Meet The Artists Through Their Spoken Words at Lincoln Center

Search Amazon.com for teaching poetry to middle schoolYesterday began with a challenging commute for me. The traffic on the Turnpike was so bad that the Port of NY Authority was actually offering apologies for the delays in the bus terminal when I arrived. I was rushing to Lincoln Center for a school program called Meet the Artists.

Middle School is often a challenging age group, with its mix of growth spurts and interests. I say this because it’s sometimes a rough room even for the best performers. So the fact that Cecilia Rubino’s
Poetry Slam 102: Verbal Velocity players could generate enough excitement to get the whole room of students to raise their pencils in the air and write, and then, on the big stage of The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, compete to volunteer to read aloud…Well! What teacher doesn’t dream of that kind of class participation? This program in the Meet the Artists Series delivers.

Their secret is an effective mix of accoustic cool, sound effects, music, and the keepin'-it-real poetry of Darian Dauchan, Erik "the advocate of wordz" Maldonado, and Shanelle Gabriel, who spit rhymes so compellingly you've just got to write when they tell you to. The show opens with the roar of a race car and does not quit humming until the end after the students applaud and cheer. Creative writing is sometimes a scary curriculum area, but this program goes a long way toward making the experience open and welcoming for everyone. While poetry slam is a fast-paced competitive sport with points and judging for the slam actors' stage efforts, they emphasize repeatedly that the students should applaud the poet not the scores. This duality works well to encourage the shy while offering some juiced literary combat for the extrovert.

Darian, Erik, and Shanelle wear many hats in this performance, alternately hosting a round of competition--with Darian donning a top hat and affecting a British accent, Shanelle, the guise of Sister Yvonne on her way to church, and Erik, the outfit of Ricky Rock 'n Roll--then spitting rhymes as the slam experts they are. The first round included puzzle poems about unnamed objects--Ink, from Erik, A Fast-Food Favorite, served up by Shanelle, and the Iphone, emceed by Darian. During the Breakdown moment, the poets explained personification--"I feel so personified"--and gave the audience 3 minutes to write to music. Rubino and the emcees circulated to help anyone who was stuck. There were volunteers aplenty, and one student came up on crutches to share his piece on “headphones.” He was generously rewarded with urban cool, and the audience loved how “dope” it was.

Round two featured highly personal tributes to favorite music—Darian to Coltrane’s sax, the Church of St. Hipness, Eric, to Salsa, el cantata, yo soy Boricua, and Shanelle brought down the house with her paean to Hiphop, “writing from the heart, spit trith…the power is ours!”  Erik provided a comic interlude by attempting an 8-minute air guitar tribute to Led Zeppelin, but he was interrupted for the second Breakdown, where this program’s high-falutin’ curriculum moment concerned the  Ekphrastic poem, which they quickly brought down to earth, Say wha? Hint: It’s inspired by art. This writing sequence figured a brainstorming freewrite accompanied by Lady Gaga for musical inspiration. Highly energizing.

Students were instructed to let this piece “marinate” and work on it another time, and Shanelle arrived as Sister Yvonne  to introduce a particularly poignant segment where the narrative poems concerned highly personal bittersweet moments about the girl Erik teased, the love Darian wanted to reach out for, and Shanelle’s struggle to understand and please her foster mother, to “Be the kind of woman you wished I’d be.” The last Breakdown encouraged students to affirm themselves through their words, and the students quickly composed sentences of their own, which many read aloud with great pride: “Hold your  ground because life is coming.”

Shanelle was the ultimate slam winner, but, as they say, "the point is not the points." At the end of the show, Heather from Lincoln Center told the students they could donate their poems to Lincoln Center. My turn to be amazed and a little jealous. What a great thing for the students and the arts! Cecilia Rubino's amazing slam poets make it look so easy. Behind this performance lurks a lot of energy and talent. If you are a teacher who wants to attend it, know that your students will go home inspired, and you can pick up a few tricks about turning that freewrite into a piece of cake. Word.

Ultimate Fusion? Science meets Dance

Speaking of poetry in motion, here's a dancer alert. All you need is a scientist who wants to compete.

Here's a link to an unusual fusion that takes collaboration to a new level--the 2010 Dance Your Ph.D. Contest.

NPR and The New York Times have profiled the competition, and it looks like a winner for trickle down interdisciplinary possibilities. So, find your favorite scientist and start choreographing for next year.

The Value of Arts Education for Children

All math and no play-acting may not improve math scores as much as we would like. A combination of instruction might improve the performance of our students in both areas.

Still skeptical about the value of arts education for children? Here is a link to studies that show connections between academic performance, appropriate behavior, and attendance--the areas that address student success in school and in life from Americans for the Arts. Scroll down that page to find research connections for different genres. 

Check out the website River of Words, which teaches ecoliteracy through poetry and art. They put their money where their mouths are and sponsor a yearly competition for kids so we can all see the results. I especially enjoyed the 2010 Grand Prize winner Carolyn Dean's exquisite poem about saying good-bye to a friend, "Snapping Turtles." Tell me it does not give you the chills.

It takes a long time to grow a poetry habit. Honoring nature is a lifetime responsibility. In my opinion, art is never a waste of children's time, and the adults could derive a value or two from considering their work.

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Poetry in Motion

I had the pleasure of seeing a performance by Sweet Honey in the Rock at Lincoln Center Jazz this weekend. Audio samples of their music can be found at this link:  SHIR

What you really want to do, though, is to go see and hear them live. Shirley Saxton, the founder of Children of Deaf Adults (CODA), who was seen first onstage while the other singers were only heard, makes a beautiful visual pun. She is the loveliest Sign Language interpreter, communicating equally with everyone. Her message is clear, her hands are graceful and brilliant, and her motion adds a layer of dance to the extraordinary singing voices of current members, Aisha Kahlil, Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson, Nitanju Casel, and Ysaye Barnwell. For this concert, to augment the jazz message of the event, Sweet Honey in the Rock was accompanied by Stacy Wade (musical director who also works with Al Green); Parker McCallister, a young and outrageously talented bassist; Jovol Bell, the versatile percussionist. This engagement comprised their tribute concert to the women's voices we have lost: Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, and Odetta, with an additional tribute to Abby Lincoln. The concert concluded with a richly deserved standing O.

I haven't heard Sweet Honey sing live since the 1970s. I missed an evolution. Before singing Odetta's medley of freedom songs, which is a historical encyclopedia written in song, Barnwell told the audience that it would be a good idea for us to learn them: "You're going to need them," she said. Alas for us. For relief from the fears of the present moment, listen to "Breaths," especially. It will keep you warm on a cold night.

Imagine Peace: Yoko Ono's Onochord

A few years ago, I took my students to see an exhibit of Yoko Ono's "Onochord." They all signed a map to indicate their participation in the event, so we are all part of an ever-evolving map of peace being spoken.

Here is Yoko on the subject of haiku.

Take a look at three early poems by Yoko, a survivor of so many experiences.

www.imaginepeace.com  is a wonderful place to visit.

If you are interested in the work of Yoko Ono, please visit this site where I published an article on "Onochord" today. Enjoy the peace. Perhaps if we all think very hard about it while the government plans to shut down, peace may come. Put your name on the map. Find a way.

Get Ready for The White Room: Jennifer Muller | The Works Creates Poetry in Motion

It has been fifteen years since Jennifer Muller premiered a full-length dance piece. Welcome to "The White Room." Jennifer Muller | The Works is dancing all over the world  in sleek, fine form these days. This company has quietly cultivated the next generation of dancers in New York for more than 35 years through its school programs, a Works apprentice program, and The Hatch program for young dancers.

Nurturing creativity and self-esteem, they offer their gifts to young dancers everywhere. How fitting that this new work, "The White Room," addresses the experience of young person coming to terms with the world.

Preview "The White Room" here.

The White Room premiers on June 22, 2011 at the Cedar Lake Theater. Tickets available at this link.

Jennifer Muller was honored this month with a conference on her work at The University of Santa Barbara. You can enjoy some of the photos and details of the experience online. What a lovely generational tribute, organized with a National Endowment for the Arts grant by Christopher PIlafian, a former Muller | Works dancer. What goes around, comes around.
Be a friend to JMTW at Facebook!

Fragmenting History: Drowning in a Sea of Love Information

Apologies. I’ve been studying up on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for another project, so I am drowning in key words. I feel a little fragmented this morning. I will get back to the poetry soon.

A history lesson. The topic is the mural in Maine. The issue is the erasure of the American Dream. Maybe it costs too much? If we cannot see a thing, we may not dare to try it. A 2008 mural, painted by Maine artist, Judy Taylor, was commissioned by the Maine Department of Labor to celebrate labor, and it was  paid for by Federal tax dollars.  The mural now sits in a warehouse awaiting a less prominent location.

There is, of course, an interesting irony in the locale, not to mention the insult to Frances Perkins, a Maine native and first woman to be named a Cabinet Secretary and the longest serving Secretary of Labor. The story is that Governor LePage is trying to make the state more welcoming to business, so a mural was removed from the Department of Labor.  Well, at least art has not lost its power to offend.

The mural might have experienced only its Warholian 15 minutes of fame had it not been for the war against workers that rages daily in America. Which part of history do you want students to know? So much information comes to us through colliding bits of information these days…This morning on CNN, Dr.  Elizabeth Cohen discussed CAT Scan over-exposures to children in hospital emergency rooms, and Christine Romans remarked how ironic it was that we now “understood” measurements of radiation exposure, but we wouldn’t have known about millisevert had it not been for the incident in Japan…SEO Alert--Transcript key word: Be Weary [sic] of Multiple Cat Scans.

Yes, we are. Weary. But, during the 1950s, we knew what a millisevert was when we went to school. We knew which foods to eat or stay away from. We knew the shelter position. What kind of critical thinking succeeded that knowledge? A half century of implementing nuclear power solutions, an arms race, and Homer Simpson, nuclear plant worker. Our knowledge is constantly fragmenting. A fact swims up and is drowned by a wave of other facts. How do we know what is important? What skills do children need to become educated citizens in the world? Should they learn that a Governor can sacrifice the First Amendment  to the whims of business? Cherry tree politics.

Fragmentation can be a wonderful thing when it exposes the structure of a complicated world. The dissonant chords of Dave Brubeck’s jazz experiment, Some Day My Prince Will Come,  or William Carlos Williams’ exquisite poem, The Descent, or Don MacLean's deliciously allusive soup in The Day the Music Died, or, yes, the structured panels of Judy Taylor's labor-celebrating mural. A good education will show us how to read between the lines and savor.

Helter Skelter. We remember, or we do not. Word has come that Lindsay Lohan may play Sharon Tate in an upcoming film about the murderer, Charles Manson, "Eyes of a Dreamer." There is some entertainment value in that, I suppose. But I also think that we need to think as if our lives depended on it. If we disappear our arts, our values go disappear along with them. Anyone can make a line. A caring society understands when it needs to be crossed.

The Blue Period in Art and Poetry: “You do not play things as they are”

Pablo Picasso painted it…Wallace Stevens wrote about it…David Hockney was inspired to make 20 etchings of it…What is it? A blue guitar. Yesterday I had the pleasure of reveling in guitars at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Guitars and similar stringed instruments, particularly the lute and mandolin, are on display, including a number of blue guitars. The story of guitar-making in the United States is a fascinating tale of immigrant success based on a love sound and beautiful design. Here’s a virtual field trip in case your plans do not include the Big Apple before the Fourth of July:

Here is a link to the Metropolitan Museum exhibit that started me thinking:

http://blog.metmuseum.org/guitarheroes/

If you have an I-phone or I-Pad, you can also download the audio guide through I-tunes.

If you haven’t succumbed to the I-Age, here’s a preview that will whet your appetite

To track the train of inspiration, go to these Picasso Links from the Chicago Art Institute:

The Old Guitarist

Discussion of The Old Guitarist

At the Museum of Modern Art, New York, you can see Picasso’s Three Musicians.

Wallace Stevens’ long poem, “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” will repay your patience. A U Penn professor has excerpted it here:

I hope you are not in such a rush…

In a lovely return from one art to another, David Hockney created 20 etchings in response to Wallace Stevens’ poem, and you can see and read about these here:

Are you an art teacher hoping to integrate these ideas through a critical thinking exercise? Give your students a chance to create individual blue guitars and write about them with the Picasso-Blue Guitar Art Project:

If the coloring book is your tool of choice, here is a link to a page featuring Picasso’s The Old Guitarist, as a blank canvas.

What color is your guitar today? Is your day green? Share your story.

National Poetry Month continues

Here is a link to the "My Favorite Poem Project":

http://www.favoritepoem.org/index.html


Have you posted your favorite one? What is it?

Here is a link to the obituary of Mona Van Duyn, the first woman Poet Laureate of the United States:

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/99999999/FAMOUSIOWANS/603120338


Scroll down. You can see her first lovely poem about a little chick and a mother hen. Then, go to the library and check out one of her books. Read a poem tonight. Open the door!

Poetry

Here it is National Poetry Month. In T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, it’s also “the cruelest month,” perhaps as a jab at an early luminary in English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer, who found it a kinder, more life-giving calendar moment in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. So, what’s happening today?

In the hemisphere where I live and work, people traditionally try to get outside after the heaviness of winter lifts. Snowmen have mostly melted to reveal the greening ground. Some of the news outside is still not pretty, though. You may need what Wallace Stevens called "a mind of winter," in The Snow Man, to process the following items. I wish you well in your thinking as you ponder these outdoor moments.

1) There is so much nuclear-contaminated water at the Fukishima plant that storage space has become a huge issue. Read about how a barge, currently serving as an offshore leisure park,  will store some of it.

2) The Persimmon Place Townhouse Community in Edgewater Florida is seeking to prohibit children from playing outside or in driveways. Games like “tag” will be forbidden because there are no playgrounds and the community surrounds a parking lot. This could be the last gasp for the skateboard and Spaldeens.

Childhood. Spring. Nuclear winter.

The womb may be the only safe place for people. No wonder it is being hijacked by politicians.

Read a poem today. Here’s a link to “[in Just-],” by  e. e. cummings:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=176657

You can read the title whichever way you prefer. I think he wanted to have it both ways.