Poetrics and Teaching at 8 a.m.

I started my first day of teaching for my second summer session. Unlike the first one, however, this one will be a pain in the ass stricly because I will have to teach at 8 am five days a week for six weeks. That is just inhuman and unnecessary punishment for both teacher and student. I am teaching two course of Prep Writing....basically a class for those who failed the placement test and need "help." Frankly, I don;t mind that. I don;t discriminate between types of students. They either try hard or they don't. However, and this will sound really stereotypical, but follow me. Out of about 35 students, four were white, three were Asian, and the rest were black. What was interesting about the black percentage is that the majority were female. Now, I know all about the statistics of education and those that make up the underachievers and what not, and as horribly ethnocentric as it is, the reality is that minories, for a number of reasons, are less apt to do well in colleges that the majority. The simple explanation comes down to powers of politics and cultural assumptions. Don;t get me wrong, I am neither supporting or agreeing with it, I am simply stating that moreso now than ever I can understand why the stereotype can be true. Is it simply turning the social blind eye to those who don;t fit in the cultural mainstream? Why do minorities have to be marginalized. Even I, who is the last person to be tagged as a minority because I "act" so American, have had to deal with that bullshit. I cannot count how many times I have been in situations where a person who does not know me starts talking very slowly the minute they see me or my name, as if I do not speak the language. Surprise to those who make that mistake when I end up rattling off words that thet can;t even understand. And I don;t do that to show off my linguistic skills, but to prove that this pre-judging steretypical bullshit is just that. It is amazing how detrimental stereotypes are, and I often wonder if certain groups often fall into those stereotypes because they are forced into it. It's tough sometimes to fight the norm and the assumptions. But I tell you what, the last time I had a "remedial" class, I found that they had more common sense and awareness than any of my other classes. Sure they had problems, but they operate on a much more knowing and aware level. Even the priveleged are wholly underpriveleged in many areas.

As I was trying to fall asleep last night I was thinking about the rhetoric of cyberspace and how it allows for "voices" to be heard, and then I thought about the teen angst sites, which are sometimes filled with angst for no apparent reason. There are SO many sites devoted to personal poetry. Now, first of all, poetry is not easy, I understand that. I have written poetry since I was in sixth grade and I would simply not put it out for everyone to see because it is very personal to me. It is my therapy and my emotional vomiting onto a page. I use it to purge, not for people to read. Only two people have ever read my poetry, and while the response has been good, it is no incentive for me to put it out there. Poetry has immense power, for both those who read it and those who write it. I have no problem with those who post their poetry, however, I do have a problem when the poetry is shit. When the words and the phrases are so mediocre and purport to be poetic simply by virtue of their rhyming or phraseology. Poetry is more than rhyming words and writing short phrases. It is both an investment of spirit and heart mixed with a highly acute sense of semantics. I know VERY few people who can move me and make me think with their writing (JeJe and Daniella being two of them). It is not necessarily something that can be learned, but honed. Poetry is as much about self expression as performance art. That being said, the abuse of cyberspace poetical rhetoric (which I call Poetrics, cause I can and all ;b) needs to end. How much of it is wanting to be one of the flock and how much of it is real? People need to think twice about taking pen to paper, and while I am not an expert to be dismissing someone;s need to express themselves on paper, I think that I do have a TAD bit more experience than the average Joe out there flashig their cyberstrokes. I am all for freedom of expression, but my God, try expressing something real and salient, not some assinine juvenile ideal.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 01, 2002 at 9:18 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.