Charles Potts Video

"The Humble Lecture" comes back

In the Age of the Overamplified, A Resurgence for the Humble Lecture

By DINITIA SMITH (NYT)
Published: March 17, 2006

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER, director of public programs at the New York Public Library, is the kind of person who, when he gets excited, literally bounces in his chair.

''My purpose is not only to make the lions roar,'' he cries. Bounce. ''But to trigger people's imagination.'' Bounce. Bounce. ''It's not only sex that's exciting,'' Mr. Holdengräber says, ''but the life of the mind. When you come into contact with a great idea, it can change your life.''

Mr. Holdengräber is riding the crest of a renewed interest in spoken-word events, lectures, debates, readings and panel discussions, in many corners of the city, from university auditoriums to the 92nd Street Y and bookstores and bars.

A spokesman for the library said that attendance at public events had doubled since Mr. Holdengräber, the founder and former director of the Institute for Arts and Culture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, arrived a year and a half ago. Dr. Paul LeClerc, the library's president, added that since Mr. Holdengräber, 45, began making his imprint on public programming, the audiences had ''a different energy.''

''They tend to be much younger,'' he noted.

In January, Mr. Holdengräber said, when the French writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy was interviewed at the library by Tina Brown, ''900 people showed up.''

''Diane Von Furstenberg and Lauren Bacall were there,'' he continued.

''There was a line 150 meters long of people who couldn't get in. It went around the corridors of the library.''

In October, similar numbers lined up to see Bill Clinton interview the historian John Hope Franklin about race relations and to see the song-cycle version of ''The Elements of Style,'' by Maira Kalman and Nico Muhly.

''Several hundred non-ticket holders had to be turned away from all the events,'' Mr. Holdengräber said.

''I feel like I'm running a rock concert series,'' he said (though unlike at rock concerts, the performers at the library are rarely paid; many do it because they have a book to plug). ''I wanted to go beyond academic discourse and speak to a very large public, and to the common reader.''

To be sure, some of the increase in attendance can be attributed to Mr.

Holdengräber's efforts to liven up the programming. One of the first things he did when he arrived was to change the name from the Public Education Program to Live From the N.Y.P.L. It also helped that he changed the time most lectures began, to 7 p.m. or later, from 6 or 6:30, to make it easier for people with jobs to attend. And he increased the library's e-mail database of potential attendees to 7,000 from about 500. He says he relies on e-mail messages now to publicize events rather than brochures, a change that enables him to program more spontaneously.

But the library is not the only place that has seen an increase in attendance at spoken-word events. Uptown at the 92nd Street Y, Helaine Geismar Katz, the associate executive director who is in charge of public programs, said she had seen ''a big change'' in the size of audiences at the Y's lectures and panels. Like the library, the Y has increased the number of its lectures, debates and forums to feed the public appetite.

''We have had poetry for over 60 years, every Monday night,'' Ms. Geismar Katz pointed out. ''Now we have programs almost every single day and night.''

In addition to the Y's usual literary fare and forums on politics, it presents interviews with actors and comedians -- Carl Reiner, Jay Leno, Ralph Fiennes and Philip Seymour Hoffman are among those who have appeared -- most of which are sold out far in advance.

Similarly, the New School for Social Research has a heavy schedule of readings and discussion groups on the arts, careers and politics, often in conjunction with the World Policy Institute. ''Last spring we did not have more than 500 people coming to any event,'' said Linda Dunne, dean of general studies. But a year later, three weeks into the semester, she said, the New School has had five events with more than 500 people each. On Apri l6 through 8, the New School will hold a three-day tribute to the poet John Ashbery, with readings and symposiums by other poets and scholars.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has always had good crowds at its panels and lectures, said Hilde Limondjian, general manager of concerts and lectures.

Its musical performances are often accompanied by talks as well.

Smaller outlets have seen a steady increase in attendance. Denis Woychuk, the principal owner of KGB Bar at 85 East Fourth Street, which is a center for readings by authors, said: ''We set up our first in 1994 on Sundays because Sundays were slow. Things were dead. I said, 'Let's do something that's going to be fun.' The business was secondary, but there was certainly that.'' Every eager young writer attending a reading means, of course, that at least one drink is bought at the bar.

''Now we do 20 to 25 readings a month,'' Mr. Woychuk said. ''There is fiction on Sunday, poetry on Monday. Tuesday is mainly nonfiction. On Wednesday there are special events with different literary groups, magazines, journalists. We have science fiction.''

''Thursdays is becoming more like Wednesdays,'' he said, with special events. Fridays are the same, he said.

''We're starting to do more and more on the weekends,'' Mr. Woychuk added.

''Used to be that if you did a literary event on a weekend, nobody wanted to come. But now we're getting a very good early crowd on Saturdays.''

KGB holds about 75 people, and when celebrity authors like Billy Collins or Michael Cunningham read, he said, ''it's spilling out the door, and we have to basically cut it off.''

''People come hours early and camp out, as though they're trying to get World Series tickets,'' Mr. Woychuk said.

Another, very different small site, the Frick Collection, is also attracting crowds to its lectures. Last November, when the novelist Colm Toibin delivered a talk on Henry James, the hall was full, and latecomers had to be seated in another room to watch the event by videocast. The Frick's chief curator, Colin B. Bailey, said that the museum was offering more programs than ever before and that it hoped to add two more spoken-word events this year.

''We think there's an audience for it,'' Mr. Bailey said. ''There's a kind of authenticity about having a living writer or artist in front of you.''

The current enthusiasm for lectures and spoken-word events calls to mind the 19th century, when crowds flocked to hear Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain and Henry Ward Beecher lecture, said Donald M.

Scott, a historian at Queens College of the City University of New York. At the peak of the country's lecture craze in the 1850's, nearly 400,000 people a week attended lectures in the northern and western parts of the country, he once wrote in an essay on the topic. In 1856, when Beecher lectured in Springfield, Mass., the organizers had to provide a special train so people from the surrounding areas could attend.

But why the resurgence now? In the 19th century the increase in the number of lectures and debates came at the same time that ''there was an explosion in print,'' Mr. Scott said in an interview. It was ''staggering, equal in its scope to the kind of explosion we are seeing in electronic and TV and visual media.''

''I think it's a symbiotic relationship,'' Mr. Scott said. ''There is something tolistening to a figure you may have read or heard about. Even though what they have to say may be something you can get in another form, it's a way to feel you are actually in touch with these ideas and these figures.''

Ms. Geismar Katz of the 92nd Street Y said that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have contributed to a renewed interest in public conversations. For years, the Y has had a lecture series with James F. Hoge Jr. of Foreign Affairs and Ralph Buultjens, a professor at New York University.

''Before 9/11,'' she said, ''it was difficult to sell a ticket to something on foreign affairs.'' But now, Ms. Geismar Katz said, ''we can't keep a ticket in the house.''

''It's not enough only to read -- our audiences are reading audiences,'' she added. ''But you always have that question you didn't get answered. Or at least, to hear it differently.''

The increase may also have something to do with the demographic bubble of baby boomers, who are aging out of the group catered to by Hollywood and other producers of popular culture. ''They make the same 10 movies,'' said Mr. Woychuk of KGB, who is 52. ''How many times can you see the same movies?''

But a spoken-word event is a two-way street, a symbiosis between performer and audience, with the performer nourished and encouraged by sometimes invisible cues of posture and attitude from those in crowd. Mr. Cunningham, whose novels include ''The Hours,'' has been reading at KGB for years, to standing-room-only crowds. ''It's very much about storytelling,'' he said.

''There's the sense of you're all gathered around the campfire -- 'I'm going to tell you about these people, and what happened then.' ''

''I love it,'' he continued. ''It's the best way to be reminded of who's out there actually reading and who books are for, and to be reminded that writing is a highly energized, sexy, deeply complex relationship between writer and reader. It's something you tend to forget when you're sitting alone in your room writing something for people you don't know and will never see.''

Meanwhile, Mr. Holdengräber of the Public Library is setting his sights on even bigger audiences. ''I'm asking people to give me two or three hours of their time,'' he said, ''and I will entertain them.''

''I will bring them into contact with other people,'' Mr. Holdengräber promised. ''They will feel something happen that night that they have never felt before.''

Angels Broadside by Amenda Dillman

Two Short Elegies on Objects

Henry’s Hat Hangs

From a nail in my son’s room.

Next to it, my dad’s red baseball cap from Roosevelt.

Next to that, my blue T-ball cap, Sunny Senter’s written under the bill.

Next to that, Whit’s cap, yellow smiley-faced, bears his name.

Her Dresser, One Year Later

A flowered sheet winds

around the empty oak drawers

in a corner of my parents’ garage.

Things to Cover Tonight

Next week, Tuesday, May 30th, 615 lecture, 730 reading

• Weathered Pages Debrief


• Small Groups


• Responses to the book


• Reading itself

• Lynn Martin Preview

• We will need to be ready.


• What makes this special.


• What makes the book special.


• What do you think of the book?

• Pick a poem, now


• Loss/Grief in poetry


• From last week—Grimes, Howell, Me, Pier, Moore, A. Byerrum, T. Martin,


• Why so much?


• “Like all the best poets, Stroud makes the earth again consolable.”


• What do you reach for at 4 am?


• What did we reach for on 9/11?

Stroud’s blurb for Jenifer Lawrence:
what strikes me most in her work is how elegy turns from grief, to wonder, to praise. Theodore Roethke says, "In a dark time the eye begins to see."
In this book, Jenifer Browne Lawrence demonstrates how the creative act, the poem itself, not only helps us to see, but is a way of illuminating the world and transforming the self.

• “Lynn Martin brings the gifts of one who has lost so much.”


• “There, face to face with the most terrifying state of not knowing, they expand outward to the farthest rim of affirmation—where the blue bowl holds everything.”

Options for Elegy:

• First/Most recent experience with death.


• Object that used to belong to someone who is no longer alive.


• My examples


• Dresser


• Hats


• Keely Murphy

• Write a letter to someone who is dead. In it, make a confession.


• Who are your dead? Have them meet in a poem.


• Whenever I look at __________, I am reminded that I’ll be gone too, one of these days.

Blue Bowl Cliffnotes

Study Guide for Lynn Martin’s Blue Bowl

Biography

Lynn Martin was born in Phoenix Arizona. Her parents both passed away in 1975 and was followed by the deaths of many people who were close to her, including a miscarriage and the most recent death of her husband. These personal blows are the influence and reason for her style of poetry.
She attended Arizona State University where she obtained her BA in English and MA in Humanities. She also attended the University of Washington where she got her MA in Advanced Writing.

She has two major influences that she draws from. One is Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) who was a German poet and writer. He wrote the Duino Elegies which have a lot in common with Lynn’s style of writing about death. The second influence is Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). He was an Italian poet and writer who’s most famous piece was titled “La Divina Commedia”, which was later translated to English and titled “The Inferno”. Lynn Martin traveled later in life to Italy to study Dante and in 1988 was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her studies in Italy.

She has had two books published. The first was called “Where the Yellow Field Widened: Elegies for a Lost Child” in 1994 following her miscarriage, and “The Blue Bowl” in 2000.
Lynn Martin is now a retired teacher of Gig Harbor high school where she taught literature and writing.

In the words of Jim Bodeen: Lynn Martin is like the Blue Bowl because only a person who has lost so much can have such great compassion and understanding for others who are going through loss.

Analysis

Writing for the New Yorker magazine, Noelle Oxenhandler wrote, “Lynn Martin’s poems walk straight into the deepest sorrow. There, face to face with the most terrifying state of unknowing, they expand outward to the farthest rim of affirmation—where the blue bowl holds everything.” Between 1975 and 1990, Lynn Martin experienced a series of devastating personal losses, and her book, Blue Bowl, not only memorializes each of the persons vanished from her life, but it is also a testament to the human need to reach outward in times of grief and sorrow, and to resist the isolation which threatens to overcome us. In the book’s title poem, she imagines her “blue bowl” as the sky, the great vessel in which all of creation is held. “I love . . . things able to hold,” she writes, “[able to] be held by other things.” Lynn Martin’s blue bowl is nothing less than the bonds of blood and faith which urge, even compel, us to companionship. If human beings are social creatures, then the blue bowl is the place we congregate. And pain itself can bind. As tragedy comes, we are met with the compassion of others who have weathered the same, and this bond of mutual suffering becomes a deeper bond of mutual hope, as we lead each other outward from the darkness and uncertainty of tragedy. ”When the new pain comes,” she writes in her poem “Cosmos,” the old pains/ do not walk out the door, but stand along beside them.” The searing pain of loss works, in the forges of the heart, a miracle.


Motifs and Symbols

Some of the recurring elements in Blue Bowl include water (rivers, rain, ocean, swimming, fish, waves, boats, lakes), colors (many colors, but blue and white seemed the most significant), flowers and trees, especially in blossom stage, though also throughout the seasons, light and/or dark, and wings and winged creatures, like birds and butterflies. These elements occur in nearly every poem and often are combined (i.e. flowers, trees, birds, and light or water).
A few of the poems that reference water include the following: “The Talk of Dying” (p. 21),“A Guest of Fishes” (p. 22), “Elegy for Stephen Tudor” (p. 29), “Third Elegy” (p. 41), “Entering Rain” (p. 75), “Intimacy,” (p. 79), “Where Everything is Red” (p. 85). Water symbolizes a number of things in these poems. Rain is often equated with tears and mourning. Swimming can be a journey or struggle (like flight, but more difficult and dangerous because of the water’s resistance, unpredictability, and power). Rivers also seem to symbolize a journey, always running to the sea. The sea itself seems to be a sort of wholeness or completeness and an expanse, which touches everything but is much larger and older than humans and is out of the realm of human control, almost like afterlife, a physical representation of the infinite (like space).

Colors and light and/or dark can be seen in these poems, among others: “The Blue Bowl” (p. 20), “Four Snows” (p. 33 - 36), “The Blue Hyacinth” (p. 67), “A Guest of Fishes” (p. 22), “It is Sunny” (p. 26), “Elegy for Stephen Tudor” (p. 29), “Four Snows” (p. 33 - 36), “Ecstatic Elegy” (p. 86), “The Wisteria” (p. 103). Blue is the most commonly referenced color in this book of poetry, often in association with the sky or water, which is what blue often symbolizes. Blue is sometimes associated with sadness. Blue is often associated with faith (even heaven), healing, calmness/serenity, wisdom, and seriousness, all of which seem appropriate for one who is grappling with great loss and the meaning of life. White is another commonly referenced color, a color associated with innocence, purity, light, and goodness. In her grief, we see the author exploring both darkness and light—grief, loss, and lack of understanding and hope, faith, and enlightenment—often grappling with both at the same time.

Martin’s references to flowers and trees, often in blossom stage (but also throughout the seasons)—apple trees, particularly, but also cherry blossoms, magnolia, poppies, dogwood, etc.—seem to tie the losses she’s experiencing into the greater “cycle of life” that can be seen in nature. Her particular reliance on springtime images at times suggest a sense of hope and understanding, but also at times simply serve to magnify her loss by showing death in contrast to new life. Most poems include references to the natural world, but a few examples include the following: “It is Sunny” (p. 26), “Prayer” (p. 27), “Four Snows” (p. 33), “Third Elegy” (p. 41), “Eighth Elegy” (p. 46), “Ninth Elegy” (p. 47), “Fasting” (p. 61), “High Sierra Trail, July” (p. 94), “Lace Curtains” (p. 98), “The Apple Tree Opens Its Fists” (p. 100), “The Ancient Plum” (p. 101). Martin’s discussion of the trees and flowers around her also contrast the desert (Phoenix) from where she herself originated; she is a “transplant.” These references also compliment references to water and other natural life, such as birds.

Imagery of wings or winged creatures seems to at times also highlight her struggle to find enlightenment during a time when it feels like her wings (her freedom and hope and future) are being broken by the weight of loss. A few examples: “ . . . my weakness dragging along, like broken wings . . .” (“Elegy for My Parents,” p. 25); “Butterflies land on the scarlet poppies. /Will I even again—have wings? . . . Cover me with your huge wings, summer night” (“Seventh Elegy,” p. 45); “With the given wind, birds coast, wings open” (“Twelfth Elegy,” p. 50), “oh, let my wings lower me into a nest of light” (“That Other Life,” p. 102). A few other poems that reference wings or winged creatures include “Solitude” (p. 62), “Two Butterflies” (p. 63), and “Cosmos,” (p. 84)

Other motifs:

opening
“ . . . if we’d open our arms” (“Come June,” p. 24), “ . . . I feel the darkness/rush towards me, and I open my arms” (“Under the Walnut Tree,” p. 88)
holding/being held (find poems)
empty/full

Literary Devices

Lynn Martin makes use of literary devices, such as personification, imagery, allusion, and metaphor, throughout her poetry.

In her poems, Martin often gives human-like qualities to natural life; for example, “The air proclaimed/its own buoyancy . . .” (“A Guest of Fishes,” p. 22) and “The whiteness of the plum blossoms cracks a smile” (“Fasting,” p. 61) and “ . . . Rain invites you . . . Rain’s gesture is ample and/innocent. It sings for itself . . .” (“Entering Rain,” p. 75). Martin creates mental images using concrete sensory details in poems, like “Four Snows, I. December Elegy” (p. 33): “Birds assemble to ornament/the trees, replacing apples. And I suddenly realize/something—feminine—about the sweep of nut trees/over the crest of a hill, their arc of ecstacy. It’s/Christmas Eve. I learn again who I am, alter of heart/to be left empty, which simply is, the stubble-yellow,/then, hundreds of white geese illuminate a green field.” The poem, “The Blue Hyacinth” (pp. 67 – 71), particularly, makes use of allusions, including modern painter, Matisse (and his bold blues), Odysseus and Penelope (The Odyssey—the heroic journey), Amma Syncletica (a “desert mother” of the Eastern Orthadox Church), and Thoreau (and civil disobedience). Another examples of the use of allusion can be seen in the poem, “Tuscany” (p. 87) , which includes references to Dionysius (Neoplatonic Christian Philosopher) and Van Gogh’s sunflower and iris paintings.Much of Martin’s metaphor use actually comes in the form of similes; for example, “ . . . to leave everything grey—like flattened hubcabs . . .” (“Early Elegy,” p. 39) and “ . . . my weaknesses dragging along, like broken wings,/my future like a mouth, unable to speak to the dead . . .” (“Elegy for My Parents,” p. 25) and “Cold hangs like stars do . . .” (“I. December Elegy,” p. 33). However, she also makes use of metaphor; for example, the last stanza in the poem, “Intimacy” (p. 79): “I am the pitcher which pours you . . . I am the window . . . I am the branch . . . I am the wood . . .”


Study Questions
1. What role does color play in Martin's poetry?

2. Martin is known as the poet of the elegy. What do elegies have to teach us? Do they do more than express sorrow?

3. What's the significance of the title/title poem? How does that guide our understanding of the book as a whole?

4. How do (or do) the original elegies ("Where the Yellow Field Widened: Elegies for a Lost Child") fit with the book as a whole?

5. Consider the line in "Tenth Elegy": "I understand the crimson leaf and plum swing on the same tree." How does this reveal the poem's (and book's?) theme?

6. In the “Ash Wednesday” section of the poem “Lenten Sequence,” Martin uses the refrain, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,” a line from Genesis 3:19. What other significance does this line have, within the poem and beyond it?

7. In “Prayer,” Martin writes, “I wish you doubt enough to keep you/ human, doubt enough to keep you clear.” How does she relate doubt and uncertainty to faith?

8. “Cosmos” compares the flight of a bird to the migration of souls. In describing life and death, how does the book’s use of natural images enhance our understanding?

9. “Lace Curtains,” like many of the book’s poems, uses some breathtaking metaphors. How is lace used in this particular poem?

10. The book’s last poem, “The Wisteria,” includes the poet’s wish for the style of her own death in its final stanza. What does this wish have to say about a collection of often dark poems?

11. “Eleventh Elegy” asks “Is it possible/ to love a love not from need?” In other words, can we do so both willingly and selflessly?

Weathered Pages Study Questions

Weathered Pages study questions

1. What does Terry Martin see as the strength of the Poetry Pole?

2. What does Dan Peters mean by “The pole is the needle on the record”?

3. How does the Poetry Pole serve as an anecdote to the Poetry Business?

4. How do the images of the puzzle in “One Hundred Steps Form Shore” add to the poem?

5. In Jim Halen’s poems, what are the different possible meanings of the stones?

Weathered Pages Broadside, Corinne

Weathered Pages, Part Two

Weathered Pages is an anthology of work that was gathered from The Pole. While reading this wide variety of work it is clear to see that this pole represents so many things for so many people, beginnings, ends, middles, and so much more for so many people. This pole was the part of a vision that has the potential to capture each individual that comes within reach. Weathered Pages begins with three essays done by Terry Martin, Dan Peters, and Rob Prout, all editors of the book. These essays lead into the poems very nicely in that it provides the reader with a picture of what the pole means to these individuals.

Terry Martin says that “The Poetry Pole is a living reminder that I’m not alone”, this I think is one of the keys to the theme or big idea of Weathered Pages. This anthology shows connectivity between readers, and writers of poetry, that this pole has connected them all. You can see the underlying connection that this pole has brought lives together that may not have entwined without The Pole.

A photo essay created by Rob Prout shows a photo of the keeper of the pole intently looking at the creations that have been left on the pole. When you look at the picture in the bush behind Jim you can see words of a poem subtly in the background. Below you can see writing that was from The Pole, this shows the underlying connection that The Pole has brought all these people together sometimes more subtly than other times.

To put your finger on just one symbol in this anthology is quite hard to do. Many of these poems are written by a poet who has already experienced it, yet as readers we are looking for the same experience. These poems are a collection of what we want to find within ourselves. Many symbols spread throughout these poems represent the stages of life, how we grow as individuals and how our lives begin and end. These symbols can include nature, weather (storms, sunshine, cold/hot), animals, insects such as wasps or bees, plants, and material objects, such as clothing. Many of the ones mentioned above are used throughout this book, in different forms. In the poem, “The Next Story,” by L. Martin (pg. 200), the poet uses nature as a way change. In conclusion, these poets in this anthology use objects that symbolize their love for something, or something they love.

Biographies:
Jim Bodeen
Jim Bodeen is a literature and writing teacher of Latino students at Davis High School in Yakima, Washington, the publisher and editor of Blue Begonia Press, and the author of several books of poetry including Whole Houses Shaking, Impulses to Love (poems set in North Dakota, Chile and Vietnam), and most recently, This House: A Poem in Seven Books. His plan with This House was to write a single poem about a single morning spent in his garden, listening to "In This House, On This Morning" by the Wynton Marsalis Septet. The poem, an epic narrative, is based on dreams, interactions with his wife, his children, his students, his friends–- but it evolved into a book that took ten months to write.
Jim, who writes in both English and Spanish, edited the book, With My Hands Full, a bilingual anthology of transformational poems by thirty-five young Latino writers. These pieces are witness to loss, migration and arrival. They explore border crossings that are geographical, political and personal. Jim calls these writers abrecaminos–-those who make a way where there is no way.
Jim received a BA in Education and a BA in History, plus a Masters in English from Central Washington University and a Master of Religious Education from Seattle University. As part of the Lincoln County School District Goals 2000 grant, Jim taught a workshop yesterday at Waldport High School.
Bodeen says of his work, "Being called to poetry is being called to listen. It is listening to the deepest sounds. The principles are basic–-extreme sobriety, practicality and courage."
Jim Bodeen and his wife Karen, his book designer and typesetter, have devoted their lives to poetry and poets.

Terry Martin
ELLENSBURG, Wash.-- "Probably my greatest strengths as a teacher are my commitment to lifelong learning, my willingness to try new things and the spirit with which I approach the work." So says Dr. Terry Martin, Central Washington University English professor.
For those reasons along with her "extraordinary dedication to teaching, commitment to students and innovative teaching methods," Martin has been named the 2003 Washington state Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).
She was recognized today (Thursday, Nov. 13) during an awards luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and at a Congressional reception on Capitol Hill. With 25 years' teaching experience, Martin, 46, has been in education for more than half of her life. After graduating from Western Washington University in 1979, she taught in Bellevue and La Center schools. She joined the Central faculty in 1986, after earning her Ph.D. in English education from the University of Oregon. Martin was named the university's Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2000 and received the CWU Presidential Award for Leadership in 2002.
In nominating her for the Professor of the Year award, Central President Jerilyn S. McIntyre, who called Martin the "consummate teacher-scholar-mentor," noted, "She has been a leader in moving our institution from one in which lecture is the primary pedagogical technique to one in which students, working cooperatively and in authentic settings, discover their own knowledge and understanding of important topics."
CWU English faculty colleague Paulus Pimomo echoes those sentiments, labeling Martin, "the teacher's teacher."
"Like many of us in the profession, Dr. Martin is familiar with and works hard to meet the demands of the fast evolving curricula and student body," Pimomo pointed out. "But unlike most of us, she has gone on to become a leader in meeting those demands."
Current and former students also are quick to credit Martin as an exemplary teacher and mentor.
"Dr. Martin has an innate ability to motivate students," Jessica Carter, a 1995 CWU graduate, says. "She causes students to dig deeper, think at higher levels, reach into depths of creativity they didn't know existed, and produce work at a quality they didn't know they were capable of. I have heard students say more than once, 'I want to be Dr. Martin,' and there is no hint of jest in that statement."
Martin says she enjoys working at Central because "teaching is the very heart of its mission. CWU offers me the opportunity to teach an interesting mix of general education, major and graduate classes. I enjoy the challenges inherent in attempting to address the diverse interests, needs and abilities of a wide range of students."
Patsy Callaghan, CWU English department chair, says: "I am not aware of another professor whose student evaluation results can compare with Dr. Martin's, yet her standards and expectations are some of the most challenging in the department, contradicting a general assumption that asking students to work hard will often elicit critical comments and negative responses."
About eight years ago, Martin, a native of Spokane who now lives in Yakima, began branching out from publishing scholarly and academic articles to also writing personal essays and poems. During the past several years, her creative writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Blue Begonia Press, as part of its Working Signs Series, published her first book of poetry, "Wishboats," in 2000.
Now, she says her creative writing has become a vital part of her teaching.
"I'm a learner; I try things that scare me," Martin points out. "Taking these risks helps me remember there's dignity in being a beginner."
That risk-taking spirit has also helped make her the very best Washington state has to offer its students in the collegiate classroom.

Rob Prout
Rob Prout teaches high school photography courses at Davis High School in Yakima, Washington. His personal work concerns intimate details of the natural and man made environment. His work is represented in private and corporate collections. An award-winning photographer, his combined vision is helping to shape the press through book design, and digital imaging as well as photography. Prout is re-inventing the poetry broadside with photography in the way he combines image and text.
Prout loves the collaborative process and what it contributes to original work.

Lynn Martin May 30th

From Wauna--Lynn Martin



Parker Room, Higher Education Center, YVCC
Reading Begin at 730

“Arising from a sequence of great losses, Lynn
Martin’s poems walk straight into the deepest sorrow. There, face to face with the most terrifying state of not knowing, they expand outward to the farthest rim of
affirmation—where the blue bowl holds everything.”
—Noelle Oxenhandler, Essayist, The New Yorker

Weathered Pages Reading

Parker Room, Higher Education Center,

Free and open to the public

Featuring YVCC Students and Staff

From Yakima—May 15th: Editors, Weathered Pages Anthology Jim Bodeen, Terry Martin, and Rob Prout.

A six-foot cedar post, the word POETRY carved on both the east and west sides, planted in a garden on a street corner in Yakima, pushpins stuck in the wood. For ten years, hundreds of people have pinned thousands of poems to the Poetry Pole at Blue Begonia Press. After time in the weather, the pages have been taken down and saved—until now. Poems collected here represent a decade of testimony pinned and flying from a cedar post planted in a garden. They may trigger what you're looking for in your own life.

There is room on the Poetry Pole for everybody

Skillman and Potts Broadsides by Michelle Gann

Scenes from Judith Skillman's Reading

 

Weathered Pages Cliffnotes

Weathered Pages is anthology of work that was brought to individuals through a truly unique and extraordinary means—the pole. “A six-foot cedar post, the word POETRY carved on both the east and west sides, planted in a garden on a street corner in Yakima, Washington, pushpins stuck in the wood. For ten years, hundreds of people have pinned thousands of poems to the Poetry Pole at Blue Begonia Press. Weathered Pages is a sampling of the work of those who have used the Poetry Pole as a source of inspiration.”

Weathered Pages has a wide variety of themes and big ideas. Many poems seem to show that love and friendship are an important part of life, for example "Agnes & Pat," "Merry Christmas," and "This Place." Other poems showed a sense of anger and betrayal, for example "The Democratic Way," "Chicken Fricassee," and "Please Post." The ideas these poets expressed came from a large variety like religion, death, expressing your self and feelings to the simple pleasures in life. Some examples would be "A Prayer for Your Cat Scan," "Brothers and Sisters," and "Night Shift." Some poems like "In the Third Drawer of My Dresser" or "Women Gather" aren't as deep into feelings like some of the others mentioned. This collection of poems from all sort of poets gives you a little taste of all types of writing to enjoy.

1. Would you suggest a method to read all the poems of this book?
2. Would you suggest reading the “Notes on contributors” prior to before reading their poetry?
3. There seem to be several different ways these poems could have been categorized how did you decide to use this approach?
4. How did poets who do not live in the Valley submit poems to the pole?
5. Do you consider all of the pieces poetry and –there are no prose pieces?
6. What made you decide to publish the poems from the poetry pole, was it part of a vision that started with the creation of the poetry pole or a different time?
7. In choosing the poems there where originally over 3000 poems how were you able to limit yourself to choosing the few that you did?
8. Where there any poems that looking back that you wish were included?
9. With the pole being part of a vision or a calling to poetry, where do you see this leading you, is your vision complete with this anthology?

Biographies:

Jim Bodeen

Jim Bodeen is a literature and writing teacher of Latino students at Davis High School in Yakima, Washington, the publisher and editor of Blue Begonia Press, and the author of several books of poetry including Whole Houses Shaking, Impulses to Love (poems set in North Dakota, Chile and Vietnam), and most recently, This House: A Poem in Seven Books. His plan with This House was to write a single poem about a single morning spent in his garden, listening to "In This House, On This Morning" by the Wynton Marsalis Septet. The poem, an epic narrative, is based on dreams, interactions with his wife, his children, his students, his friends–- but it evolved into a book that took ten months to write.

Jim, who writes in both English and Spanish, edited the book, With My Hands Full, a bilingual anthology of transformational poems by thirty-five young Latino writers. These pieces are witness to loss, migration and arrival. They explore border crossings that are geographical, political and personal. Jim calls these writers abrecaminos–-those who make a way where there is no way.

Jim received a BA in Education and a BA in History, plus a Masters in English from Central Washington University and a Master of Religious Education from Seattle University. As part of the Lincoln County School District Goals 2000 grant, Jim taught a workshop yesterday at Waldport High School.

Bodeen says of his work, "Being called to poetry is being called to listen. It is listening to the deepest sounds. The principles are basic–-extreme sobriety, practicality and courage."

Jim Bodeen and his wife Karen, his book designer and typesetter, have devoted their lives to poetry and poets.

Terry Martin

ELLENSBURG, Wash.-- "Probably my greatest strengths as a teacher are my commitment to lifelong learning, my willingness to try new things and the spirit with which I approach the work." So says Dr. Terry Martin, Central Washington University English professor.

For those reasons along with her "extraordinary dedication to teaching, commitment to students and innovative teaching methods," Martin has been named the 2003 Washington state Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

She was recognized today (Thursday, Nov. 13) during an awards luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and at a Congressional reception on Capitol Hill. With 25 years' teaching experience, Martin, 46, has been in education for more than half of her life. After graduating from Western Washington University in 1979, she taught in Bellevue and La Center schools. She joined the Central faculty in 1986, after earning her Ph.D. in English education from the University of Oregon. Martin was named the university's Distinguished Teaching Professor in 2000 and received the CWU Presidential Award for Leadership in 2002.

In nominating her for the Professor of the Year award, Central President Jerilyn S. McIntyre, who called Martin the "consummate teacher-scholar-mentor," noted, "She has been a leader in moving our institution from one in which lecture is the primary pedagogical technique to one in which students, working cooperatively and in authentic settings, discover their own knowledge and understanding of important topics."

CWU English faculty colleague Paulus Pimomo echoes those sentiments, labeling Martin, "the teacher's teacher."

"Like many of us in the profession, Dr. Martin is familiar with and works hard to meet the demands of the fast evolving curricula and student body," Pimomo pointed out. "But unlike most of us, she has gone on to become a leader in meeting those demands."

Current and former students also are quick to credit Martin as an exemplary teacher and mentor.

"Dr. Martin has an innate ability to motivate students," Jessica Carter, a 1995 CWU graduate, says. "She causes students to dig deeper, think at higher levels, reach into depths of creativity they didn't know existed, and produce work at a quality they didn't know they were capable of. I have heard students say more than once, 'I want to be Dr. Martin,' and there is no hint of jest in that statement."

Martin says she enjoys working at Central because "teaching is the very heart of its mission. CWU offers me the opportunity to teach an interesting mix of general education, major and graduate classes. I enjoy the challenges inherent in attempting to address the diverse interests, needs and abilities of a wide range of students."

Patsy Callaghan, CWU English department chair, says: "I am not aware of another professor whose student evaluation results can compare with Dr. Martin's, yet her standards and expectations are some of the most challenging in the department, contradicting a general assumption that asking students to work hard will often elicit critical comments and negative responses."

About eight years ago, Martin, a native of Spokane who now lives in Yakima, began branching out from publishing scholarly and academic articles to also writing personal essays and poems. During the past several years, her creative writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Blue Begonia Press, as part of its Working Signs Series, published her first book of poetry, "Wishboats," in 2000.

Now, she says her creative writing has become a vital part of her teaching.

"I'm a learner; I try things that scare me," Martin points out. "Taking these risks helps me remember there's dignity in being a beginner."

That risk-taking spirit has also helped make her the very best Washington state has to offer its students in the collegiate classroom.

Rob Prout

Rob Prout teaches high school photography courses at Davis High School in Yakima, Washington. His personal work concerns intimate details of the natural and man made environment. His work is represented in private and corporate collections. An award-winning photographer, his combined vision is helping to shape the press through book design, and digital imaging as well as photography. Prout is re-inventing the poetry broadside with photography in the way he combines image and text.

Prout loves the collaborative process and what it contributes to original work.

Are Poetry Readings a Good Idea?

From the Academy of American Poets

Senryu and Haibun

For the poetry pole try:

Senryu

and

Haibun

Skillman Broadside from Jeff

Study Questions for Skillman

Study Questions

General

1. Is Skillman’s poems entertaining, informative, didactic, philosophical, argumentative, or some combination of these?
2. Do the titles enhance the poems? Are they symbolic or misleading impressions of the poem?
3. Is her work difficult to read? Why?
4. Did your first impression change as you read all the way through?
5. What type of imagery does Skillman use? Figurative language?

Specific

1. Skillman uses quite a few titles that incorporate music but the poems themselves do not talk about music. Why do you think she does this? Is it the music in the words of the poem?
2. In most of Skillman’s poems she talks about birds. Do you think that in some way they influence her? Are they a symbol for something?
3. Beethoven and the Birds was one of her first books and Storm, was right after that one. Do you notice a difference in her poems between the two books?
4. Can poems be considered music? They can produce pitch and rhythm, but are they the same as say Beethoven’s music?
5. Do you think that music can be as much of an influence as a person can be? In a way music is a person if you look at it like the composer as your influence not just the music.

Skillman Broadside by Chandra Anderson

Skillman Broadside by Jennifer Hall

Bodeen thoughts on revision

added notes on revision, after listening to Judith Skillman at Dan Peters’ class, and thinking and reading Lynn Martin with Rilke during her time of great loss— and finding this page from Jane Hirshfield in Nine Gates, a book suggested by Terry Martin

“Beauty rakes its painted claws”

Lynn Martin, sHADOWmARK broadside

Poems, despite the ways they are sometimes taught, are not crossword-puzzle constructions; first drafts and many stages of revision, take place at a level closer to daydream. But daydream with an added intensity: while writing, the mind moves between consciousness and the unconscious in the effortless effort of concentration. The result, if the poet’s intensity of attention is sufficient, will be a poem that brims with its own knowledge. water trembling as if miraculously above the edge of a cup. Such a poem will be perfect in the root sense of the word: “thoroughly done.”

In the concentration of poetry, rhetoric not only reflects intention but shapes it: the clarity of the writer and the clarities of syntax, word choice, and grammar are not one-directional, but two. Making a poem is neither a wholly conscious activity nor an act of unconscious transcription—it is a way for new thinking and feeling to come into existence, a way in which disparate modes of meaning and being may join. This is why the process of revising a poem is not arbitrary tinkering, but a continued honing of the self at the deepest level. Yeats describes revision’s work in an untitled quatrain, epigraph to his 1908 Collected Poems:

The friends that have it I do wrong

when ever I remake a song,

Should know what issue is at stake:

it is myself that I remake.

--Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, p. 16

Italics mine.

Jim Bodeen