English gone wild!

Welcome to the Zany English Teacher blog! I created this blog, initially at least, to help guide me down the path toward completing my first multi-genre research paper (heretofore known as MGRP) for my "So you wanna teach English" course at GMU with Dr. Horvath. I stole the idea of doing a blog from a classmate, so thank you, classmate! This will be a far more productive forum for me than carting around a notebook and pen.

For my MGRP topic, I have chosen "Poetry Phobia" and how a student's fear of poetry affects their ability to read, enjoy, and write the medium. After Dr. Horvath approved the topic, I ran up to my bedroom, ripped the tape off an un-stored box of books, and dug like a hungry chipmunk in winter until I pulled out one of my all-time favorite poet's (I dug out his book, not him).

Martin Espada. Born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents, Martin teaches primarily at UMASS Amherst and was once a good friend's poetry teacher at Emerson College in Boston. Following is a picture of Martin, and a picture of a copy of my favorite of his books, Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands. He autographed my copy to me, writing simply, "To Laura, Companera writer, love, Martin."



Following is a Martin poem I am considering using in my MGRP:

Federico's Ghost

The story is
that whole families of fruitpickers
still crept between the furrows
of the field at dusk,
when for reasons of whiskey or whatever
the cropduster plane sprayed anyway,
floating a pesticide drizzle
over the pickers
who thrashed like dark birds
in a glistening white net,
except for Federico,
a skinny boy who stood apart
in his own green row,
and, knowing the pilot
would not understand in Spanish
that he was the son of a whore,
instead jerked his arm
and thrust an obscene finger.

The pilot understood.
He circled the plane and sprayed again,
watching a fine gauze of poison
drift over the brown bodies
that cowered and scurried on the ground,
and aiming for Federico,
leaving the skin beneath his shirt
wet and blistered,
but still pumping his finger at the sky.

After Federico died,
rumors at the labor camp
told of tomatoes picked and smashed at night,
growers muttering of vandal children
or communists in camp,
first threatening to call Immigration,
then promising every Sunday off
if only the smashing of tomatoes would stop.

Still tomatoes were picked and squashed
in the dark,
and the old women in camp
said it was Federico,
laboring after sundown
to cool the burns on his arms,
flinging tomatoes
at the cropduster
that hummed like a mosquito
lost in his ear,
and kept his soul awake.

from Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands