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Like most people, before I learned to read and write, I taught myself to draw. How easy to pick up a crayon, a magic marker, or a pencil, and make something—anything—on the page (or on the living room wall). As children, we confidently draw what we want to see and what we see, as we see it. Our drawings are not wrong, misspelled or illegible—and if they are illegible, it’s often the kind of illegibility that one reads as poetic, abstract, mysterious, and open to interpretation. Thankfully, we don’t need to speak an artist’s national tongue to read his visual work. Everyone is capable of reading a painting by Rothko or a sculpture by Brancusi, sans translation.

Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners -- and I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know."

-Wisława Szymborska from T&W book Illuminations: Great Writers on Writing

In January of last year I began a nonfiction-writing residency at a  high school, here in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.  At an early point during the residency as a teaching artist, I asked my students to explore a memory.  What I meant essentially, when I asked for an exploration, when I asked the students to use or employ their memories, a flash of a memory, a blink or spark from the corridors behind their collective eyes, was supposed to be rather simple.  Pick or choose a moment within an event and use that moment like a flash card.  Put that moment to work as a piece of a scaffold or, as a bone  in the structure of a larger narrative.

From the onset of the residency, my goal was to have the students produce a collection of nonfiction pieces for our year-end anthology.  The idea was to transform a memory from a fact or group of facts into a central thread in a narrative.  I gave them an example, from my own days in high school, from an exceptionally different or perhaps foreign landscape.

Check out our Poem as Big as New York City page for a new lesson on adapting  Big Poem project with your kids! 

See Changing the Face of the Statue of Liberty  for easy ideas to help kids write poems about the special statues and monuments in your community!

Teachers & Writers Magazine Winter Issue, excerpt three
A Kind of Magic: On Reading, Teaching, and Being Inspired by Joe Brainard

This week we are posting an essay by the novelist Rick Moody, the third piece from the magazine's feature on Joe Brainard. Brainard’s book-length poem I Remember has something of a cult following here at T&W. Nearly every one of us has taught an I Remember lesson using Brainard’s work at one time or another. The poem’s spontaneity, playfulness, frankness, generous spirit, and unassuming tone have made fans of readers, writers, and teachers since its publication in the 70s. The publication this year of The Collected Works of Joe Brainard, edited by Ron Padgett (Library of America) prompted us to revisit I Remember in the winter issue ofTeachers & Writers Magazine, where we take a new look at the qualities that have encouraged teaching artists across the country to turn to the work again and again.

Strange, Guileless, Incredibly Moving
by Rick Moody

I came to Joe Brainard relatively late, which is a humbling thing to admit. If you were schooled in the experimental writing of the sixties and seventies, like I was, you believed that experimental writing did certain things, had certain consistent preoccupations. Experimental writing was anti-establishment, it was sexually explicit, it was cynical, it was malevolent, it was concerned with philosophy, it was often comic, and so on. Mostly the writers of this work were white, male, and straight. I read all the canonical writers in the experimental pantheon, and that was a lot (reading all of William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon, for example, can fill a few years). I was a keen student.

And I therefore felt that I had learned all that I had to know about the furthest-out fringes of literary experiment. I already  even  accounted  for  language poetry, and Oulipo, and Stein, all of that stuff. I knew what I knew. Until I went out to dinner one night, ten or twelve years ago, with Paul Auster. We talked about a lot of things we both liked—Beckett, of course, and  Hawthorne, and  then  at  some  point  Paul  said “You’ve never read I Remember? Well, you have to come back to the house, and I’ll show it to you.” So I went back to his house and down into Paul’s library (which is substantial), and he pulled out a copy of I Remember.

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Teachers & Writers Magazine, Winter Issue, excerpt two
A Kind of Magic: On Reading,Teaching, and Being Inspired by Joe Brainard

Last week we shared an appreciation of Joe Brainard by Matthew Burgess. This week we’re posting an essay on Brainard by T&W artist David Andrew Stoler.

Joe Brainard’s book-length poem I Remember has something of a cult following here at T&W. Nearly every one of us has taught an I Remember lesson using Brainard’s work at one time or another. The poem’s spontaneity, playfulness, frankness, generous spirit, and unassuming tone have made fans of readers, writers, and teachers since its publication in the 70s. The publication this year of The Collected Works of Joe Brainard, edited by Ron Padgett (Library of America) prompted us to revisit I Remember in the winter issue of Teachers & Writers Magazine, where we take a new look at the qualities that have encouraged teaching artists across the country to turn to the work again and again.

Like a Key to the Writer’s Mind 
by David Andrew Stoler 

The first few times we saw each other the best we could do was cast wary glances at one another across the busy halls of the college, like people who met at a party long ago. We recognized each other—vaguely—but that was all.

And then one day the elevator door opened, everybody got out, she got on, the door closed. We stood for a moment, staring at our shoes.

“What high school did you go to?” I said. I thought I knew her, but having taught thousands of students over the last decade, I just couldn’t be sure.

“Lincoln,” she said. Somewhere I had never been. I shrugged, and we returned to the intimate, awkward silence of strangers on an elevator.

Then she spoke: “I remember the pretty German girl who stank. You’re the poetry guy. I still have the anthology we made.”

Her name was Jasmine. She had been in the fifth grade when I had taught her at PS 156 in Brownsville, Brooklyn. It had been nearly a decade since, she was now a sophomore in college, and she remembered the very first lesson we had done together: Joe Brainard.

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Teachers & Writers Magazine Winter Issue, excerpt one
A Kind of Magic: On Reading,Teaching,and Being Inspired by Joe Brainard

I Remember has something of a cult following here at T&W. Nearly every one of us has taught an I Remember lesson using Brainard’s work at one time or another. The poem’s spontaneity, playfulness, frankness, generous spirit, and unassuming tone have made fans of readers, writers, and teachers since its publication in the 70s. The publication this year of The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, edited by Ron Padgett (Library of America) prompted us to revisit I Remember in the winter issue of Teachers & Writers Magazine, where we take a new look at the qualities that have encouraged teaching artists across the country to turn to the work again and again. In the coming weeks we’ll post appreciations of Brainard by three writers, excerpted from the magazine's pages.  We start off with poet and T&W teaching artist Matthew Burgess.

 
“Glories Strung Like Beads”: The Queer Brilliance of I Remember
Matthew Burgess

This isn’t the first time I’ve mentioned Eugene. I remember exactly where he sat, second row back, in the seventh-grade class at PS 187. I remember his laser-beam smirk as I read aloud from Joe Brainard’s book, and before I could send the students into their own lists of “I remembers,” Eugene raised his hand: “Why are we doing this? It seems pointless.” I said something about the importance of specific, sensory detail in our writing, but my reply didn’t erase the look on Eugene’s face. I looked down at the book for examples: “I remember the chocolate Easter bunny problem of where to start… I remember rocks you pick up outside that, once inside, you wonder why.” As much as I loved these lines, maybe Eugene had a point?

In that moment, I was unprepared to justify the lesson. I had led the same I Remember exercise countless times, and it always worked wonders. Students listened to excerpts from Brainard’s book with dreamy attention. They often laughed openly in recognition and amusement. People with difficulty writing found a flow while composing their own lists, and they read their memories aloud in speech rhythms that felt authentic, spontaneous, and poetic. Students listened attentively and respectfully to each other’s words, and the classroom grew perceptibly warmer for the experience. Many of you know what I’m talking about. We call them “I remembers,” and they work.  (more...)

Let There be Joy

by Gabrielle

Instead of soil
let there be an amusement park
Instead of sadness
let there be joy
Instead of depression
let there be a big heart
instead of darkness
let there be a tower to Planka
Instead of broken glass
let there be tall trees to the moon
Instead of hollow ground
Let there be an elevator to
the clouds
Instead of disappointment
Let there be my great grandma
looking at me from the sky

A Letter from the T&W Staff

Teachers & Writers Collaborative is grateful to the individuals and institutions whose generosity makes our programs and publications possible. Recent supporters of our work include the following. (more...)

It is fairly safe to say that not every student is immediately open to poetry.  Especially at first.  We’ve all had the experience of coming into a new classroom and, after explaining the basic tenet of most poetry residencies – writing and reading poetry – receiving blank stares or less than enthusiastic responses.

One effective way to hook students’ attention and interest is to listen to poets read their work or watch poets perform, not only on that first day, but throughout the residency.  And thanks to the Internet and modern technology, it is now relatively easy to do that in the classroom, even when an author visit is not possible.

Charles R. Smith’s “Allow Me to Introduce Myself” is full of rhythm and musicality as he describes his abilities on the basketball court.  Students literally dance in their seats listening to it and want to hear it again and again.  It’s a great example of the use of hyperbole, description and show don’t tell.        

Writer and actor Daniel Beaty’s piece “Knock, Knock” details his experience growing up with a father who was in prison for most of Beaty’s childhood.  Not only is the piece itself powerful, but Beaty’s performance of his monologue is completely engaging and inspiring.

By starting off with an activity that students most likely do in their spare time—listen to music, watch videos—it can help demystify poetry and make it more accessible, especially for reluctant readers and writers.  It truly brings the poet’s words to life, right there in the classroom, in a way that is otherwise impossible to replicate.  This also models for students the significance of reading their own work out loud.  How the best medium for their words, their stories, their voice is actually themselves.

-Susan Buttenwieser

Susan Buttenwieser is a prose writer and T&W teaching artist.  To read more about Susan, go here.

Check out our Poem as Big as New York City page for a new lesson and new poem relating to the book! 

The Origins Poems lesson idea helps kids break down a place or a thing by tracing it back to its origins. It's a great way to work with kids to animate your city!

We've also added an additional poem by 7th-grade Brianna who writes about where she's from.