Work In Progress.....I think

The following is a poem that began when I was a junior in college taking creative writing with Tom O'Grady at Hampden-Sydney. From time to time I have taken it out an tinkered with it. I think it's getting there....but really not sure. Such is poetry, I guess. Let me know what you think.

Sprouse's Farm, After the Rain

Rusty tendrils of honeysuckle
weave their way up the pickets
of the front yard fence fashioned last May.
Sparkling refugees from a late summer shower
hang patiently off of bedraggled yellow petals
as if anticipating their release when I shut
the gate behind me to take my nightly stroll.

Thunder smudges pass on in the distance,
and a calm blue sky intercedes overhead
soft and agreeable in the twilight.
A solitary robin and a few vesper sparrows
stroll the wet firm grass, intently
searching out their evening meal.
Frantic squirrel dashes from tree to tree, and
an orange-tinted cloud ambles distractedly
overhead, as if tethered to the chimney
of the tidy brick bungalow next door.

A gaggle of children go back to their swing sets
for one last game of hide-and-seek,
as I whistle my way down Lucerne Drive --
Tripped over a dog in a choke-chain collar
People were shouting and pushing and saying...
Steam lifts lazily from half-cooled streets,
disrobing that familiar workaday exhaustion.
I wave hello to the old couple on the porch swing
and they nod in return--
lift up their countenance to me.

At the end of the subdivision,
where the permits and concrete curb ran out,
Sprouse’s farm --
the man who wouldn’t sell --
stretches back to the pine forest
beyond the praying mantis limbs
of the high voltage towers
that curve away in the distance.

Windows smashed out and paint peeling,
the old house sits there, remembering --
the wild eyes that turned a shotgun
on the upturned hands, the gingham apron,
then tossed a lantern into the hayloft
before one last trigger pull to the head.

Barbed wire on a half-rotted fence post
and a string of Confederate Jasmine
breaking free-- rambunctious,
tangled messily, but perfect
for the empty pebbled milk glass vase
on the kitchen window sill.

About face -- cracked black asphalt stretches on
as the sun begins its disappearance.
Vagabond children run for home
at their parents’ call;
crickets chirp in response
as the first evening stars begin their watch.

I walk on, no longer whistling,
attempting to outpace
nighttime's descending drop cloth.

small victory......I'll take it

"Oh, yay.....this is fun! It's like solving a riddle!!"

-- seventh-grade student, surprised, upon uncovering a metaphor in Frost's The Pasture

The Father / Daughter Dance

Tonight I had the pleasure of that singular event which all men who have little girls look forward to: the elementary school father / daughter dance -- an indescribable delight which I shall, nonetheless, attempt to describe.

It is an almost surreal sight: a crowded cafeteria, pink streamers and crimson balloons lashed to the stainless steel serving lines; garlands of red paper hearts dangle from the plexiglas sneeze guards, and dimply pink cupids festoon the shiny refrigerated milk carts. The tables are sprinkled with glossy little die-cut hearts and topped with tissue paper centerpieces.

A cadre of grown men wearing ill-fitting suits amble about looking supremely unconfident. With each of them is a princess bedecked in red velvet or pink chiffon, sparkly sequined ballet flats, and a beatific smile that says aren’t I fancy? -- a princess whose hand they gingerly clutch as they search about the room for clues of what to do. Each man and his princess wait in line for chocolate dipped strawberries, for red velvet cake, and they sit at long tables with giddy friends and clink their plastic cups of pink frothy punch.

In the middle of the room, by the DJ with his soundboard and the razzle dazzle disco lights, each of the fathers attempts hesitantly to dance with his little princess. I can throw a ball....I can yell from the sidelines...I can change the oil in my car....but how do I dance with this small vision of perfection and not let her know how terrified I am. He shuffles about uneasily, holding her hands and swinging her arms akimbo in some sort of delirious but indistinct jitterbug to the rhythm of a Katie Perry candyfloss.

And all is fine and awkwardly good until a slow country song with a heartfelt voice comes on. Stop. Pause. Then each commences a clumsy two step with his princess, swaying back and forth, smiling. On goes the song, the heartfelt singer...

“She would always be

playing Cinderella, riding her first bike--
bouncing on the bed, and looking for a pillow fight--
running through the sprinkler with a big Popsicle grin--
dancing with her dad, looking up at him...”

And slowly you see the jaws of grown men clench tight as the words sink in -- as they swing hesitantly to and fro, trying not to cry.

The Truest Truth I Know

(I wrote this poem last year for Valentine's Day, and surely it bears repeating)

From across a smoke-filled bar
I saw you,
index finger summoning,
so I approached
and fell in love
with the girl next
to me.

At an intersection,
two roads converging,
I sat the next day
hands at 10 and 2
and did not know 
the light had changed.

With each thought of you, 
time still stops—
rocking a baby so she would not cry,
searching for shells on a white sand beach,
stringing beads with a silly six-year-old,
knitting a scarf to give to a friend,
sending a 12-year-old off to camp--
Time stops, 
but my heart goes on in certainty.

In the future all I want is you.
If I beckon now,
will you sit with me
and hold my hand when I am old,
a greybeard upon some park bench
mumbling nonsense that only you
are meant to understand.

To Beth, with love

Michael

2010

Ice Capades....

Well, I was a little disappointed in the students’ performance today. We were explicating poetry, and they simply weren’t giving it their best efforts or highest levels of concentration -- not spotting the alliteration, not scanning the meter, not grasping the metaphors. So....I forced every one of them to fully submerge in ice.

Ohhhh, I didn't of course! What do you take me for -- some pedagogical Marquis de Sade?!? Needless to say, if a teacher were to pull such a stunt over student non-performance, said teacher would be F-I-R-E-D and then, most likely, brought up on charges of child abuse. So it was with a fair amount of shock and incredulity when I read the following account in this weekend’s Gwinnett Daily Post:

HOSCHTON Feb. 4 — After a win like this, another round of ice baths

are on the way.

Mill Creek coach Chad Rogers forced every one of his Hawks to fully submerge in ice Thursday after his team was a no-show Wednesday night in a 66-38 loss to Norcross. It was the second of back-to-back region games for Mill Creek, which lost the night before in overtime to Peachtree Ridge.

“We had to get our legs back under us,” Rogers said.

Their legs were there from the start Friday at home against North Gwinnett. The Hawks’ defense kept North’s guards off-balance and their offense found and hit shot after shot in a 68-52 win.

Submerged them in ICE BATHS?!?!?!?! Are you kidding me??!?!?! Ohhhhhh, but it was the high school basketball coach, you say. Well, why didn’tcha say so!! That’s totally okay!! The boys needed a wake-up call, for heavensakes....good for character....that’ll teach ‘em. Hey, after all, we did win the next game!

I’m perpetually astounded at the double standard, it seems, in what is often tacitly approved for the coaches of our young people versus what is acceptable from our teachers of the same young people. Mind you, when a teacher stands in front of his or students and chides them -- okay....berates them -- for poor effort or laziness,that teacher winds up on YouTube quicker than you can say bus call, and is quickly dubbed hysterical, perhaps later even having to explain himself or herself to no less than the likes of Bill-Almighty-O’Reilly. And then they’d be fired.

Coach, on the other hand, gets a pass -- lauded, even, for instilling those slack youths with mettle and backbone. You missed your block; give me twenty! Is it any wonder we can’t keep teachers? Well, who knows, maybe tomorrow if they botch sensory language, I’ll have the students run the stadium steps.

Michael McIntyre

Dacula 2011

On Odes........

This week the students are going to learn how to write an ode.

An ode is a lyric poem, usually written in a formal, heightened style, and usually with a dignified theme. Its purpose is to praise and glorify. Almost all odes use the poetic device of apostrophe, where the speaker addresses something that can't speak back -- and inanimate object or an absent person. Our odes, of course, will be a little out of the ordinary.

Here's two that I wrote as models for the students.

Ode to Bugles

And you, crunchy Bugle,
are the cornucopia of my kitchen cupboard.
The moment I open the bright red box,
your aroma greets me and I’m transported
to the county fair
and the heavenly scent of roasted corn
fills my nostrils.
Greedily I grab for your pointed ends,
careful not to crush them,
like a giant swooping in for a handful
of tiny elves wearing their little cone-shaped hats.

You, Bugle, are the crisp golden delight
of my childhood.
Sometimes I would not even eat you,
until I had worn ten of you as fingernails,
crinkly and wizard-like at the ends of my hands,
only to devour you one by one,
fingertip by delicious fingertip.

Ode to Rice Krispy Treats

Truly, Rice Crispy Treat,
you are a treasure among snacks.
You are the perfect marriage –
a melting of marshmallow
joined with
a crackle of crisped rice –
and molded into golden bricks
of childhood memory.
With you, Rice Crispy Treat,
I see my mother at the stove,
a double boiler filled with a cloud of white,
while I waited nearby
with a wooden spoon
to stir you into existence.

Michael McIntyre
2010

On the Instruction of Cursive, and the Cessation Thereof

Salve omnibus! Si hoc non legere, tune non habetur traditum modi agendi. Pudeat tui!

Hello, everyone! If you cannot read this, then you have not kept up with the traditional way of doing things. You should be ashamed of yourselves!

Or so one might think if one agrees with Darrell Huckaby’s heartfelt supplication in the Gwinnett Daily Post to “protect cursive as part of our culture.” Well, Darrell is right: the instruction of cursive is about to cease, just as once we ceased the instruction of calligraphy, Morse code, and -- pay attention, ladies -- shorthand! Huckaby contends, perhaps presciently, that with the loss of cursive instruction we are “presiding over the decline of civilization” in our society -- good penmanship, he evidently feels, being the hallmark of a stalwart, humane society. So, should cursive handwriting instruction be an element in the education of the modern American student??

I say no. The responsibility of the teacher is not to ensure that the student communicate prettily, with well-formed letters. The responsibility of the teacher is to ensure that the student communicate effectively, with well-formed ideas. I don’t need cursive for that.

Things change, to be sure. Consider this: we don’t walk around these days shouting Ave Maria to every Tom, Dick, and Mary we think highly of. (Whoooooooops, that should be: of whom we think highly -- Lord knows I don’t want to break with accepted traditional rules.) No, Latin is in the dustbin of history -- once universally useful for communicating effectively, but now, not so much.

Modalities of communication change. Quill to inkpen; calligraphy to cursive; fountain pen to typewriter; cursive to helvetica: Tempus fugit. Our job, as teachers and parents, quite frankly, is to keep up with the technology that allows the student to communicate clearly and with the most facility. And for students today, that means on a keyboard -- whether on a computer or a cellphone. This -- like it or not -- is their currency.

Tell it clearly. I don’t care how, as long as your meaning is made known to me.

I’ve seen this in my own classroom. “Tell me about your favorite candy bar.” If I set them loose on the computers, I get 5 paragraphs that I can then help the students revise and make better without too much pain, sorrow, and agony -- even those students that HATE to write. With a solely handwritten composition, however, I might get three paragraphs that they are then reluctant to revise in any way simply because, logistically and mechanically, it is just too big of a pain in the butt.

Here’s the dirty little secret of writing instruction: the final copy is secondary. I’m much more concerned with the effort the student expels during the revision process. This is where writers learn to write -- to communicate their ideas clearly and effectively, rather than merely prettily, cursively. I’ll take a sloppily written but well communicated idea any day over a prettily formed but horribly formulated idea any day.

Time once was, to make a snack for munching during the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, we’d break out the biggest stainless steel pot from the cupboard, swirl in a couple tablespoons of Mazola, pour in about half a cup of popping corn from its glass jar, set it upon the electric stove on medium heat, cover it with a lid, shake briskly for about ten minutes, and wait for the magic to happen. Meanwhile, a big glob of butter slowly melted in a jelly jar that we’d placed in a pan of water over low heat. Of course, no one today in their his or her right mind would suffer such laborious tomfoolery. Put the little packet in the Nuker (this side up!) and hit the damn POPCORN button!

I teach language arts, for heaven’s sake! You’d think I’d be on the side of this argument hollering for quill pens and ink pots. But I’m not. I mean, when was the last time any of us read a newspaper in cursive? Or a magazine? Or a book? Nothing is done in cursive, save for signatures -- and even those are becoming for the most part obsolete. That slurry of garbled slashes you scribe with the little plastic pen at the credit card reader -- you call that a signature?!?!?

Each teacher has about 180 hours to make sure students know what they need to know in each content area. 7 ½ days, that’s about it. Instructional time is indeed the bugaboo. Yes, I know that many will say that we teachers are simply cramming into the students the bits they will need to know for the end of the year standardized tests. But we’re not. As Huckaby himself explains, the goal of most teachers is to “enrich students’ education and teach them to think, to solve problems and to love learning.” This is all any teacher really wants to do. Yes, some teachers do it better than others, but -- to be sure -- cursive is not their secret weapon.

Many obsess that in discontinuing the instruction of cursive writing, we are thereby ushering in its obsolescence. So be it. Sure, the monasteries stopped teaching the friars how to create illuminated manuscripts in the scriptoria. Well.......that’s because the printing press came around. Can you imagine what the consequences would have been in the 1770s if John Dunlop had said: “Oh, my...we can’t quickly print out hundreds of copies of that declaration; we need to write it out longhand!”

Passions about cursive are totally understandable. Yes, we remember the slates with the special lines, and the difficult G, and how am I ever going to make that twisty, curvy lower case Z. To be sure, Darrell Huckaby makes a passionate case for the importance of cursive writing -- handwritten notes, good manners, and the continuation of civility in a society that seems, persistently, to be spiralling downwards in the civility department. Southern Living magazine, no less, ran a feature article just last October on the important albeit lost art of handwritten thank you notes.

.

“Dear Mrs. Easterling, thank you ever so much for the beautiful engraved set of julep cups. I was just telling Caleb how badly we needed some if we were ever hoping to have friends over this May. You have truly saved the day!!!”

All this, of course, laid out in meticulously crafted penmanship on fine linen paper from Crane, wrought by a Cross pen or some such instrument with a special nib. Hmmmph!

Regardless, I’m not some techno-geeb who thinks that everyone should walk around with a bluetooth earpiece and communicate solely by text message. I went to a 200 something-year-old college and actually learned Greek, Latin, and a took a course called Western Man, precious and antiquated though it may sound. For godsakes, I wear a tie most days! True, we need civility, and I like a handwritten note as much as the next favor-currying-CEO or debutante. It is not, however, going to make our students smarter or better adults.

Darrel Huckaby does have this right: cursive is an art. Regretably, though, just as I don’t have 10 weeks to teach little Johnny or Suzy the nuances of Impressionist pointillism, I don’t have the time to teach them cursive either. Plain and simple -- and, yes, it probably stinks. But such is the result of modernity, just as we must suffer the abomination of apples that have been kept miraculously fresh, Rip Van Winkle-like, through a nitrogen-flushed state of suspended animation .

So, regretably, if you want your child to be a gifted scribbler of cursive (and I dolefully recognize that there are far too many parents out there who couldn’t care less) then go get him or her a tutor -- just as you would if you want them to learn to sing, or play the piano, or throw a sick curve ball. They will sign their checks wonderfully! (What’s a check?)

.Perhaps my favorite argument from Mr. Huckaby is this: “And if we don’t teach students how to write cursive, they also won’t know how to read cursive.” To this I simply respond: “And if we don’t teach students how to send Morse Code, they also won’t know how to read Morse Code.” Huckaby also states: “If we lived through it, so should our kids and grandkids.” Hell, yeahh!!! FREEBIRD!!!

Sadly, the institution of cursive handwriting will not save our civilization, any more than did the institution of Petrarchan sonnets -- sad as that may make you. And nobody bitched too mightily when we stopped forcing kids to pump out line after line of iambic madness. And the world kept spinning.

-- Michael McIntyre

Dacula 2011

Irving and Hank

Hammers
pound into wood
and echo off the pine trees
like shotgun blasts
on a dying fall day.
Circular saws
rip and gnaw
at sap-filled two-by-fours,
spewing a reek of
electrified pine tar.

Irving Hoppes, at 76,
gracefully arcs his right arm
through the sawdust riddled air
and sings an old country tune
to the rhythm of his 20 ounce Stanley –
“When the Looooorrrd made meeeee....”

And his cigarette
dances up and down,
inch long ash refusing to fall.
“He made a raaa-aaamblin’ man.”

Hammers pound.
Ash falls.
Saws drone on and on.

“Naawh, dammit. There ain’t been

no good country songs
since ol’ Hank Williams
gone and died.”

Michael McIntyre

begun 1985

revised 2011

Secret Codes

Yesterday in class I was discussing the importance of form in poetry -- how a poem can either be structured or unstructured. And thus came up the issue of codes and secret language.

In high school and college, I had a lot of friends who were learning about the language of computers back then -- FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, and the like. To me, all that stuff they were writing seemed nothing more than arcane squiggles of nonsensical, seemingly random groups of weird words and phrases. But they called this vegetable soup “code,” and they discussed their efforts with excited but bleary-eyed reverence.

“You guys are such geeks,” I told those friends, walking away from their warren of cables and keyboards, confidently assured that this computer craze was little more than a modern day hula hoop.

I, on the other hand, stuck to my type of writing: literary stuff and, more specifically, poetry -- sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, with the occasional foray into the unstructured chaos of free verse. There were, surely, far more people paying attention to what was inside The New Yorker than would ever be interested in what was inside those dimly lit computer screens with their haphazard, blinking rows of strange green letters and ampersands.

And thus, twenty eight years later, there I was-- attempting to explain to a group of twelve to thirteen-year-olds the importance and elegance of structured form poems such as the sonnet and the villanelle and the rondeau. Yesterday it went something like this:

“ABBA...ABBA...CDCDCD....14 lines....ten syllables......”
while, on the other hand,
“A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.….see, you alternate.....”

“So...it’s kinda like a code,” one of my more intrepid students stated questioningly.

“Yes, it’s very much like a code.”

“But what if you don’t know the secret key??“

“Well....most people back then learned the codes in school, or they explained them amongst themselves. Kind of like you guys do for Cheat Codes with Call of Duty.”

“Those aren’t a secret. Those are all online,” ring out ten voices in derisive unison. “You just have to Google ‘em.”

“Well, regardless....sonnets are indeed like a code, and I’ll explain how it sometimes helps you understand what the poet is trying to say. But also, the special code was there to help people remember the poems when they recited them out loud at parties.”

“WHAAAT?!?!??!?!?” ring out twenty voices this time in hysterical unison. “Are you crazy?!?!?! Who would say any o’this stuff at a party?!??!!?!?”

“Yes, I know, we wouldn’t do that today. But once upon a time, people would read these poems just to simply entertain themselves -- for enjoyment.”

“Ohhhh, that’s crazy!” exclaimed one leader of the pack. “I would never read one of these for entertainment, even if I did have the secret code!!”

Nods in agreement, giggles, all around. Clearly, this lesson was going to be nonsense.

“Well...I think I would,” one lone voice piped in.

And that, sometimes, is about the best you can hope for in seventh grade language arts.

Emily, I Have Read You

Yes I have sat alone
in an empty room.
Yes I have seen the sunrise
explode across the horizon.
Yes I have heard the crickets
scream secrets at each other
on hot summer days when birds
stayed home and wouldn’t fly.
I too have walked the forest
with dogwoods blooming bright,
pink petals flashing against
their shining cloak of green.
I have snapped a million twigs
from a thousand maple trees
and have smelled the musky sap
that wanders through the boughs.
I have tromped of blindly
down paths foot-high with drying leaves
and have wondered at the music
as they crunch beneath my feet,
a crowd of cymbals crashing in my ears.
I have tried to read the road map
of the cloudless azure sky;
I have tried to find the travel logs
of the silent listless stars
careening through their crowded void;
I have watched the ocean never stop.
I have stopped and scratched my brow
a hundred times at all these things,
but in the end can only smile
and touch, and smell, and hear,
and see some more of what there is.
And that is all.

Michael McIntyre
Hampden-Sydney 1986