michaeljarmer

#5: Friday Irony

I know I said I wanted to take a break from writing about teaching, but today was kind of a frustrating day and I couldn’t help myself. This is a poem called a cinquain, apparently, because the stanza or stanzas are all 5 lines long. The form also has to follow a specific syllabic countContinue reading “#5: Friday Irony”

#4: The American Teenager Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters

The American Teenager Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters Untitled (Wang Wei, translated by David Hinton) You just came from my old village so you know all about village affairs. When you left, outside my window, was it in bloom—that winter plum? What the hell? What village affairs? Who left? Why did he leave? Where’d heContinue reading “#4: The American Teenager Reads the Ancient Chinese Masters”

#3: Self Censorship and the Creative Writer (You Can’t Say That)

I hate it. I wish it were not true, but whenever I have penned something delicious or exciting or in some way daring or brave, a series of questions begin nagging my monkey mind: What will my students think of that? How will my mother react? Will my brother disown me? Will my wife want me reading thisContinue reading “#3: Self Censorship and the Creative Writer (You Can’t Say That)”

#2: Lies My Presidents Told Me

In keeping with the April Fools theme, and in a sideways response to today’s prompt on the National Poetry Writing Month website, I offer poem number two for your consideration: Lies My Presidents Told Me I did not sleep with that woman, while, technically a lie, can also be seen as the truth, as itContinue reading “#2: Lies My Presidents Told Me”

#1: April Fools

What follows is the first poem of thirty I plan to write to celebrate National Poetry Month, a poem for every day in April. Let’s begin, appropriately enough, with a poem about the significance of April the first, a strange little holiday if there ever was one. The composition part went pretty smoothly, but here’sContinue reading “#1: April Fools”

It’s April: National Poetry Writing Month!

Wasn’t it T.S. Eliot who wrote that April is the cruelest month? Of course it was; it’s the first line, and perhaps the most famous line* from The Wasteland. What’s so cruel about April, T.S. Eliot? He must have known something about National Poetry Writing Month. But there is something considerably less cruel in my estimationContinue reading “It’s April: National Poetry Writing Month!”

Reading With My Boy On Easter Eve

It was a first, a first on this Easter Eve afternoon. Sure, we’ve read to our son at bedtime almost every night of the week since birth, but this was the first time ever, on this warmest and sunniest day of the year thus far, that my son and I were to sit down together,Continue reading “Reading With My Boy On Easter Eve”

Combustion Deconstruction: Some Musings on the Fate of a First Novel

I started writing my first novel when I was, perhaps, 28 years old, I finished it coming out of an MFA program when I was 32, revised it when I was 35, began a long, demoralizing, tedious, and ultimately unsuccessful agent search, and then, when I was 40, I put the novel in the proverbialContinue reading “Combustion Deconstruction: Some Musings on the Fate of a First Novel”

Of Being Tired of Writing About Teaching

I think, at least for now, I’ve exhausted my brain and my “pen” regarding teaching, issues of public schooling, educational crisis, education reform. I know I will come back to it. It’s inevitable. But for the time being I feel like anything I have to say now will be a repeat of something I haveContinue reading “Of Being Tired of Writing About Teaching”

Of a Long Teacher Work Day on which Only a Third of the Work Gets Done

Today we were given a teacher work day on this last day before spring break. Awesome for students because they get an extra day off. Awesome for teachers, at least in our district, because the work day didn’t even fall at the end of a grading period, but rather, a couple of weeks before. SoContinue reading “Of a Long Teacher Work Day on which Only a Third of the Work Gets Done”