The Joy of Teaching

I am so knocked out by the talent of my former students!

Faye Rapoport DesPres's lovely, wise essay, "Up to Nothing," appears in the Summer 2010 issue of Hamilton Stone Review.  Anyone who's ever cared for an elderly relative will resonate to the narrator's attempt to reconnect with her husband on a hiking trip--while dealing with the fact that they've left behind his mother, who doesn't want to be left. 

Faye's essay "Forty-Six," which examines the narrator's feelings about the loss of youth, also just appeared in the marvelous online journal Ascent.  Congratulations, Faye!  These must be heady days for you. 

It was my privilege to work with Faye when I taught at Pine Manor College in Boston, and I hear that Pine Manor MFA student Jim Kennedy's beautiful, beautiful essay "End of the Line" was a finalist in a contest at Creative Nonfiction and will soon be published in an issue of that journal. 

Graduate Faye Snider's lovely essay "Goldie's Gold" was accepted recently by Alimentum, and if you're a foodie and don't know about that journal, you should definitely check it out.  Hurray, Faye!  I look forward to reading "Goldie's Gold" again. 

By the way, I learned that Pine Manor is now offering fellowships and need-based scholarships, and I think that's kind of rare for a low-res program, so if you've considered pursuing an MFA and money has been an obstacle, you might want to check out their program.  I'm no longer teaching at Pine Manor, but I love the people there and think they've got a great thing going--which is obvious from the success of their graduates!

Here in the Ph.D. program at UNL, Tom Coakley, an active-duty military officer, wrote an essay, which appeared in Fourth Genre 12:1, that contends with the impossibility of describing/critiquing things that are classified.  (Most of us worry about what our mothers will think if we publish this or that.  Tom worries about being court-martialed.)  His Fourth Genre essay, "How to Speak about the Secret Desert Wars," is brilliant, and if you can lay your hands on it, it will knock you out.  It's incisive, critical, authoritative, experimental, beautifully written.  He makes art out of a hell that should never have been.

The lovely John Chávez had 3 poems in Issue 5 of Palabra.  Here's one I love:

Just North of Nowhere

There is only one heart in my body, have mercy on me.
--Franz Wright

Often the changes one yearns for,
one has to suffer.  Unless,
waiting near the undershade, the elderberry,
the aster, etc.,
     the world is close to blooming,
heart-drawn in minor notes, tuned to the open sun.

Then, how simple to assemble it all (the breaks
in the human vessel).

Like a boy gripping rain on white branches,
you will build

                     a reliquary in your chest.
Fill it with two watts of light.

Once filled, the moon will exit like a lullaby
          from your humming rib cage's hollow.
There you will find a heart,
& waiting nightly you will sing it to sleep.

I like the way it moves so fluidly among modes prophetic, imperative, even elegiac--and casual, too ("etc.").  John's vision is both tender and clear-sighted. 

Aside from publishing his own work, John is actually already in the process of editing (with Carmen Giménez Smith) a collection of Latina/o writing that explores where the field is moving now.  So ambitious!

What is wonderful is when you can feel it a genuine honor to work with your students:  when you can admire them and learn from them as well as offer what you have.  I love teaching.  It is a gift.