Friday poetry challenge: put it in park

So I'm sitting in my Volvo in a busy grocery-store parking lot on a damp, cold, gray afternoon, and my car won't start. I turn the key: nothing. Not so much as a click. Oops, looks like I left the lights on...and the radio...and the seat-warmers. Okay, I've grown accustomed to being pretty stupid in the afternoon, but this is ridiculous. Now I'm sitting in the dark in a car with no lights or heat or power and I don't even have the energy to call AAA. Tell you what: I'll just sit back and let the car make the call.

Yes: for a few hours yesterday afternoon, both my car and I were suffering from dead batteries. But this is not the first time I have resembled my car; in fact, people are always commenting about how well my car suits me. "It looks like an English professor's car," they say. It's not at all flashy, just stodgy and dependable, kind of battered and showing some signs of age, but it just keeps running (except when some idiot overtaxes the system and pulls the plug). More than any other car I've ever owned, this car seems like an extension of myself:

My car 'n' me
we both agree
it's time to take a nap;
we're sitting still
without the will
to make those spark-plugs zap.

My jumper cables
are not able
to set the gears in motion,
so we'll just park
without a spark,
avoiding all commotion.

Thanks to the efforts of a spouse who knows how to replace a battery, my car and I are both functioning properly today--a little slow, a little sluggish, but still puttering along.

And poetrying along too. Your challenge today is to write verse of any sort about a time when you've been stuck in park--with or without a car.

Multimedia musings

I'm teaching creative nonfiction next semester (hurrah!) and some time ago I decided to bring that class into the 21st century by requiring students to produce a multimedia essay. Now I have to figure out what that means and how it will work, and I need help.

Nonfiction writing abounds beyond paper publication--on blogs, in radio essays, in live performance--so I want my students to create essays employing some medium beyond print, but I don't want to put too many restrictions on their creations or teach them all some specific technology that will soon be obsolete. Let them go with what they know: pair their wonderful words with photographs and hyperlinks on a web page, for instance, or produce a radio essay accompanied by appropriate sounds.

The multimedia essay will be due fairly late in the semester, and I wonder whether I ought to allow them to re-purpose an essay written earlier or insist that they write something new. (That will depend partly on how the schedule looks, and I'm not ready to make that call yet.) I also want them to present their multimedia essays to their peers, perhaps in an evening event open to the public. Food will be involved, of course.

I realize, though, that I'll need to show students some examples demonstrating how outstanding writing can be combined effectively with other media; I have a few examples in mind, but I'd like more variety, so I welcome suggestions. I also welcome suggestions from anyone who has tried this kind of assignment before. What sorts of problems might arise? What gripes might I hear? How in the world will I grade the finished product?

Writing in this medium is a two-way street. I've done my part: now it's up to you.

Malicious menu

Evidence that chemotherapy has disabled my taste buds:
1. I over-season the sweet and sour cabbage because I can't taste the vinegar.
2. Sausage pizza has no detectable flavor.
3. Texture is the only real difference between butter and peanut butter.

Foods that still taste good anyway:
1. Chocolate.
2. Ginger ale. (Or ginger anything.)
3. Key lime yogurt.
4. Pineapple.

Foods I normally love that now make me want to spit them out:
1. Cheese.
2. Swiss chard.
3. Mandarin oranges.
4. Chicken soup.

Foods I don't ever want to see again after I'm done with chemotherapy:
1. Plain mashed potatoes. (Especially in the middle of the night.)
2. Scrambled eggs.
3. Dry toast.

Foods I'd like to gorge on after my digestive system figures out how to function again:
1. Salad.
2. Sushi.
3. Jalapeno poppers.
4. Cheesecake.

Evidence that God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life.
1. I'm still eating.
2. Did I mention chocolate?

Sweet (gum) dreams

On the way home from church this morning I turned to my husband totally out of the blue and blurted out, "I want a sweet gum tree."

At that point any normal husband would have pointed out that we already have more than enough trees and that even if we could afford to buy a new tree, we have no real need for a tree that will drop annoying pods all over the place. But who ever said my husband was normal?

"Why do you want a sweet gum tree?" he asked.

"I like the shape of the leaves," I said, "and they turn a really pretty red in the fall."

Neither of those are particularly good reasons to invest the kind of time and money required to plant a new tree, but nevertheless he nodded and admitted that he has always appreciated the stately shape of the sweet gum--but where would we put it?

At that point he steered the Volvo right off the driveway and took a wide, meandering loop around the meadow so we could visualize the effect of a mature sweet gum tree near the bluff or in front of the apartment or on the slope above the garden. "It won't matter if pods fall here," he pointed out, "because they'll just blend in with all the other falling stuff."

It was for moments like this, I think, that I married the guy--so that one day when I shared a sweet-gum dream, he would find a way to make it grow.

Survival skills

Red-bellied woodpeckers keep visiting the feeder out front this morning, one plump and another a little skinnier. Before swooping down to peck at seeds, they perch first in a nearby maple tree that still holds on to a few bright yellow leaves. Up the hill oak saplings hold tight to brown-orange leaves, but all the other trees stand naked, ready for winter.

I'll let the sun come up a little higher before I venture out on a walk this morning. It's cold out there! I know 30 degrees is mild compared to what we might see in a few weeks, but if I wait an hour or two, I won't have to bundle up quite so much. I haven't walked much this week, thanks to persistent shortness of breath plus too many afternoon meetings, but this morning I feel good and strong and ready to put my feet through their paces--a little later.

I did take an unusual walk last night: one lap around the track at the college's Relay for Life, the Survivor's Lap they call it. I walked alongside a gentleman who was diagnosed with stage III malignant melanoma nine years ago and a two-year-old girl who has been battling cancer most of her life. I was the featured speaker for the event, which made me more nervous than any other talk I've ever delivered. There's nothing particularly intimidating about an audience of students, faculty, and staff, but instead of babbling about my area of academic expertise, I talked about an experience that defies my expertise and requires me to admit limitations. "Tell us about your journey" was the only guidance the organizers gave me, so I told them about my journey, and then I set out on a short journey around the track. I survived.

This morning my woodpeckers show how to survive the chill by filling themselves with black oil sunflower seed, while maple trees demonstrate a different approach to survival: drop everything and go dormant. I think I'll survive the winter by walking--alongside anyone else I can persuade to join me on my journey.

Friday poetry challenge: found poetry

Two events this week have made me think about the future of written communication. First, the college e-mail server was out of commission for nearly 36 hours, leading to widespread panic among people incapable of imagining other methods of communicating; and second, I read A Wild Perfection: Selected Letters of James Wright, which offers a reminder of the depth and breadth of information that ordinary people once regularly conveyed by means of letters. I love the way the poet's voice comes through in even the most mundane passages, transforming ordinary events into luminous lyrical moments.

Collections of letters provide a quirky but compelling glimpse into the lives of long-dead authors, but what will happen in the future when the written letter disappears and scholars are left with scattered e-mail messages, Twitter feeds, and Facebook status lines--some corrupted, some deleted, some lost in internet limbo? Ye shall know me by my bytes.

Which is not to say that electronic communication is worthless. Indeed, tweets and e-mails may acquire a poetic compression of expression, as in this brief excerpt from an e-mail message:

Cold enough here
for a cold-weather coat,
which is what I didn't take
when I walked the dog past hail
in those small vales and gullies
in the park beside the library.

Or this brief but colorful Facebook status line:

Sun streaming
through yellow leaves
and the scent
of autumn.

--Both borrowed from private or public messages and simply formatted to look like poetry.

Today's challenge: manipulate a passage from an electronic message to make visible the poetry hiding within the bytes.

Best. (Unwanted.) Excuse. Ever.

After all my griping about stupid excuses yesterday, I found myself this morning whining about my inability to form coherent sentences after 2 in the afternoon. "I have the same problem," said a colleague, "but at least you have a good excuse."

I can't count the number of times I've heard this in the past few months. Friends, colleagues, and even students have been eager to let me off the hook for any number of things--can't stay awake for evening meetings, can't remember to send a birthday card (to my brother! on his 50th birthday!), can't get papers graded as quickly as I used to--because cancer treatment has taken over my life.

I appreciate the fact that lots of people are cutting me some slack, but really: I'm tired of having the world's best excuse. I don't like being the person from whom not much can be expected, and I fear that I'll have trouble shaking off that label. Please, may I have my real life back?

Maybe eBay is the answer: "For sale: one all-purpose excuse, slightly used. One size fits all. Comes with bonus sack of sympathy and get-out-of-jail-free card."

I'll have to list the side effects in very small print, though, or no one will ever take that excuse off my hands.

Worst. Excuse. Ever.

First thing this morning a student walked in my office (proof positive that he knows how to find me!) and demanded an extension on a paper due today. Why? Because the college's e-mail server was down all day yesterday so he couldn't revise his paper.

Now I had e-mailed extensive comments on all these drafts last Friday so students could work on them over the weekend, but when I asked him why he hadn't looked at my comments before yesterday, he said, "Because I didn't know the e-mail would go down."

When I pointed out that, despite the lack of e-mail, we still had access to the internet, the library research databases, and that old-fashioned tried-and-true telephone, he said, "I didn't know how to reach you."

And when I pointed out that three of his classmates facing the same dilemma had actually walked to my office to ask me to print out copies of their drafts with my comments inserted, which I was happy to do, he gave me an excuse that ranks right up there with the worst ever: "I'm a lot busier than other people in the class."

And then when he pugnaciously demanded to know what I plan to do about the situation, I said, "If you don't turn in your paper, I plan to give you a 0. What do you plan to do about it?"

I probably should have told him that I'm a lot busier than other people in the class...way too busy to respond to such ridiculous demands.

Instant Tranquility Kit

Yesterday's mail brought me an Instant Tranquility Kit, including a tea bag, an origami crane, a picture of a Japanese tea house, and a piece of sashimi.

Of course it's not real sashimi. Only a fool would send real sashimi parcel post. Besides, sashimi is strictly off limits for anyone with a weakened immune system.

This is a piece of plastic wind-up sashimi on wheels, perhaps the finest piece of plastic wind-up sashimi on wheels I have ever encountered. Wind it up and it goes whirling around the way real sashimi never does. In fact, if a piece of real sashimi moved so much as a muscle, you'd hear me screaming in Schenectady.

So this morning while the entire campus is in a tizzy over the temporary intransigence of our malfunctioning e-mail server, I am sitting in my office, drinking tea, gazing at a Japanese tea house in the company of an origami crane, and watching a piece of plastic wind-up sashimi skitter around on the desk top, and I am content.

Playing possum

I would be significantly more alert today if my dog were a better communicator--or if I had a handy phrase book to help translate her urgent messages.

All dogs, of course, occasionally feel the need to convey urgent messages in the middle of the night. Since Hopeful lives outdoors, her communiques generally involve interlopers: deer chomping on the sweet potatoes, raccoons ravaging the corn. She'll bark for a little while until the threat dissipates, and then she'll stop. It's easy to ignore that kind of message.

Last night, though, she didn't stop--and she had help, too. Her best dogfriend, Duke, was over for a visit, and even though he's a gimpy old gentleman incapable of pursuing whatever is causing the disturbance, he does like to get his barks in. Late last night (or early this morning) Hopeful and Duke set up a message relay team: we could hear Hopeful's high-pitched yaps in the distance and Duke's deep growly rowlfs right outside our bedroom window.

And they just wouldn't quit.

It's probably nothing, we agreed. Probably just some dumb critter causing all this ruckus. Unlikely to be a human intruder way down by the creek, right? Probably nothing.

But they just kept barking.

Finally, the hubby threw on some clothes, grabbed a flashlight, and wandered out to see why the dogs were dialling 911. Down by the creek he found Hopeful barking her fool head off at what at first appeared to be an inert lump of road kill.

On closer inspection it turned out to be a possum...playing possum.

Garry grabbed a stick and flicked the possum into the creek, where it emerged from its stupor just long enough to hustle back onto dry land--and then it curled up again and played dead. He tried to convince Hopeful that the possum posed no real threat to anyone, but it's difficult to deter a dog on a mission, no matter how foolhardy that mission might be.

Hopeful kept barking. Duke kept relaying Hopeful's message right into our bedroom window. And the possum kept playing possum.

I envied the possum's ability to disregard the dogs' messages, and I really wanted to emulate the possum's ability to assume a slumber so deep it resembled death. But instead of playing possum, I just had to lie there and listen while the dogs told me all about it.

And now I'm telling you. Mission accomplished.

Raising an eyebrow

After my penultimate round of chemotherapy, I am pleased to report that I still have eyebrows. They're faint and vestigial, a mere shadow of the bushy Cindy Crawford brows I brought into the world, but if the need should arise to raise an eyebrow today, I am equipped to do so.

I still have a little hair on my arms too but not on my legs. I wonder why? Eyebrows and arms: aside from that, I'm as bald as a newborn baby's butt. My fingernails haven't fallen off but they've developed ridges and they look bruised, as if they've been attacked by a mad hammerer.

My final round of chemotherapy is scheduled for Nov. 24, so I'll feel rotten on Thanksgiving but I'll be overflowing with thankfulness for finally being done with treatment. Today I feel okay. Everything tastes like metal and I have to stop to catch my breath when I walk across the room, but that's pretty normal. Normal for now, anyway.

My doctor tells me that cancer patients generally take six to nine months to get back to normal after chemotherapy, or back to whatever counts as normal by then. So now I'm looking forward to a whole new type of normal, the New New Normal. It'll be a whole new life and I'm ready for it, even if it requires me to raise an eyebrow.

Friday poetry challenge: advice for writers

Today Bardiac offers up A Poem for Grading (read it here), quite appropriate considering that my primary task today and tomorrow is to respond to eight more freshman drafts, a dozen honors humor theory papers, and 24 postcolonial essays. I'm thinking about making it more interesting by writing all my comments on papers in verse.

A quatrain on comma splices:

To join complete sentences
requires strong glue.
Semicolons work wonders,
but commas won't do.

A little moody blues:

When you write about conditions contrary to fact
Oh, when you write about conditions contrary to fact
Yes, when you write about conditions contrary to fact
If I were you, dude,
I'd choose the subjunctive mood.

A transitional haiku:

Wide chasms between
paragraphs? Build a bridge to
keep me from falling.

Now it's your turn: verse of any kind providing advice to writers of any kind.

Stephen King Out-Thurbers Thurber

Stephen King in the New Yorker? The Nov. 2 issue features his story "Premium Harmony," which is simply a hoot from beginning to end. The story contains significant echoes of "A Couple of Hamburgers," the James Thurber story in which an unhappy couple rehashes one old tired argument after another during a road trip through Connecticut. King's story includes more serious disaster but still remains more lighthearted and even gleeful than Thurber's bitter tale. And King's metaphors are fresh and telling:

"He sometimes thinks marriage is like a football game and he's quarterbacking the underdog team. He has to pick his spots. Make short passes."

"Now they argue quite a lot. It's really all the same argument. It has circularity. It is, Ray thinks, like a dog track. When they argue, they're like greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit. You go past the same scenery time after time, but you don't see it. You see the rabbit."

The scenery in King's story is provided by a small Maine town suffering from economic decline, but, like Thurber's story, the entire plot takes place first within a car and then within a small, struggling business. Thurber breaks his story up by taking his couple inside a diner in search of a couple of hamburgers, but the change in location only pushes the eternal argument underground, where it festers for a while before breaking out again back in the car.

King similarly breaks up the road trip with a visit to a small business, and, as in Thurber's story, the husband's appetite is assuaged while the wife's most definitely is not. Thurber ends the story with the wife's self-satisfied knowledge that she will soon win a small victory that will cause pain for both of them, while King's story ends with a scene evoking pain and suffering but also suffused with radiant joy.

James Thurber's writing once defined what was meant by a typical New Yorker story, ranging from the madcap adventure to the gently nostalgic memoir to the sour anatomy of the failing relationship that we see in "A Couple of Hamburgers." Stephen King's thrillers seem as far from typical New Yorker fiction as any prose could possibly be; nevertheless, with "Premium Harmony," King evokes the madcap end of Thurber's range, joyously transforming one of Thurber's bitter relationship tales into raucous good fun. Thurber must be rolling over in his grave--rolling on the floor laughing, that is.

Snow birds but no snow (yet)

Juncoes have arrived!

Yes, my eagle-eyed daughter spotted the first of the snow-loving birds yesterday. They generally arrive closer to Thanksgiving, so I suppose this means we can expect an early winter and a harsh one. And sure enough, my daughter lives just over two miles north of here and she drove through snow to get here yesterday. None here so far, but when juncoes arrive, snow is not far behind.

I suppose this puts a little extra urgency into my Winter Preparation To-Do List.

Home office help

Here I am responding to student drafts in my elegant home office. My adorable daughter stopped by to help...by making a warm winter hat.

Make "make it work" work

Not long ago I observed a speech class in which a problem with a video camera delayed the start of speeches, but instead of running around trying to fix the problem, the professor sat on the sidelines smiling while the students figured it out. "They know they're responsible for getting the camera set up," she explained, "So they just have to make it work."

What a brilliant idea. I borrowed this approach during my freshman composition class's midterm essay exam. I allowed students to bring laptops to class if they wanted to write their essays that way, but I warned them that I had to have their essays in my possession before I left the class. They could hand me a hard copy or e-mail an electronic copy, but either way, a late paper would be an instant F.

As time was running out, a few students found that they were unable to connect to the wireless network to send me their essays. In the past I might have offered to run around trying to figure out their technological difficulties for them, but not this time. Instead, I followed my colleague's example: I stayed in my seat smiling and said, "Make it work." They did.

Now two of my classes are preparing to give oral presentations in the next couple of weeks, and again, I adopt my colleague's approach: I'm happy to show you how to use the classroom technology and let you in the room to practice your presentation, but when it comes down to the wire, it's up to you to make it work--or have a Plan B in reserve just in case.

It's remarkable how freeing this attitude is...but why did it take me so long to figure out how to make "make it work" work?

Thoughts while scraping frost off windows

Daylight! When was the last time I drove to work in the light? Gotta love that time change. Except soon I'll be driving home in the dark.

Better get a new tiny flashlight for my keyring. Tough to walk up the driveway from the garage in the dark.

Better practice parking the Volvo in the garage. I'll need to work on making that tight turn.

Better make sure the hubby's stuff isn't scattered all over my side of the garage. That's what I get for not parking in there all summer long.

Gloves. Must find gloves. And my winter coat--where is it? Did I have it cleaned after last winter? Probably smells like a wet dog. Better check.

Cold car, cold seat, cold fingers--but thank heaven for seat-warmers!

Nothin' for nobody

When our daughter was an infant, we lived in a trailer park tucked behind the seminary where my husband was studying. In that block of decaying trailers constantly threatening to collapse into piles of scrap metal, a group of seminary students and their spouses formed a supportive community--sharing meals, offering rides, gathering on Saturday morning to clear out a clogged septic line. We all helped each other because we all knew how desperately we needed help.

One morning I was in the kitchen eating breakfast when I heard the garbage truck lumbering up the street. My husband had already left for class, so I grabbed our one big bag of trash and prepared to sprint to the curb barefoot and in my PJ's. But when I opened the door, I saw a neighbor walking past, a tall, rangy fellow with an air of the apocalyptic. I called out and asked him to carry my trash to the curb, and he turned to me with fire in his eyes, pointed a long, bony finger in my face, and said, "You never do nothin' for nobody--but I'll do this for you."

It felt like a slap in the face--and two decades later, it still stings. I never do nothin' for nobody? It wasn't true then and I know it's not true now. There are certainly thing I won't do for anybody. Don't ask me to buy a raffle ticket, for instance, no matter how good the cause: I'd rather make a donation and avoid the suspense. And don't ask me to bake a pie for your bake sale. I'll bake cookies or fudge or banana nut bread, but I don't do pies--not for you, not for nobody.

Other than that, I've always tried to be helpful, and I've always hated asking for help. Asking for help means admitting that I need help, and that's a bit daunting--even now, when I really can't get by without a little help from my friends. Worse, though, than asking for help is asking and being refused, which makes those words ring in my ears: "You never do nothin' for nobody!"

It's still not true. I've always tried to help my colleagues whenever I can, from covering their classes when they're absent to covering their butts when they screw up (one of the unwritten duties of a department chair). Even so, this semester as I've struggled to keep teaching through treatment, I've been reluctant to ask for too much help, and I've tried to spread the joy around so I'm not relying too heavily on any one person.

I've gotten rides from a variety of friends, former students, and college staff members, and so far I've asked three different colleagues to cover classes for me. All except one were happy to do so, but naturally I obsess over the one who said no (for a very good reason!). And this week I've been flummoxed in my attempt to find a ride home from chemotherapy next Wednesday. Everyone is really, really busy, which I understand, but each refusal makes it that much harder to ask someone else.

Maybe I'll just walk home. It's only 17 miles. I've walked that far before. Once or twice. Okay, twice--long before chemotherapy became a normal part of my life. How hard could it be?

It could be really, really hard, especially now that the weather has turned cold and wet. I guess I'd better keep asking for help and keep hoping I won't hear that apocalyptic voice crying in the wilderness: "You never do nothin' for nobody--but I'll do this for you."

A radical sleep-ectomy

Lately I'm spending way too much time either trying to stay awake or trying to sleep. I wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and can't get back to sleep, and I try not to get up but I'm bursting with energy that can't be contained under the covers so eventually I get up and get to work, and I keep working steadily until the middle of the afternoon, when it feels as if someone has pulled the plug.

All I want to do then is take a nap, but sleeping during the day means I won't sleep at night...but not sleeping during the day means I spend the evening fighting to keep my eyes open and eventually losing the battle way too early. If I could stay awake past 9., maybe I'd be able to sleep past 4.

And the time change tonight will only make it worse. I've been awake since 3 this morning and up since around 4:30 (on Saturday! for no good reason!) , and now I'm ready to collapse, but if I give in and drift off too early I'll be awake at 2. This afternoon I downed a few cups of strong black tea just to help me resist a nap, but now it's not even 9:00 and I'm inventing meaningless tasks just to maintain alertness. If I try to read, I'll fall asleep. If I try to write, my syntax stumbles and my brain cells respond with resonant snores. I can fold laundry, but that takes me pretty close to the bed, which looks pretty inviting right now. So I wander around aimlessly taking up mindless tasks and trying to keep my eyes open when all I really want to do is sleep.

Funny, but when I signed all those consent forms at the hospital, I don't recall agreeing to a radical sleep-ectomy. Whom shall I sue?

Friday poetry challenge: Fright Night

When we lived in the middle of town, I used to distribute pencils on Halloween. I know that makes me sound like a total crank, but the kids loved 'em! I would hold out a mug full of brand-new pencils decorated with various sports or movie logos, and they would agonize over which to choose: Browns or Bengals, Ariel or Belle? I never heard one complaint.

No one comes to our door since we moved to the woods, and I don't blame them. It's hard to trick-or-treat on a dark country road where you have to walk a quarter mile between houses, and our driveway is treacherous enough in broad daylight--I'd hate to stumble through the potholes in the dark while wearing a flimsy plastic mask and a cape, especially with coyotes yipping in the distance.

So there will be no trick-or-treat at our house tonight, but I do plan to dress up today as the scariest monster I know:

When strangers, impressed by my glamour,
Request my profession, I stammer,
"I'm an English profess-
Or." They blanch and confess,
"I guess I'd better watch my grammar!"

That's right, folks, I'm armed with a semicolon and I know how to use it!

Ooh, scary.

Now it's your turn: if you're planning to frighten anyone today or to be frightened, put it into verse and share it with the rest of us.