And you keep coming back. And you slam the locker door, and you curse the coach and the cosmos, and you stop. But you don’t quit. You stop and wonder and doubt, and you think this is not only a waste of time but a waste of your life, and you think about all the people out there making money or having good times while you’re staring at a lame image. You think you must be insane. And then you keep going because the word quit cannot ever become part of your life. Your jump shot may have faded, but you didn’t quit. Your jump shot quit you.

And you learn not how to win but what to do when you lose. You never learn how to win. You just work the key and hit the boards and hope like hell and pick up the pen and listen to the words, the words, the words. And sometimes you feel that shake and bake, and the rhythms shake and bake, and the words fake left and go right, and you drive the lane and pull up or shoot a floater or break away for a slam dunk. And you get down and watch your opponent’s belly and wait for that slip-up and steal the ball and hit the open man. Sometimes. And when the mailbox brings another loss, you convince yourself that it was an upset and that you’ll win the next one.

Today I practiced again. Tomorrow I’ll practice again. The game never ends. The rhythms I learned on that backyard court are in me and in my language. The images are precise because there’s so little room for error between ball and hoop, between ball and opponent’s outstretched hand. And there is no such thing as getting it down, mastering it so you can do it all again the same way the next time. You can only prepare for the next game. You are always preparing for the next poem.

After I wrote the poem that Zimmer called a poem, he said, “You know you haven’t learned to write poetry, don’t you? You don’t learn to write poetry. No one learns to write poetry. You always have to learn how to write the next poem.” Practice.

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

And those who can’t stop teaching…

The new school year is starting and for the first time in 37 years, I’m not going to walk into a classroom, hands shaking….

(Feeling kinda wistful actually.)

But! This summer I dipped my toes into the waters of independent writing workshops. And I LOVED it. With the great good assistance of Colette Volkema DeNooyer, who has experience in these things and hosted the workshops at her magical home along Lake Michigan, I spent a week with a group of people who love poetry and loved being together.

The sessions were such a good time that Colette and I decided to try for another set of sessions running once a month from September through February. That workshop has already filled. So now we are thinking of other possibilities, and that’s where you all come in.

I’m imagining several types of workshops: ones for those who have always wanted to try their hand at writing poems, ones that focus on particular approaches to writing poems, ones that are for those who want to add to what they already do with their poems, ones that focus on developing ways of working with the various elements of poetry, ones that focus on particular contemporary poets and what we can learn from what they do, etc.

So—-to that end we’ve added an email news feature that you can sign up for to hear about workshops, readings, new books coming out, etc. By asking you to sign up for it, (see the link in the upper right-hand corner of the site?) we’ll know we’re notifying only those of you who want to hear about the kinds of things I’ll be up to in my so-called retirement.

Here’s the setting for our workshops:

photo by Joy Gaines Friedler

And if you have ideas about what these workshops should be? Leave comments here, or over on the Readings and Workshops page. I’d love to hear from you.

And now back to looking ahead while remaining ever grateful for the wonderful years I had with my students at Hope College….

Stretching Out There Somewhere

Where have all the flowers gone? That allusion implies how long I’ve been in the classroom

Came here to Hope College in 1971. Thought I’d stay maybe three or four years. Wednesday, April 23, thirty-seven years later, I walked out of my last class

Felt a little like Icarus in that Bruegel painting. Not that I plunged to my death. But I sure plunged. And all around me were students and teachers heading to their classes or meetings or study dates or out to lie in the first sunshine of spring, many of the students chattering away on their cell phones. I looked at the buildings where I got to be with my students and the one where I had my office, then walked to the car and drove home.

The scary thing about having a teaching life close down is that you have so little to measure it by. You hope that you did a lot more good than harm. And yet realizing even one harmful result could ignite a forest fire in your mind burning away any hopes for good memories that were trying to sprout, thrive, and offer some comforting shade.

So, you go home. When you walk in the door, Charlie the dog runs to greet you. A bit later Julie comes home from real work. You sit with her on the couch, turn on ESPN, take her hand, and feel all of what lies ahead stretching out there somewhere.

Degrading the Grade

I wrote this essay for an anthology about teaching being prepared by my pal, Jeanine Dell’Olio, at Hope College. My students already know about my approach to grading, of course. Julie thought this would be a good place to keep this essay, with hopes these ideas can continue to stir up trouble.

……………………………

Degrading the Grade

Jack Ridl

I have spent my classroom life teaching in the arts, specifically poetry writing. Among the questions I am most asked is “How do you grade a poem? Isn’t it completely subjective? Isn’t it impossible to grade any art?”

Well, of course you can grade a work of art. You can decide to award an A for accomplishing effective use of various artistic elements or a grade based on improvement. You can grade based on a determination of quality. You can determine the criteria. I had a writing teacher whose grading system was A if you wrote as well as Shakespeare, B if  you wrote as well as Hemingway, C for “most of you, likely.” Another teacher offered this system: “C if your work makes me think. B if it makes me feel. A if it makes me laugh.” So, yes, you can grade an artwork.

But how to grade was not the issue for me. Why grade, and what are the consequences of grading, and does the grade help a student develop? These were the questions that would not leave my mind alone when I took a walk. Then one day came the epiphany. It was rather simple as epiphanies go: Grading was preventing my students from being artists, poets.

Grading interfered with the value of constructive critique. The grade was not an assessment, not even a reward or a punishment. It was a consequence. As soon as I would suggest to students that they could do something else with an ending or a line break or change the tone, all they heard was a grade plummeting. Defenses rose. They refused to see any alternative to the way they had composed the work, and stood firmly for the A grade they deserved. The result was stifled growth, inauthentic work, begrudging changes that took little if any effect, a hostile relationship between what should be a coach/mentor and a growing writer.

So I eliminated grading. I eliminated it in order to suggest, respond, criticize. And what happened? The students–ALL of the students–began to welcome suggestions and options and alternatives and even challenges. They were not unlike anyone learning to play the piano or to swim or to build a campfire. They wanted to create an effective work. They had always wanted to, but understandably because of school and its achievement evaluation based on measurement, they had to make their grade not their first priority but their first concern. Eliminating grading of their work enabled them to connect their priority with their concern.

And the reward became, dare I say, spiritual and communal rather than a “seal of approval.” They discovered the real reasons for creating. What became important was not confined to the “product.” Importance and value expanded into the process, not because it led to a product, but because the process itself brought valuable experiences, insights, revelations. The students began offering to one another both their poems and the value embodied in them and stories of what happened in the process, both of which enriched the entire class and created a deepening of community. One time I was challenged in a faculty meeting about what I was doing: “Why will your students do any of the work if it’s not going to be graded? What makes them do the work?”  My response was simply “The right reasons.” That sounds glib. It isn’t.

Something that surprised and liberated the students was that they began to discover real value in everything written, successful or not. We had complex and provocative conversations about the importance of the material. We decided together whether it resulted in an effective poem or not. Any image, moment, insight, any line break, the implications of the impact of the rhythm of lines could lead to conversation and worthwhile realizations. The poem did not need to be successful for us to find remarkable and worthwhile content and artistic attributes, ones well worth discussing. I realized that it was my job not to demand that they write successful poems, but to teach them what it took to write poems. They have the rest of their lives to write successful poems

Emily Dickinson didn’t sit down to write a poem for a grade. David didn’t write the 23rd Psalm and say to himself, “That’ll get me an A.” There were very important reasons for composing poetry. The students deserved to have access to that discovery.

But I was worried. Won’t some students blow this whole thing off? Won’t my reputation go down the tubes? Won’t I become a laughing stock, an “easy grader?” And won’t the students create mostly mediocre work?

That’s when another surprise arrived. Instead of mediocre work, the work improved. Not one student blew off a single assignment. And while many students never became full-fledged poets, more than in the past did. In 15 years since my epiphany, more than 60 students have gone on to the best MFA programs in the country and are publishing. No, there is no data.  But what I do know for sure is that every single one of the students had poetry restored to their lives, and have kept it as an important part of their lives since their graduation.

And as for me? I put away being a tough grader and became a “tough responder.” All that means is that I was no longer hesitant to make suggestions and corrections for fear I might “stifle” a sensitive soul. I no longer had to tell them the lie that they needed to develop a tough hide in order to take criticism. They could maintain their vision and voice and sensitivity. They could welcome critical response because it was in their behalf and their poem’s behalf. Critical response did not lead to a grade which had led them to play it safe and learn little. Critical response led to growth and the intrinsic joy that comes when beginning artists realize what can be done instead of hiding within what they can already do.

Winter Happening

Happy Happy, everybody. We’re curling in for the long winter, and my last semester teaching at Hope. I’m looking forward to a lot of things, including Hope’s Winter Happening, mid-January, where I’ll be reading from Losing Season. Come by if you can!

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.

Rybicki Fundraising Details

My life in poetry has been made warm and magical because Julie Moulds Rybicki is in it. She lit up my classes more than 20 years ago, and has lit up my mind and heart and life ever since. I am not alone. I bring her back to my classes as often as I can so she can spread her gift to as many students as possible. Her work and devotion to students of all ages makes her one of those teachers whose gifts can never be measured or repaid in any way.  She’s given us so much.

So it especially infuriates me that she has had to fight with cancer for her whole adult life. But being Julie, she has beaten cancer over and over again. She has to put up another fight. It’s time for another transplant. And our health care system being what it is, and fighting cancer for 20 years doing what it does to a family’s finances, Julie and her family now need our help. I think we can give it, don’t you?

There’s a big fundraising underway. Come to it or mail it in. But please, let’s support our amazing friend, okay? And please help spread the word!

 

**** All-Star Poetry & Fiction Reading, Concert * and Party*****

To Benefit the NTAF Great Lakes Bone Marrow Transplant Fund

In Honor of Julie Moulds Rybicki

For Her bone marrow Transplant Relocation Costs

 

Featuring the Poetry and Fiction of: Con Hilberry, Bonnie Jo Campbell,   Bill Olsen,   Nancy Eimers,   Jack Ridl,

Jackie Bartley,   Rodney Torreson,   Diane Seuss,   David Lee, Elizabeth Kerlikowske,   Andy Mozina,   Danna Ephland,

Gail Martin,   Greg Rappleye,   Nina feirer,   Dave Marlatt, Susan Ramsey,   John Rybicki   and   Julie Moulds Rybicki

 

Also featuring:

Irish music by Dave Marlatt and the Rambling Boys of Pleasure as well as American Roots Acoustic music by Solid Geometry and a Silent Auction of arts, crafts and signed books.

 

Where:  Kraftbrau Brewery    www.kraftbraubrewery.com    

Located at 402 East Kalamazoo Avenue, Kalamazoo, MI 49007, 269-384-0288

When:  Sunday, November 4 from 3 to 7:30 p.m.

Cash Bar.  Food provided.  Cost: $5

 

Come enjoy wonderful words, live music, revelry, mingling, eating, drinking and dancing.

 

Schedule: 

3-4 p.m. American Roots Acoustic music by Solid Geometry

4-5 p.m. All-Star Reading Part I

5-6 p.m. Irish music by Dave Marlatt and the Rambling Boys of Pleasure

6-7:  All-Star Reading Part II

7-7:30. More revelry, auction results and wrap-up

 

For additional information, Email John Rybicki at jjrybick@yahoo.com

 

Tax-Deductible Donations Can Be Made Out To:

NTAF Great Lakes Bone Marrow Transplant Fund,

150 N. Radnor Chester Road,

Suite F-120, Radnor, PA 19087. 

Print “In Honor of Julie Rybicki” in the check’s memo section.

For secure, online credit card contributions visit: www.transplantfund.org or call NTAF at 1-800-642-8399, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., EST.

 

Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.  This campaign is administered by the National Transplant Assistance Fund, a 501(c) (3) non-profit providing assistance to transplant and catastrophic injury patients.  Information:  1-800-642-8300.   Michigan registration number: MICS No. 11575.