Listening to Gary Whitehead (Memo 3b)

I typed this up while attending the event and recorded some of the poems so I could listen again. Please enjoy reading about my experience and maybe, hopefully, this will provide some motivation for others to attend poetry readings like this.

Gary Whitehead

Before the event:

The room had more adults than students, as I expected. It’s a shame that not many really want to listen to poetry, when they listen to it all the time. I see people on campus with headphones jammed in their ears and people sitting on the library stairs strumming guitar strings. The only people I saw my age were people whom I knew were English majors. In fact, I have had to meet each of them at least once.

I wonder… Most English teachers I had in high school were fairly young, the oldest being around early forties. Could it be, that poetry and teaching poetry feels age restricted? Does poetry have some sort of stigma that gives people the impression that it is too refined for them, too old for them to teach? Is poetry too old now?

But I am here, in the room ready to listen to a modern poet. So, I do not think that poetry is too old. So what is it about poetry that deters younger audiences, those listening and those teaching the subject? 

3 minutes before the event starts:

The room is pretty full now: REALLY full. I may have to move my coffee off the seat next to me. This is actually kind of nice. But speaking of coffee… it’s not all that good. : ( 

7:35pm

Introductions.

Shoreline submissions: Now until February 1, 2014… Maybe I could search through an older edition.

Whitehead claims that the last poetry reading he did was 5 years ago. 

First Poem:
"Sisyphus" Push a stone uphill. His dad was a high school teacher for 28 years!

Some lines that stood out to me:

“Boulder like a briefcase on a kitchen floor.”

“Life of work.”

“Falling and gathering up.”

“Even this…”

“Withering and Giving in.”

                “Drop and let go.”

“One Day in July” Wrote while in isolation.

                “Die here for all that moves me.”

                “Adam still ribbed.”

                “Another seven days of silence.”

                “No wonder God created Eve.”

“Glossary of Chickens”  A friend of his and he were raising chickens and he gave him a literal glossary of chicken and poultry terms.

                “Gleaning, gizzard, grit”

                “Bobbling”

                “Wriggling like an old woman swallowing a pill”

                “By naming we can understand”

Working as a high school teacher: he gains a lot of inspiration from his work and his students. Wrote a sonnet on the board about an owl pellet (Sonnet); they were cheering him on. As he sat down to polish the poem he claims that it “Went on its own digestion”. I thought this was a nice little pun.

“Owl Pellet I Show My Students”

                “Gift on a park road”

                “Nocturnal Pleasure”

                “My tender moles”

“Fisherman at Sea”

                “Same question asked another way”

                “I have been at sea as well”

“Sealegged”

“Vessel is dragged back onto land”

“Of fools there are many”

Some Q/A:

·         One woman noted that he puts animals in a lot of his poems and asked if it was intentional.

o   He responded that he did not intend it, he was just fascinated by the world around him: an animal lover. Otherwise, it was not something he noticed before.

·         Was there a way or method to how he arranged the poems in his book?

o   No, they are miscellaneously written and then put together. Sometimes he spreads them out on the floor or table and look for poems that seem to have some sort of pattern and prays for luck. Glossary of Chickens was assembled rather quickly due to a time constraint and because he “didn’t want to wait too long and have them to forget about me”.

·         Has he ever written a poem that turned into a story?

o   Whitehead claims that he has turned stories into poems but never the other way around. He prefers poems because they are shorter. However, he does have some essays and about ten short stories.

·         He has written a blog while he was writing poetry in Oregon. Many of the poems are still up: “Fronting the Essentials” (http://garyjwhitehead.blogspot.com/). “Destination: a remote cabin in the backwoods of southwestern Oregon, deep in the mountains and not far from the famous Rogue River. My lodgings there would be meager though not quite as primitive as Henry David Thoreau's at Walden.”

·         Experience with teaching writing in a classroom?

o   Creative writing was only one course. “Kids would get turned on into writing then that was it.” He has to propose other classes to the school board until they offered a 4 year creative writing course. He runs his high school and college writing workshops the same way. Always gives a lot of writing prompts then allows them free reign. “They rise to the challenge; and I enjoy it”. However, this was an affluent district. Would it be the same experience if it were an urban school maybe?

·         Do the students come back and tell him about their new experiences?

o   Yes, yes they do. He sometimes friends his graduates on Facebook, afterwards, to keep in touch.

·         What is his favorite poem?

o   “Tough one”, he says. “Sleeping with my dog” poem is probably his favorite because “I am obsessed with my dog”.

Recommends Poet’s Market to advertise his poems “before the realm of the internet” (http://www.writersdigestshop.com/poets-market).

When I asked him about teaching poetry in classrooms and his own experiences, he mentioned that most of the poetry he taught was during his creative writing classes. As one of my hypotheses confirmed, some of his more advanced classes lack an opportunity to teach poetry in the class, as they do not fit into the curriculum.

So, I asked what he feel could allow him to teach poetry anyway, as a way to reinforce the topic at hand while still being within the curriculum. He said that a good approach would be to find a poem that was maybe inspired by the text and use that as an introduction to the text or a way to reinforce a theme.

He also teaches a poetry class online where students from AROUND THE WORLD can take the course.

Overall, this was a wonderful experience and I was very glad to listen and meet Gary Whitehead. Please check out his blog (linked above) and check out some of his works.