“Auschwitz is not only behind us.”

“Auschwitz must be comprehended in the context of its historical past, be recognized when it happens in the present, and not be ruled out blindly for the future.”

Gunter Grass  “A Father’s Difficulties in Explaining Auschwitz to His Children”

“My children have their doubts. They say: You don’t believe in anything anyway. I admit to my unbelieving life, and tell them: As soon as belief gets ahead of reason you can count on the demise of both politics and literature. Examples include the belief in one God, the belief in Germany, and the belief in true Socialism.”

Gunter Grass “Literature and Politics”

I have been reading a lot about the early part of the 20th century in Germany and the events and effects of what occurred then and there.

W. H. Sebald “The Emmegrants”, Ursula Hegi “Stones from the River”, Gunter Grass “The Tin Drum”, Roberto Belano “2666″, and a graphic novel “Berlin”, as well as many works by Kafka have been giving me some understanding of the enmeshing social and cultural atmosphere that produced the horror that was Auschwitz and the whole nightmare of the Holocaust and the insuing costs that left scars on the world.

Fear is the common thread that weaves this tapestry of doom. Fear disseminated by people who want to control the destiny of a nation and use it to hypnotize people and by degrees convince them to accept inhumanity as the only appropriate measure to protect their way of life.

Every time Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck speaks about what we should fear and why we must act on those fears. I am thankful that we have for the moment pushed them to side to focus on some of the pressing issues that face us as a nation. When they use the examples of Hitler and the Third Reich to paint the current political situation in blackest most fearful terms, they are actually using the methodology of the Nazi’s. I think we should fear unreasonable, unsubstantiated  fear and single minded devotion to blind faith in anything. Let’s think things through and look for evidence. Let’s keep our eyes and minds open to posibilities and continue to fill the air with our dreams for a world full of people who can discuss and celebrate differences without the shadow of unreasonable fear. Then Auswitz will be behind us, as well as Rawanda, and Vietnam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan and torture for freedom’s sake.

We do have a long way to go before we are far enough ahead of this thing that it can’t creep up and bite us in the ass again. Maybe we need better rearview mirrors, or maybe take turns looking out, but we have to know what the thing looks like in order to avoid it. When we are looking for a high-stepping, swastika resplendant mob it might sneak up on us in the form of some nice people concerned about morals, or anti-terrorist legislation to keep us safe. Your favorite relatives and best friends could be involved. That is how it gets in when we are afraid to disagree with nice people about their bad ideas and unreasonable fears. Fear is the monster that closes the mind to humanity: careful listening, respectful conversation, and diligent open-minded inquiry are the weapons that will slay it. These are the things that keep us  from reliving the horror of Auschwitz.

Why I Write Poetry/Getting Inside Another Cocoon

“I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven’t.

“I don’t think of fame or posterity (as Keats so grandly and genuinely did), nor do I care about clarifying experiences for anyone or bettering (other than accidentally) anyone’s state or social relation, nor am I for any particular technical development in the American language simply because I find it necessary. What is happening to me, allowing for lies and exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems. I don’t think my experiences are clarified or made beautiful for myself or anyone else, they are just there in whatever form I can find them. What is clear to me in my work is probably obscure to others, and vice versa. My formal ‘stance’ is found at the crossroads where what I know and can’t get meets what is left of that I know and can bear without hatred. I dislike a great deal of contemporary poetry—all of the past you read is usually quite great—but it is a useful thorn to have in one’s side.

“It may be that poetry makes life’s nebulous events tangible to me and restores their detail; or conversely, that poetry brings forth the intangible quality of incidents which are all too concrete and circumstantial. Or each on specific occasions, or both all the time.” —Frank O’Hara

I found this here, and thought it was pretty close to the way I feel about poetry, only I am not as driven to it as Frank O’Hara, and I find more good in contemporary poetry (Though much of it alludes me) and the past is alright some of it inspirational, but much of it a little too dramatic and not enough momentary for my taste.

I feel like poetry should represent a way of feeling and perceiving in a moment as we all live life moment to moment each in our own little cocoon of senses and thoughts. Poems are an attempt to reach out like a little tube that can slide into other cocoons and communicate on more intimate level. Anyway parts of  O’Hara’s reasons for writing and the reasons he disavows line up with my reasoning pretty well. I am not out to make a grand statement or be famous, and I think that any poet who is is really searching too hard for disappointment. There are many easier and quicker ways to fame and glory. Poetry to me is one moment explained well from my point of view in a way that might connect to someone else enough to continue a real conversation. When I read poetry I find that much of it does not speak to me, but when I find a poet that speaks to me, it is like that person is speaking to the inside of me, breaking into my cocoon and whispering to my deepest self.

Summer Teaching and a Great Book

Summer Teaching

I have started full time at my summer job of keeping my little friends busy and safe. All I have to do is pay attention and go with their flow, and all is well. No paper work just being there for children and providing what they need. They have decided that Dr. Suess is great and have me reading the story of the pale green pants with no one inside them every day. We also have a great box project going, where each has their own special box and I provide materials for them to decorate it. There is one that has his moments, but I am definitely reaching him already after just one week so I feel pretty solid. So many calm moments of children just being and doing what is natural to them — learning about their world. Why do teachers think we have to interfere so much in children’s lives? Curriculum, I don’t need no stinking curriculum. I just need to pay attention and have a few ideas and some interesting materials. The children do the rest.

Short and Vague Review: 2666 by Roberto Bolano

I just finished a facinating novel by Roberto Bolano translated from Spanish, called “2666.” It is about so much that I could not tell you what it is about. It is written in the form of 5 novelas with vague connections to each other, some stronger than others. In the end I got the feeling that somewhere out in the future it all makes more sense, or maybe not. It is not very important. Like any good novel, for me, it was living a life in another skin, or experiencing the world from a slightly shifted dimension. I come back a little changed with a fuller understanding of life as a human being. Also I feel a little disoriented, like I only got some of what he was saying and maybe some of what he said by accident. I think the really good writers are not able to know all the levels contained in their work. There are shadows and reflections that are cast that they are not able to see. There are so many combinations of characters and symbols that interact with the reader that they cannot know what chimeras will hatch. I always come out of novels like this as if I have gone to a foreign country and my mind has not yet assimilated all of the strangeness and time of a different land. That is how I know it was a well written piece. It shifts my perspective and I see more of the human experience. The scope of what I have read has to linger because I am unable to process the whole experience on a conscious level. I am sure that bits of this novel will resurface in poems and dreams for a long while to come.

A Poem on a Magazine Headline And 2 Preschool Classroom Notes

Hot Vampires in Love

The TV Guide shouted

above the conveyor

carrying my groceries

to the supermarket checker.

Suddenly I missed

Warren Zevon.

Only he could write this song.

Note #1:  On Teasing

I had a large group of very active boys for the last two years. There has been a lot of teasing and a lot of lost tempers. The thing I finally hit upon with them was to talk with the 5 boys who were doing most of the teasing (They also were the ones most sensitive to it of course). Together we came to a pretty good definition of teasing and a signal I or other children could do to alert the teaser to his behavior. We decided on simply saying the word “Teasing” with our “no thank you” sign which is sign language for “no”. Within 3 weeks the worst offenders had reduced their behavior by 3/4 and we had very few temper outburst. I did most of the alerting, and I did it very matter-of-factly with no judgment, or as little as I could manage. One boy who was the worst offender almost completely stopped teasing behavior within 2 weeks of the start of our experiment.It so important to give children immediate feedback (especially with children under 5) without interrupting their flow or making them feel badly.

Note #2: On Exploring Emotions and Feelings

Emotion coaching is one of the only effective tools that a preschool teacher has to use when teaching children how to successfully integrate into a group and learn social skills. I think that teachers should be thoroughly trained to be sensitive, and use this in mostly one on one situations. Why would we as educators talk about water, sand, or kangaroos and not about feelings? We should explore feelings as freely as we explore butterflies or mud puddles. That way they may be less scary and more easy to manage.
Now if a child starts to disclose abuse or shows signs of emotional distress, of course you cut the activity short and check on the child as well as talking with the parent to report what happened and see if you can give more support to the child around whatever issues came up. In my experience parents often are relieved to have a sensitive teacher who is willing to give extra support to a child who is experiencing a crisis as long as you support the parent as well.

I’ve Been Thinking About Recovery and Discovery

I have been reading May Sarton’s journal called Recovery which is initially about recovering from the loss of her life partner due to onset of senelity and finally recovery from a radical mastectomy.  I have not had to face any such life altering events in the last few years, and yet her ideas on finding meaning in the middle of life when you are lost helped put some perspective on my life. I have been feeling lost the last few years and actually most of my life.

In the journal, she tells of all the people who come to visit during the year, about all of the connections she has made in her life, and the people that reach out to her in letters. She writes about the difficulties of balancing the need to have space to create with the need to have connections with the world. My life is crowded with the world of work that I find overwhelming and family which has many positive aspects, but leaves me with just little slivers of time to be, to contemplate, to wonder, to study, to read, to absorb ideas and make sense of of them. This is what being a writer is all about. It is what makes me feel whole, and it is what I get to do the least of.

It does not help that I have been battling little illnesses all winter. I have had to use my low reserves of energy just to get through long dark days. But now I feel the light coming back. I am getting out in the world and moving and ideas are growing.

On Thursday I took some time to go to a recycled hardware store, something I used to do all the time for inspiration. I found some large bolts and nuts that I brought back to my class just to see how the children would use them. Just this process opened up other possibilities. How can we use the old muddy clay left over from last year. The bolts are heavy and cold and hard. What other materials with different properties can I find with which the children can experience different properties. Can we use clay to paint with? What about sand or coffee grounds? All of this is more valid than any of the other work on pre-academics and fine motor skills. I want to open their minds to the world and with preschoolers the world comes through what they feel and experience concretely. Maybe we will build stick houses and cover them with the muddy clay and coffee grounds. Maybe carving ice with colored salt water and eye droppers. What will inspire the connections in their brains to open up to the world and ask questions? Because questions are essence of true learning, questions that lead to more questions and further experiments. There is no need to make the answers hard and fill in blanks. The world should be full of wondering and open ends. They will have a life time to build frameworks of facts around the airy space of wonder. Let them discover the questions first and design their own structures to organize what they find.