April 2020 – michael jarmer

#374: Ode for a Colleague Leaving

You are a force of nature, a force to be reckoned with in the best possible way; students say they are afraid of you and yet they love you, clearly. What they fear, actually, is your disappointment, not your wrath; although, to be fair, you can be wrathful– I’ve seen it with my own eyes;Continue reading “#374: Ode for a Colleague Leaving”

#373: A Prose Poem Meditation on the Penultimate Day of National Poetry Month by the American English Teacher in His Potentially Penultimate Professional Year, Ending in a Rhyming Couplet, II

Last year on April 29 I wrote a poem with this same title, hence, the Roman numeral two punctuating its conclusion. Let this be the second part of a prose poem meditation on the penultimate day of National Poetry Month by the American English Teacher in his potentially penultimate professional year, ending in a rhymingContinue reading “#373: A Prose Poem Meditation on the Penultimate Day of National Poetry Month by the American English Teacher in His Potentially Penultimate Professional Year, Ending in a Rhyming Couplet, II”

#372: Day 28 Hummingbird Haiku

My sophomores, under the gentle tutelage of a wonderfully gifted student teacher, are distance learning about imagery, beyond the sort of rudimentary understanding that imagery is language that appeals to the senses, into a deeper knowledge that imagery plays on both the intellect and the emotions, that it is associative, that it often works bestContinue reading “#372: Day 28 Hummingbird Haiku”

#371: Monday Review

I’d give it two stars. I’d say that so far, its performance has been uneven, like it can’t decide really what it wants to be. Heavy rain early, then cloudy, then a clearing, dry enough for a dog walk, but too damn warm. Muggy, almost. Monday has forgotten that we live in the PacificContinue reading “#371: Monday Review”

#369: Some Kind of Hymn

(after James Schuyler and for Cresslyn Clay) Moss grows on the roofs of the garage and the woodshed and the weather is shitty, again. This April, it’s unseasonably warm and dry with spells that go on for days of rain and clouds, gray spells. We’re in the middle of one of those. We sit atContinue reading “#369: Some Kind of Hymn”

#368: It’s Friday

It’s Friday at the end of the second weirdest teaching week in history and I’m not going to write a poem about a piece of fruit. In my resistance to writing about fruit, in addition to a number of diversions today, I almost neglected to write a poem at all. My impulse today was toContinue reading “#368: It’s Friday”

#367: For Its Own Sake

Here’s a question. What motivates a person to do a thing, especially a thing that is purported to be good for a person–let’s say, eat right, exercise, learn an instrument, learn an instrument well, dance, sing, paint, or act well, and while we’re at it, add into the mix all the academic endeavors: write well, readContinue reading “#367: For Its Own Sake”

#366: Ghost School

I saw two human beings in this building that, on a typical school day, houses thirteen-hundred. I saw our head secretary, Dee, spending her Wednesdays from eight to noon on site, and the head custodian, Dan, spending a couple hours a day doing odd jobs until the crew can come back in May, he hears,Continue reading “#366: Ghost School”

#365: Staff Meeting in a Google Hangout

Our principal postponed the official and virtual staff meeting until Thursday, expecting new information about distance learning to come in after our regularly scheduled Tuesday morning Hangout. He held the Tuesday meeting open, though, made it voluntary, invited us to attend for mostly social reasons. I’m guessing about 30 of us showed up at thatContinue reading “#365: Staff Meeting in a Google Hangout”