Roc and the Flying Chaucers, Part Two

Geoffrey Chaucer may be approaching his 670^th birthday, but I think at this point in the semester the dude’s anything but ancient history to the students of English 195.

It’s a fact I don’t take lightly.

While studying The Canterbury Tales in February, I had them use Chaucer’s poetic devices in order to create a character study of someone at the college.  After 35 minutes of letting them develop their sketches, I asked them to put their pens down.  

“Let’s read some of them out loud,” I encouraged. 

Spencer volunteered to read his. 

“With brown curled hair to music and capture art

And old food stains on one third of his shirt

He, the unwashed single dwelling freshman

Frequented Commons, the College’s Chaplain —

The church under the wing of Mother Duck,

X-box, Starcraft, and not giving a fuck.

Lacking the life skills to see that he must

Brush his teeth . . . and throw out that pizza box.

Wearing pajama pants in class each day,

And a shirt showing Silent Bob and Jay.

His beard hair like the backside of a yak

Eating fried food until his heart attack,

And yet when confronted, he gave a hymn,

How he was the only one who wasn’t dim.”

Everybody began to laugh, knowing who this Everyman was in their own circle of influence.  “Who else wants to read theirs?” I encouraged.

Lily raised her hand.

“His specialty was the Great Orient

and he had been to China many times been sent

He paced vigorously in lecture, wiping his brow

Repeating the right way to pronounce kow-tow —

Not to mention the differences between

The Boxers, Taipings, and the Dowager Queen

His hands shook with fervour and his words were stuttered —

It's just that China made his heart a-flutter

He was crazy about primary sources

About the Tang court with their dancing horses.

To him, the mail room box numbers were historic dates,

And Ming dynasty feminisms were nothing but great.”

One by one, each of the students volunteered to read their characters.  Their sketches of professors and fellow students (including themselves) were at turns funny and poignant, angry, wry and ironic.  I collected them at the end of the hour, and the following weekend I compiled them in an extended narrative poem, which I then sent back to each one of them.

Through the course of the subsequent weeks, we revisited the poem a number of times with thoughts of other issues it raised, such as the relationship between social order and the order in which characters were introduced.  The students could readily identify their characters by ‘estates’. 

“There are definitely ‘estates’ on campus,” Katie replied.  “Some of whom you never see away from their Wii. The LARPs, BSFFA, Sigma Chi, TKE, The Residents of Peet . . . not to mention all the professors, who probably don’t hang together all that much . . . ”

“What about the narrative situation?” I added. “ . . . Chaucer’s ‘pilgrims’ would never have been on a pilgrimage together.  Many of the so called estates on campus will never be together either.  What sort of occasion could realistically bring them together?  A convocation?” 

“Drinking.” Someone said wryly. “Drinking brings everyone together on the weekends.”

“How about Spring Day?” someone else said thoughtfully, “after all, the Canterbury Tales begin in April.  . .”

This is how “The Beloit Tales” came into being.  It’s also the way that I hope the students my survey literature course made the leap from an academic knowledge of a poet and his poetic method to an embodied knowledge of them. 

When the parody edition of the college’s weekly newspaper comes out tomorrow, in it will be an extraordinarily funny poem authored by Roc and the Flying Chaucers that starts something like this . . .

When that April with his showers soote

The frozen tundra of March, pierced to the root,

And bathed was every vein in such liquor

As could be found at a major discounter,

Then longed Beloiters of all sorts and kinds

To be reacquainted with the weak sunshine,

And thus they poured from every office and hall

Through the doors of 840, and Morse Ingersoll

From Godfrey, Middle College, and 815,

Sigma Chi and every place in-between.

North across campus, they each made their way,

To partake in the ritual known as Spring Day. . .

As within Chaucer’s opus, the poem provides a delightful cross-section of the cast of characters making up the little civilization of a 21st century midwestern college campus, revealing them in all their humanity, replite with follies and idiosyncrasies.  And like Chaucer, each poet proved to possess the eye of the seasoned traveler, for whom nothing human was ever strange, but ever a consummate delight.

It's been famously said that no one should ever teach a new class for the first time, and at this point in the semester, I am increasingly aware of how the course has failed to serve the students as fully as it could.  Too much time spent on some texts and historical periods, too little time spent on others. . . not enough prose, and drama . . . too much levity.  But as my 'notes to self' on how I will and won't be teaching the course in the future aggrandize in their neat little piles, I feel in some way, just through the course of traveling together toward Canterbury we have achieved something that looks, feels like a teaching outcome every literature professor should be aiming for. 

(Part One)

Roc and the Flying Chaucers, Part One

When I was asked to teach British Literary Traditions — a survey course designed to cover major periods between 1400 and the present in 15 weeks — I honestly had a fair amount of anxiety about how to best teach materials from the Middle Ages and the Anglo-Saxon period to young post-moderns for whom tradition is not a litmus test of education.  How do we make works such as The Canterbury Tales relevant in the 21^st century other than as a subject of historically situated literary inquiry? 

Some professors of literature would say it is enough to make Chaucer’s masterpiece the subject of a historically situated literary inquiry . . . indeed, that’s the point of teaching in our discipline.  To teach students how to use the analytical lenses that they need to employ to trade of literary study so to speak — close reading, poetic and historical explication, exegesis. 

Without a doubt, these skill outcomes are integral to any successful undergraduate lit course, but teaching literature for me will always begin with the enterprise of modeling the joy I feel at reading great works, the enterprise of inviting delight and passion in fellow readers.   

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour [. . . ];
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages [. . .]

By the time Chaucer began his Canterbury saga he was an old man, well traveled and wise to the varieties of human existence.  His temperament conditioned by his consummate cosmopolitanism, he must have embraced Terence’s maxim, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto (I am human, therefore nothing human is strange to me), given the diverse social and ideological scopes of the characters he depicted within works such as the Tales and A Parliament of Birds.

He was a man looking at a civilization facing extraordinary transitions — transitions in the class structure on his small island, the development of a vernacular language, the emergence of a new sociopolitical identity called ‘Britishness.’  What was there to do with all that transitory energy but to map it onto the lives and bodies of characters who are bound together on a journey to Canterbury. 

There’s the nun with the prideful habits and less than demure passions of a great lady.  The noble knight whose relevance is as rusty as his armor.  The bellicose miller with a will to power that is honored despite his lack of stature in the traditional societal structure. . . and of course the loose lipped, loose hipped Wife of Bath.

“Have you ever just sat on a bus, or on the steps of a fountain while travelling and simply read people — developed a story about who they were simply from the what of their manner and dress?”

Several people nodded.

“Chaucer’s narrator is the consummate traveler in medieval London,” I continued.  “He's one heck of a travelling companion today.  Even after 700 years, he is still teaching us how to read ourselves and those other ‘planetary bodies’ whose orbits we cross, clash with, and intersect.  His characterization technique in the Prologue is extraordinary for the way in which it invites us to really read people, to investigate the ways in which class, identity, and desire is mapped on each and every body.”

Through the course of our discussion, I asked my students to put themselves to task in writing a Chaucerian character sketch.  “Use Chaucer’s poetic devices to develop a caricature of someone here on campus . . . someone who may be highly individualized, but also represents a type.” I said. “Use iambic pentameter, verbal irony, and details of dress and manner as vehicles of characterization.”

After emitting few mild groans they put themselves to task.

What they produced convinced me that my early concerns with making Chaucer relevant were overblown.  He’s alive and well.

(Part Two)

A Year in the Life of a Songbird

It’s amazing what a year can bring.  Last year on March 24^th Songbird’s journey began, when I drove out to Watertown to pick the brain of long time family friend Jeff Allen, a successful independent author and publisher.

I hadn’t seen Jeff since I was a young kid, when we had spent summers camping near his home.   (In fact, the thing he most remembered of me was that I ate dip out of the serving bowl with my hands).  Still, as word trickled through the grapevine that Brian and I had a manuscript, and were facing the point of how to proceed, he was more than willing to meet me to discuss the nuts and bolts of creating an independent publishing house.   . . . I was more than eager to take him up on it, given his own successes with Inner Coaching, a publishing house that has developed a number of stress management resources for children.

It was a great, long visit — one which uncovered so many shared sympathies between us that our discussion took a number of delightful turns.  For nearly three hours Jeff graciously shared his expertise in independent publishing, expertise built over 10 years managing a company, and authorship, while all the while maintaining his professional commitments as the principal of an elementary school.

In a word, I saw in him evidence that it is possible to wear the three hats of educator, author, and entrepreneur successfully . . . while maintaining a sense of balance and grace.  They were necessary conditions for me to take on this enterprise; as I once wryly warned my over-competent friend, Dana Dillon, “Superwoman flies best without her hair on fire.” 

It was twilight by the time I left, and the songbirds were out in droves, filling the fading sky with their night calls.  I called Bal from the car, energized.  “If Brian is on board, I think we can do this.”

By May, Songbird Books was incorporated as a business, and its trademark was filed.  We were on our way.    

It has been an extraordinary year.  Since January 19^th, when the book became available to the public, over 200 copies of How Kwaku Ananse, Master Hairstylist, Saved the Animal Kingdom have been delivered into the hands of parents and educators around the world.  We have received strong printed reviews from a number of readers.  We are preparing materials to begin direct marketing to independent booksellers and media outlets . . . and we are still having a great deal of fun in doing all of it. 

That’s one metric of Songbird’s success that you’ll never see on an annual balance sheet, and here’s another.

Two months ago, I was sitting in a waiting room speaking to another  2^nd grade mom about our children’s class.  Through the course of our conversation, we began talking about the book, and about writing in general.  She had began graduate school in journalism before having children, but realized early on that the business was too cutthroat and controlled by corporate outlets for her.

“I miss writing,” she confided in me. “I enjoyed doing it so much.”

“Then you should,” I said, smiling at her with encouragement.

A couple weeks ago, I came into the waiting room to find her smiling ear to ear.  She had contacted the Elm Grove Times, sent in samples of writing that she had produced in those journalism classes — and the editor gave her an assignment.

“It’s a story about a local woman who made 60 dresses to send to Africa as part of a relief mission based in Michigan,” she explained.  “I went to her house and interviewed her.  It was a great story . . . I’m not getting paid for it, but it was wonderful to be able to write.”

I was overjoyed for her.  “You may not be paid for it, for now, but aren’t there are other ‘benefits’?  Your children get to see you doing something that you love to do.”   

She nodded in affirmation, and promised to get me a copy of the newspaper. 

“Thanks for inspiring me,” she said.

It may not be a strong indicator of the financial success of a business, but for the first year of this little publishing house, I can’t think of a better indicator that Songbird Books is living up to its mission than this. 

Protecting the Territory of Solitude in a Busy Home

It’s five o’clock in the morning, and I descend down the stairs before sunrise to find the evidence of last night’s St. Paddy’s Day soiree.   On the couch, my cousin Ryan is covered head to toe in a blanket — he evidently decided not to drive home after all.   Upstairs, the house is filled with more sleeping bodies.  Nestled like sardines in Miss. S’s full bed, are four little girls — two at the head and two at the foot.   In their own rooms, Paddy, Sina, and Bal are each wrapped up within their blankets and dreams. 

William Henry Hunt's
Girl Reading By Lamplight

I stealthily pick my way around the eight pair of brightly colored shoes and rubber boots that S and her friends have left scattered like flower seed, wondering how four girls could produce twice as many shoes as they need.  I pass through the kitchen and see the trivia game, the dishes, everything has been left in medias res — the room is neither clean nor dirty, but, left well, in the middle of things. In the next room, near the closet where they actually belong, school bags mope on the floor, slumped over in despair of the weekend.  I ignore their self-pity and find my way to my desk.  A small circle of light floods the space as I turn on the lamp, illuminating the darkness.

It is my favorite part of day, these few moments of solitude. 

It is my favorite time of life, wading through the chaos that has got me here.

In a poem titled “Crooked Prayer,” April Lindner celebrates the dual impulses of wanting to both inhabit one’s natural landscapes of solitude and to ride the visceral eddies created by living:

Please don’t give me, Lord, the thing I covet:

silence silken as a candleflame,

or blank and pregnant as the moon

on which I might imagine any face

or none.  Resist my wish

for cool white walls, windows flung open,

the afternoon hush edged with birdsong.

give me again and again

this rattle of wind-spun trashcans,

the schoolbus with its screechy brakes,

two dogs poised at the sill to listen

and bay back their urgent wisdom.

teach me to see unmade beds,

fruit torn into and abandoned,

pith and rind, as hungers

satisfied, to look in cracks

for what I step, unseeing, over:

rice grains, spilled beads, a lost needle, a burr,

and dust balls spun of nothing but nostalgia

of shed skin for a body, any body.[1]

I keep this poem posted on my refrigerator, atop the weathered fundraiser forms, earmarked school calendars and release forms, party invitations and coupons.  Linder’s prayer is a touchstone for me, not for the way in which it ultimately moralizes against loneliness, but because within it I find the language to honor both a natural impulse to craft a space for my own solitude, to make it its own territory within the strangely wonderful disorderliness of this home, and the lives lived therein.  

[1] Ascent Poetry Magazine, September 2010

---

Raising a Fashionista (part two)

"All good trips are, like love,” travel writer Pico Iyer suggests, “about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder."

. . . parenting a seven year old is a bit like that too. 

I don’t know why Miss S’s burgeoning fashion sensibility has left me feeling so vulnerable . . . it’s a quality I’ve marveled at in several beloved friends -- people like Auntie Weinie, Stephanie, and Uncle ‘Lerio -- individuals so thoughtlessly stylish and well put together that I swear they could spend the whole night sitting upright on an overcrowded train next to members of a strung out Zydeco band, and descend onto the platform the next morning looking nothing but artfully tousled.   

But without a doubt, it is in no uncertain terms, a strange elixir of terror and wonder that I feel as I ascend the steps up to the Library of Congress beside her, having just come through that strange little wrinkle in time.  Miss S. takes the scarf off of her head, and she, Auntie Weinie, Aunt Melissa and I enter the building.

Melissa suggested we make a visit to the Library of Congress in order to see the architectural detail, and I’m glad she suggested it.  The Great Hall is breathtaking, its vaults decorated with passages of classical texts, framed in the ornate floral designs of the art nouveau period.

“It looks like a palace!” Miss S. whispers to me, taking my hand.

“It sort of is one!” I said with a smile.

“Really?” she said, her eyes wide with excitement.

“Yeah!” I replied. “Palaces protect the King and Queen, right?  The Library of Congress is a fortress protecting the most important documents we have . . . the ones our country would be in trouble without. Without the library protecting those documents, the kingdom wouldn’t be protected from all sorts of threats.”

Or kingless-dom.  Sometimes analogies are more trouble than they’re worth.  It’s no matter . . . I’ve already lost her.  She darts ahead up the stairs, twirling twice at the top, and I know she’s imagining she’s at a ball.  I giggle as I realize with my arm dragging languidly on the marble balustrade, that I half am too. 



Copy of the Maryland Gazette,
dated 1755



We head into the exhibit of Thomas Jefferson’s Library together, and I begin looking at documents on display as Miss S. watches an interpretative video nearby.  

My attention is drawn toward an issue of the Maryland Gazette, dated 25 July 1776.  In a single, unassuming column, the new form of association, the new form of community is declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...”

Two columns over are three printed advertisements from slave owners, posting descriptions of their fugitive property, and rewards for their return.   

“S.?”  I say without looking up.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Come here.  I want to show you something.”

If Pico Iyer is right, and journeys back to places we’ve been draw us into disorienting encounters with our earlier selves, a trip to Washington is an encounter with countless other phantoms as well, and each ghost is a storyteller.  The bedrock of this city isn’t eastern granite, but this set of inspiring principles set in dialogue with the injustices that mar our nation’s history.   

This place is utterly haunted. The lives that have intersected with Jefferson’s extraordinary treatise, who have interpreted it, undermined it, and slowly nurtured this nation into accord with the principles the Declaration calls for, continue to leave trace elements in the air.  We draw them in with every breath.  

I want S. to feel this.  I want her to feel the grave and extraordinary power of Jefferson’s idea of human community and of human freedom.  I want her to know this nation for what it is: an awe inspiring ideal, and a process that is fraught with willful blindness, self-interest, missteps, deference.  I want her to have the reverence I have for the spirits that haunt this city, the lessons that they have to teach us.

. . . and I’m pretty sure she wants ice cream, I think, silently laughing at myself. 

She takes my hand as we enter the darkened vault housing Jefferson’s library, and I realize the source of my vulnerability today has been in my own earnestness, my desire to transmit to her what I value.  My fashionista’s burgeoning sense of style is only one of a whole host of other forms of independence that she is slowly gaining the right to exercise . . . but it is that capacity for self-determination, of her being able to choose what I do not value, that absolutely freaks me out.

And the terribly undemocratic truth of this sentiment freaks me out even more.   

Part One

Approaching Lent through Slow Reading

As Lent begins today, and Christians around the world enter into a season of preparation for Easter, I find myself once again simultaneously drawn to and wary of the call to sacrifice and penitence that the season is borne on.  With millions of other Roman Catholics, I will attend Ash Wednesday Mass to receive a cross of soft ashes on my forehead, and be told “you are born from dust and to dust you will return” — an ontological statement I find extraordinarily comforting, but at the same time perplexing, given that Catholic theology of the afterlife, as I have always understood it, is decidedly void of dust.

During this holy season, Christians around the world are encouraged to begin the season ‘giving up’ something for the greater glory of God — some popular choices are always chocolate, swearing, meat, the ubiquitous demigod Facebook . . .

Because of the origins of the religious tradition, our idea of  abstaining, or ‘giving up’ something is linked directly to the idea of penitential sacrifice.  Within some Christian denominations, the rationale for this giving up is rather symbolic: We should suffer as Jesus suffered, wandering for 40 days in the desert before giving himself in the ultimate act of sacrifice for our sins.  In others, it is an act of expulsion and redemption: We should suffer, to remind ourselves of our sinfulness and need for grace.   

I don’t really feel comfortable with either of these accounts.  I instead view ‘giving up’ as an act of beautiful sharing and of generosity, and certain scenarios always come to mind — a mother extending her newborn child toward the child’s father so that they may gaze on it together, a retired gardener taking the spoils of his labor and sharing them with neighbors, a young person fasting until nightfall in solidarity with the poor and hungry around the world. 

Giving up — literally, to offer heavenward, is an act of joyous giving, the benediction — or good speech — that one pronounces simply by celebrating the bounty of one’s labor and one’s life.  Either by cultivating one’s mindfulness towards what God has given you, or by sharing those gifts with others is, to me, a most beautiful Lenten rite.

So what does this have to do with reading together at home?  Everything. 

How many of us parents really take the time at the end of the day to sit with our children and be present to them, and the story, in the moment as they read to us or we read to them?  How many of us are capable of sharing stories together without looking at our watches or getting impatient?

In 2004, Carl Honoré published a book calling for a ‘slow reading’ movement after he caught himself about to buy a collection of “one-minute bedtime stories” to read to his children.  In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Changing the Cult of Speed, he argues that slow reading— not just ‘finding,’ but mindfully making the time to read deliberately, alone or together, changes the very fabric of our relationships with one another, with time, and with the stories themselves, enriching those relationships and bringing them to bear on the future. 

We exist in a world that is increasingly productivity driven, where the mantra ‘hurry up’ drives every activity, mediates every relationship. . . even those at home.  As a consequence we become wrapped up in routine activity, forgetting to draw attention toward the blessings we have in our family, the blessings we create within those relationships we create within our homes, and offer back up to God, from what we’ve been given.   

It’s why this year, I will be honoring the call to Lent by ‘giving up’ more time to read with my family — out loud, energetically, allowing for questions and interruptions, in crazy voices and accents.  Carving out a more hallowed space for the other people in my life, and the stories that bind us together, is the best way I know how of carving out a more hallowed space for God in this season of preparation. 

Raising a Fashionista (part one)

I have returned to Washington D.C.    The city is verdant, and the velvety magnolia buds are pursed like a lady’s lips as she applies her lipstick.  I know it’s mostly wishful thinking from someone who has suffered the white blight of a too-long winter, but I can almost feel them preparing to burst into flower.  Through the course of the weekend I hear snippets of countless conversations, and it's the same refrain threaded through most of the eavesdropping — the tidal basin, home to Washington’s famous cherry trees and the Cherry Tree Blossom Festival, will be awash with the silky blush of petals by the end of the month.   Everyone awaits the transformation. 

Suci at the Inauguration, 2009

Two years ago I was here to celebrate a Presidential Inauguration with my diminutive host daughter Suci, and found myself perpetually afraid of losing her within the massive crowds that descended on the city through the course of that bitterly cold week.  I learned then what it feels like to be made vulnerable by the independence of a child, as the sight of her white hijab ebbed and flowed between the people who jostled their way between us.   

This time is different . . . and the same.  At seven, Miss S is also small enough to slip in-between people and be absorbed into a crowd, but it is a sleepy spring Washington weekend and the city is host to few visitors.  My view of her remains blissfully uninhibited as she walks ahead of me down Constitution Ave in her black boots and jeans, my fuchsia scarf wrapped around her neck, fluttering in the breeze that is created by her wake.

As with Suci before her, it is in Washington that I become fully aware that Miss S. too, moves in an independent orbit now . . . even if her independence at this point is primarily exercised in matters of haute couture. 

The first intimations of this new-found independence came before we even left, when she spent six days packing for a three day trip, making sure that every outfit option met the following criteria:

a) stylish,

b) complementary in pattern and color,

c) interchangeable,

d) comfortable

. . . in that order.  Given I have worked with college students who could not even design and execute an effective evaluation, I am pretty impressed by her ability to both articulate and use a set of criteria in decision making.  That being said, I have to admit I laughed both about how she weighed the criteria, and how seriously she went to task with her packing, given that I gave myself an hour to pack and actually took fifteen minutes . . . being mostly concerned that I had enough clean underwear. 

Both my amazement and amusement are tempered as it becomes apparent through the course of the trip that her attention toward style is threaded throughout every stage of the day.  Waking invokes a thoughtful review of jewelry options.  After breakfast, conversation on the day’s agenda detours into a conversation on just why, exactly, she should have to wear a winter coat instead of her fleece sport-jacket when we leave Aunt Melissa and Uncle Luke’s house.  I find myself exhausting a number of forms of reasoning available to me within classical argumentation . . .

• “Because it’s only 50 degrees!” (Argument by Fact, relying on an Enthymeme)
• “Because when Mom was a kid, she would get sick if she didn’t have a coat on in early spring!” (Argument by Analogy)
• “Because if you get sick we won’t be able to do anything.” (Argument by Consequence)
• “Because it’s easier to take off layers than to put layers you don’t have on.” (Argument by Benefits)
• “Because I said so, and if you continue to complain you will sit at Auntie Melissa’s house and miss out on all the fun.”  (Argument by Authority)

In the end, the only grounds I give her that hold any weight is the last one.  At the utterance of this final ultimatum she silently puts her coat on, checks to make sure her earrings are still dangling, and walks out the door. 

“She’s just like you!” Melissa said teasingly, and we all chuckle, knowing how impressively ignorant I have always been regarding personal fashion.

Once on the town, the moist, balmy spring weather, a delight for the rest of us winter burned people, is nothing but a cause for discontent for Miss S.

“My hair is frizzy!” she cries.  

“The curl in your hair is activated in the humidity, honey,” I try to explain.  “See how my hair and Auntie Colleen's hair has become curled because of the weather?”

Miss S., taken at the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial, two days earlier.

She rolls her eyes, gives a slight shake of the head, and puts my fuchsia scarf over her hair to cover the problematic curls.  For a moment, the drape resembles that of Suci’s headscarf.  I have the uncanny impression that time has folded back upon itself — I am walking along Constitution Avenue in D.C.  It is simultaneously 2009 and 2011, and ahead of me walks a daughter who is just out of reach, being tossed ahead on the energy of those she moves through, propelled onward, away from me, moving in her own independent orbit.   

The sense of vulnerability I once and again feel steals my breath away.

Part Two