Harlem Poems

As far as the young Harlemites are concerned, this week, much better.

I think my ass just had to loosen up.

Monday was a much more positive day, for all of us. The vibe between me and the students was more positive, with a certain familiarity that I didn't expect them to grant me for another week or so. I was also surprised by how quickly I had learned their names. Desperation is a bitch...

In the beginning of class, I took them outside and had them walk around the block, writing down smells, sounds, colors, things they see. It was so cute to see them walking through this forest of concrete, past rancid trash, past 99 cent stores, past elaborate wigs in shop windows, past the ranting homeless, walking past all of this with their notebooks propped up, writing as they walked. A few of them ended up writing "Harlem" poems from the exercise.

I think we really got cool when I did my HIV poem, "Next Door Neighbor" for them. I instantaneously loosened up after I performed. My whole demeanor towards them and the situation changed. I should have done that shit in the beginning. What the hell was I thinking?
They loved the poem. One girl, a really avid writer looked at me like I grew another face and she asked me almost increduously, "you wrote that????"

I also learned the merits of having young people work in groups. I guess the classroom is like everything else: the more pieces you break it into, the easier it is to digest. The intimacy of a group as opposed to the whole class really allows some of the quieter students to open up and be more themselves. Plus, it's just easier to get them to shut the hell up.

It's really hard at first, trying to get some of them to write. While others write with a quiet exuberance, many of them do it so begrudgingly. Why are so many of our young people so anti-writing? A couple of them are even proud that they don't "know how to write." Quite a few of them said, when i was trying to get them to write something (and I'm still trying to decide if this is a cop-out or a really valid concern),

"I'm not a poet. I don't know how to write."

How do we negotiate this? How do we still regard Poet as something respected and esteemed without making the term so alienating and untouchable to younger people? The only answer I have to this overwhelming, overarching concern of theirs is:

"I'm not trying to turn you into poets, I just want you to write the poems that are already inside you."

I"m not sure if this makes sense to them, but i don't know what else to say. Either way, once they started writing, they wrote some really good shit. One of my favorites, the African student, the wonderfully intense and thoughtful one, wrote a short lyric about AIDS being the equivalent of World War III. One of the groups that I worked with decided to write a group poem about a boyfriend and a girlfriend having an argument and it turns out that the boyfriend is the AIDS virus. So it's essentially the woman talking to AIDS and AIDS talking back to her except we don't find out till the end.

Today was just a good old time. I started the session by reading them Patricia Smith's "Skinhead" and they responded really well to it. The shock value of the poem worked wonders. Talked briefly about the wonders of the persona poem. I'm learning that with this age group, the less you explain things and the more you show them, the better.

I find myself really gravitating towards quite a lot of them. I'm really starting to like these kids, more swiftly than I imagined: from the timid and tender ones to a couple of the rambunctious and bawdy ones. On opposite sides of the spectrum, they all remind me of little shards of myself when I was that age...hell, even now.

I did this fun performance excercise that I made up on the fly. I crossed my fingers and hoped it would work. I started performing my abortion poem, Crying over Spilled Milk and had one of the students call out colors while I was doing the peice. Each time she called out a color, I had to invoke the emotion that the color created in me. It was crazy. I've never done that poem like that before and I had no idea how flexible of a performer I could be if challenged. I think many of us get so used to and comfortable with doing poems the same way, once we've found the way that works.

She called out red and I started reciting the poem very angrily, she called yellow and I started skipping and reciting with a haunting, ironic brevity (considering the subject matter), she called out pink and I started reciting as if I were a girl in love, she said black and I hunched over, strengthened yet roughened my voice and made such intense eye contact with some of the students, that it made a couple of them clearly uncomfortable and self-conscious. Gray invoked a monotone that I didn't even know I possessed. The students loved it. After that, I got a few of them to volunteer, which was really fun to watch.

I think one of the biggest weaknesses about my interaction with these students is that I'm not a disciplinarian. I kinda let them do what they want. If they want to throw packs of oatmeal cinnamon cookies across the room, then that's their prerogative. I don't like this about myself, but I think that side of me will come with time. I've never been that way with younger people, I've never been firm, never been able to play the role of the babysiter.

During their break the director came in and patted me on the back. She said that the students came to her and they were very happy. Interestingly enough, the girl who came in last Wednesday and kept her arms crossed the entire time, the one went and told the director that she was disinterested in my unit, is now one of my favorites. After having a conversation about how fine Morris Chestnut is, she asked me:

"So, are you going to be here permanently or are you leaving after next week?"

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't want to tell her the truth, which is:

"It's up to you, darling, up to you."