A brief intermission to let ourselves fall down and get back up again during finals, the heartbreak of courses coming to their inevitable conclusion—even when you see it coming it hurts to see it go. Then again, even when you see it coming it sometimes never arrives soon enough. In either case, this week we feature an excerpt from John Taylor’s most recent manuscript, the poetry of Lindsay Hanson, as well as the up-and-up on our recent trip over to Patrick Henry High School of Minneapolis to bestow some creative writing knowhow (some) on the teeming minds of its students. Thank you to Patrick Pelini for inviting us into his classroom.
In other news, we’re taking on some new faces and diversifying our portfolio of talents (it’s 2011, everyone is diversifying) in anticipation of the Fall launch of Parachute and it’s entailing expansion of content and services to our readers—which is the fancy way of saying: more killer content. We’ll have more multimedia, regular features, etc. etc. But enough of my yammering, take a look at what we’ve got cooking this week and check back next week. As always, thanks to all our contributors and readers.
None of this is possible without you.
Enjoy!
***
There is More than One Possible Conclusion
Minneapolis, Minnesota. March 7, 2010.
I spend seven hours in front of a computer finishing a paper having something to do with some reading of Shakespeare. So very external. Upon concluding the paper I still have a mound of homework to do, but I decide that if I don’t get out of my apartment I’ll go insane. I take up my usual place on the corner of the bar and set about my work, naturally inviting curiosity. After all, what kind of drunk comes to a bar to do homework?
The first guy who tries to talk to me doesn’t find me particularly interesting. He asks me if I’m grading, I say no. He leaves. Another guy comes in and sits down. He has shaved his head to (poorly) conceal his baldness. He’s in his late thirties and has a dorky countenance that screams, “I work in the financial sector.” He asks me what class I’m doing homework for.
“Literature stuff,” I tell him.
He immediately asks to see what I’m reading. I explain that it’s all very boring and senseless, ivory tower hokum and liberal claptrap. I’m not bothered that he’s impeding my progress. I arrived expecting to be bothered. I entertain his interruption and allow him to tell me his sad tale. He had moved to Minneapolis from Texas chasing a job with some financial company whose name I don’t recall. For whatever reason he is now unemployed (I didn’t ask). He laments to me that earlier today he had been relegated to accepting a job as a clerk at OfficeMax making eight dollars an hour. Relegated because when he had been a hotshot salesman of life insurance, annuities and retirement plans (financial sector) he had been raking in more than ninety grand a year.
He laments to me the dangers of being hopelessly overqualified for retail drudgery, “They won’t take you when they know you’re gonna just up and quit right away, and they’ll only pay you eight dollars an hour if they do hire you. Eight dollars an hour? I’m gonna move some serious product for those people and they’re gonna only pay me eight dollars an hour?”
I lower my beer from my mouth. “That’s practically minimum wage!” I say. I tell him I had made almost as much as a high school dropout vending porn eight years ago.
He asks, and I tell him that I major in English and Linguistics. He suggests that I go into the military as a linguist. “You go into training and come out a full captain.”
“But you have to go where they tell you,” I qualify.
“Yeah, but they treat the officers well, they don’t jerk you around.”
He leaves for awhile to have a smoke and I return to my homework. After awhile he returns but makes no effort to disturb me. He simply requests a long piece of receipt paper and I notice him scribbling furiously on it out of the corner of my eye. He scribbles for about five minutes, stopping occasionally to think. Finally he disturbs me again.
He hands me the slip of paper, “Here, this will save you thousands of dollars over the course of your lifetime, I guarantee it.” He proceeds to explain to me the nuances of exercising precise timing in the purchase of insurance policies.
I tell him, “All that’s Greek to me.”
I explain that I’m going to school so that I can get a job where I won’t have to know any math and that my best skills involve talking and reading.
“You should go into sales,” he insists.
“I don’t like to sell things; I can’t make cold calls.”
“You get a job where they call you. You have the floor, man, and you’re selling them something they need. Something everybody needs! I’m telling ya, I bet you’d be good at it.”
I change the subject quickly and he allows me to return to my work. I see him dump a mess of coins out on the bar and begin sorting the change into stacks. As I work, he gets a call on his cell phone and quiets his voice.
“No. I’m at Mac’s with a friend here… I was at the bowling alley earlier.”
“No. I’ve only had three beers.”
“No. A friend is buying them for me… I’m not spending all my money on beer…No – I’m not.”
“No. I was planning to play a game of Buck Hunter and then go home and kiss my daughter ‘goodnight.’”
He stands up and doesn’t say a word to me. He goes to a table of women behind me and asks them if they would kindly tell his wife that they are buying him beer. He asks the same thing of a waitress and of a patron across the bar. No one is willing to lie to his wife for him. He leaves without asking me or even saying another word. His pile of change is still on the bar, and the secret to saving thousands over the course of my lifetime is in my pocket.
—John Taylor
***
eggs
this is my child
< tucked chin
watery eyes &
gossamer hands curled around nothing
I wrapped her in albumin quilts held her till
she went cold
a fragment of my X, she slips a chromosomal fugue
raw
fractured
falling
molasses through my fingers I loved you, i am saying I loved you,
you were my child (our child) we
carried you our skin
knew your beautiful roundness
freckled, sanguine
then your imperfection, jagged&
salient broken edges
dripping
leaking
your life my palms
only pieces, my child
only pieces
—Lindsay Hanson
***
ShootingStar* Goes to School!
We went without superhero lunchboxes or a crowded yellow bus to pick us up. Instead, we piled in an old Buick equipped with nothing but our favorite writing exercises. Our destination: Patrick Henry High School in north Minneapolis. The mission: a day creative writing workshops for high school English students.
Ours was an entirely offensive approach. We were the experts, and we were going to teach those kids a thing or two about writing. Sure our intentions were good; we were going to help some high school students express themselves creatively. But too strong of an offense often leads to a weak defense; similarly, the teacher often in turn becomes the learner. Our experience with the creative writing workshop was no exception. The students left that day with poems of their own and (we hope) some ideas for future creative expression. So what did we take away? Perhaps that’s a little more difficult to define, but I think it has something to do with the purpose of creative writing within English education.
This role seems to be largely that of non-existence. The students we worked with had taken the state-mandated MCA Writing Test earlier in the week, and our job was to give them a taste of something entirely different. The MCAs collectively determine many important things for the school such as funding, job retention, and simply—maybe most importantly—keeping the doors open. The test focuses primarily on the five-paragraph essay and English teachers spend the months between September and April preparing students to write the most glowing, finely crafted essays possible. The MCA creates an environment of practical, quantitative work in the classroom. For example, Patrick Pelini, the teacher who accommodated us for the workshop (thank you Mr. Pelini), had each of his students write twelve practice essays in the weeks leading up to the test. He kept all of these in a full, heavy crate and displayed it with pride in the center of the classroom, a monument to the students’ progress.
At the time, it seemed to me that the absence of creative writing in curriculum must be some kind of atrocity, so I asked Pelini what I now realize was a very leading question: “What are your thoughts about creative writing in schools?”
Pelini—never seeming to miss a teachable moment—did not give me the easy, what-I-wanted-to-hear answer. He said, “Other teachers might bemoan the loss of creative writing in school curriculum, but I would rather equip them for the so-called ‘real-world.’”
“What do you mean?” I probably looked confused but I was genuinely curious hear more.
He answered with another question. “How prepared did you feel when you came to college and faced the writing load?” He took a moment to judge my reaction. I had been totally blind-sided my freshman year, and my face must have shown it. “Schools need to prepare students for this,” he said. “For academic and technical writing.”
I realized the truth of this. Most of the students there would not become novelists or poets. Instead, many of them would become college students and all of them would need technical writing skills along the way. With the recognition of the tall task of preparing students for the great beyond (beyond high school that is) and of protecting the school itself from budget cuts and possible closure, our ambitions of making students “Be creative” seemed almost trivial.
I hope it does not come across that I am here condemning the very thing that this magazine upholds: creative writing. I believe as much as anyone in the power of the written word in personal and social change, but I think it is worth considering the role of creative writing in education. Perhaps creative work is only meaningful to a select few, writers and readers alike, and the focus of secondary education should be to help everyone succeed regardless of their interests. Perhaps creative work is something that should come later in a students’ education, once they have mastered the tools of the language. Then again, perhaps creative writing can be used in a practical way to teach important concepts. I do not know if any correct or even definite answers exist, but I do know that it’s important to recognize what schools and students are up against and how English education can effectively meet these challenges.
In closing, I would like to thank Patrick Pelini and the students of Patrick Henry High School for participating in our creative writing workshop. The day was as fun as it was educational and we hope it was for them as well.
—Christopher White
Editor & Outreach Coordinator
