Some of My Poetry Written this Semester!

I Am From…

Yeeeehaw watching Hee Haw and Hallelujah on Sunday mornings
Puuuraise the Lord on the way to church and Go to Hell on the way to lunch
Seedy southern trailer parks and free lunch milk money
Fried chicken and Kool-Aid and guilt by association

I am from
taking shelter in the radio's warm green glow while F bombs are dropping from the ceiling
Family reunions leading to family dysfunction leading to family desecration
Down south, down home, and downwind from hate’s foul fumes
Hayseed and overalls, outhouse and outsource; now outsourcing the outhouse

I am from
Haggard, Mellencamp, Small Towns and small minds
Weeping willows, weeping widows and big dinners after the funeral
Moonshine and moonlit walks
Spanking the monkey that’s on my back

I am from
Raisin’ Cain and Raisin’ Hell
Beautiful landscapes, beautiful women, and beautiful ideals
The rash realities of rural decay
Grandma’s kitchen, momma’s guilt and daddy’s guidance
Family perdition and hates tradition

I am from the southern table of hospitality that loves you while you die



Blackalicious Dope Disciple

Radiance becomes unbearable, light bouncing off the moon.

No light please, I am dark for a reason, black clothes only: pantsshoesshirt.

Sunglasses in daylight. “I want to look like, be like; Jimm Leary S. Thompson”.

Drunken role models for college students. “But Professor, acid enlightens me, makes

me more creative” (walloozing). Later,life becomes unbearable,

tiny pinhole of joy.




Naptime at the Free Will Baptist Church

No Hallelujah for the absurd dine and dash.
Religious molestation: Godly spiders moving about the world-

wide web of their deceit. The church of sinful greatest hits; Thou shalt
not steal: tithe runs to Colombia to double your pesos in a dope deal gone

blasphemoso. Call Dog the Bounty Hunter to prey for us and track
the tithe, only to get arrested for indecent haircuts in a public

place. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors daughter! But Preacher
spins a new tail to chase. Momma and Daddy thinks she’s being

sanctified, I suppose she will see the light. I reckon
she’ll learn the meaning of The Bible Belt.



Defeated

Ran to french
kiss the future. Breath was too bad.
Ran back to old lang syne. He smiled saying,
“It always looks darkest right before
it is.” Truth isn’t pretty
in hooker clothing, looks worse in
rags. I want to stand and scream, conscious
won’t let me stick
around and hear them chant
“Go Green, Go Green”, the only ones
heard are the red teabaggers
doing what teabaggers do! No winning
this game, I can’t fight
alone anymore. I think I will lay
down with everyone else and wait
for the bus.


Pulp Truth

Impregnates the brain with
stupidity, birthing cerebral flatulence
'round the globe. (ha!) Reality

whore, male / female, doesn’t
matter as long as the
adsecutives sell more smelly

beans to fill the crock and raise
the ratings instead of the bar.

(Be back after this important massage)

Give the rose to the one you truly love,
yourself. Give the money to Big
Brother and Big Sisters on the Tour Bus to aging,

washed up rock star’s viagra fund. One more
Hilton stripper pole, sex
video on how to tighten your ignorance

for the paparazzi rodeo on Rodeo. Honesty
is a horrible trait to defecate.

(… next week on The E True Hollywood boring)

Michael Jackson isn’t dead and
neither is Elvis. They are on a rich dessert
island with Rachel Ray. News at

Eleven. Global warming is a suntan.
War is Punk’d. Life is only a passing of piety to the gods
of merchantry. Eat up, drink up, and sleep with
our credos Flava Flav.

(Bombs bursting in air…CLICK!)

A Challenged but Fulfilled Semester!

Our class this semester has been challenging because sometimes we felt we needed direction, but had to look to each other as peers to find it. That was not Professors Dwyers fault, not the substitutes fault, just that life sometimes throws curveballs and we, as a class full of peers, hit that curveball out of the park. Thanks to Brian, Ana, Chris, and Sharlene for helping me with the detail portion of my Lesson Plan project and to Professor McIntyre and the rest of the class for helping with the integrated Theater portion. I cannot express what I have learned from this class and classmates. In leaving this class I have not only learned about creativity and the visual arts for my future students, but have become a better prepared individual to become a better educator. Thanks Fall '09 classmates and Professors Dwyer and McIntyre. YOU ALL ROCK!!!!

WOW, What a Play!!!! Six Characters in Search of an Author!

I loved this play from the beginning to the end. It absolutely rocked my
world. The questions about reality and the ways in which we allow
ourselves to live out our realities are still not extinguished in my
mind. I love art that questions and makes sport of the art it is
portraying. I love it in poetry with Ars Poetica. I love it in film and
theater. The costumes were bizarre as these characters were supposed to
familial, but were dressed in costumes from different eras of time. I
especially found it amusing that the "silent boy" was dressed in a
futuristic costume that looked much like the "cockroach costumes" (nice
use of budgeting). I thought the computer screen as backdrops was
amazing and cost effective. But most of all the actors were amazing. The
step daughter and father were played flawlessly. The chilling
performance of the biological son was so great that it got cold in the
room whenever he was around.The producers part was "spot on" as a
producer/ director. I thought the mothers acting was slightly overdone
but overall the play was stunning. We could stand to see more plays like
this at Northridge. I would go to everyone.

Eeeeek! What I thought would be "The Lesson Plan from Hell" (echoing in a dungeon)!!

I really believed the Lesson Plan would be what drove me out of school. (ha ha ha) But, it has turned out to be the most profound and realistic thing I have done as far as preparing me to become a teacher. It opened my eyes to realities of teaching and the preparation that goes into just 3 days of teaching. The first lesson plan I turned
in was sparse in terms of detail and repetition. Professor Dwyer then gave me feedback and with the help of Brian and Ana, I was able to fully develop this lesson plan into something I would be be proud to take into any classroom. Thanks for the help and preparing us a lot for the credentialing program. My lesson plan was Booker T. Washington's 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech:

Haiku! Drama, not a sneeze! Professor McIntyre

As much as we did miss Professor Dwyer while out on medical leave. We did get the opportunity to be introduced to a substitute that took us on a slight detoured journey that ended up in a magical place. Marilyn McIntyre introduced us to an exercise in drama that gave a new outlook to poetry. Again, another alternative to the written word. This was when she had us act out a haiku. The experience was really great for me as a poet. I now think about what I write and try to visualize the poem as well as write it. It has been very good practice and has made my poetry better. KUDOS to Professor McIntyre. (She is a wonderful actress also!)

What is the real definition of "knowing"?

Websters Dictionary describes "knowing" as; that knows; having knowledge or information; intelligence! I really like this definition. I personally believe that knowing can come from any area of creativity that works for the individual trying to learn and eventually know. I really have to go back to the Ken Robinson video on creativity. The quote,"Creativity now is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status." I believe also that literacy and creativity can be one and the same. We learned this with the visual arts project. One person can be creative and literate with a pencil and paper while another is creative and literate with a can of spray paint and a concrete wall. Robinson also says, "Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value". All knowing has value. The Truth or "knowing can be different to everyone, while being just as value to each individual Truth.

Visual Literacy Project

This was one of the more fun projects we have done this semester. We read part of Tim O'Brien's "The Things We Carried". We took a phrase and built a diarama around that phrase creating The Visual Literacy Project.

Here is what I thought was the best one:



This exercise was one of the most eye opening of the semester. It has helped me in my poetry and in the lesson plan stage of this class.

Transmediation

Transmediation is the process of recreating the meaning of a text from one medium to another (e.g. from a novel to a film). It is used to enhance communicative impact.

This can be done especially through theater. Many novels have gone from the written word to the stage. In some ways it makes it better to see the words acted out. I really enjoy the post modern transmediation. A wonderful example of this is Watchmen.

Ken Robinson "Out of Our Minds:with Creativity"

Ken Robinson Quotes on Creativity

* We must change the way we look at being an intellectual.
**Diversity-All the ways we experience thoughts and ideas
**Dynamic-Our brains are interactive,they are able to multi-task different types
of information at once.
**Creativity defined as; The process of having original ideas that have value.

*Our job as educators:

Realization of the creative capacities for the richness they are.
Children are our hope.

We need to educate the whole being so
they can face the future.

We may not see the future, but they will.

Our job is to make something of it.


My views on video:

What an extraordinary 20 minutes I spent watching this video. I am really grateful for this CommonPlace text so that I can keep a copy and notes to use later to remind me what a teacher is supposed to be. I am ordering his book as soon as I finish this entry. He was an amazing motivator.

Anna in the Tropics

Fate of that Dang Cockroach!

Fate of the Cockroach?

In the production Fate of the Cockroach by Tewfik Al Hakim, there seemed to be a lot of whining and scurrying about, but little meaning. It is much like life in the sense, there is a lot of talking about the problems in society but little action. Maybe that is the point of this production, parody. The problems I found in this play were that there was little to care about. I didn’t care about the cockroach that was taken by the ants. I didn’t want to know why the king was the king. The Queen was way too narcissistic and the minister of defense was a whiner. I felt as if I was on a bad acid trip at an even worse cocktail party. I have been to a number of theater productions and have never cared less about a group of characters than in this production. There is a possibility that because it was a Saturday afternoon and I felt cranky for having to be at this play and not doing other things I wanted to be doing, that is why I felt this way or it was because it was simply a bad play with worse characters.
The characters in Act Two seemed to be heading in the same direction. This couple gave me nothing to care about. I felt as though I was a fly in the bedroom of two people that I wished would open the window and allow me to fly away. The incessant whining by the husband and dominance by the wife just made me remember the arguments of my parents when I was a child.

I understand this production was to be a parody of social and cultural norms. Also it was to be a small scale tale about large scale problems in our world. I just wished they would have tempered the whining and crying with smarter dialogue. When I came home my significant other asked me, “Well honey what was the fate of the cockroach?” I said back to her, “Does it really matter?” To quote comedian Dennis Miller, “This is only my opinion, I could be wrong.”

Now everytime I see a cockroach, I think of that crazy play! Arrrrggghhhh!

The last line of communication you could leave to the world!

"Truth is beauty and beauty is truth" John Keats

" Rage Rage against the Dying of the Light" Dylan Thomas

"All You Need is Love" John Lennon

"Drama is What Literature Does at Night" Professor Dwyer

"Because I could not stop for death" Emily Dickinson

"Sula" Toni Morrison

"Dope" Amiri Baraka

Then we had to pair the quotes to just a few words to time capsule. The final word we decided on was LOVE! Now that is a cool class!

The Name Game--First day of introductions!

Professor Dwyer had all the class get in a circle and start to learn each others names. It was interesting way to get the class to come together and start becoming peers instead of just classmates. Sooooooo...lets see if I can still do it:

Anthony, Jessica, Diana, Ana, Laura D, Chad, Brian, Louis, Tara, Cherie, Chris, Grace, Rebecca, Ivonne, Amanda, Sharlene, Laura Seese,D.J., Professor McIntyre, Professor Dwyer.

Geez...that was difficult!

But it was harder trying to do it while standing in that circle! But I do really dig the classmates everyone has turned out to be helpful!

Thanks,
Duane