I'm not sure if I have what it takes to be a professor. Let me explain. For my intermediate poetry night class, that meets once a week, we have to write a new poem each week, but also workshop 20 of my peers'/poets' poems, as part of our homework. I got my peers' poems last Tuesday and read them a few nights ago. I wanted to throw up after reading most of them. I was so disappointed, especially since we had a month to write them (we actually had to write two poems over winter break, and one was a series of prompts, but we didn't have to workshop that one). I can understand how people want to relax and party over break, but this is an INTERMEDIATE poetry class. I can understand if my peers blow off an intro poetry class or bullshit their way through it or are only taking it to get an easy A, but it's a poetry class for poets! My peers should be serious about their writing and dedicated to not turning in garbage. And, the most shocking thing about reading those 20 poems a few nights ago was that they were worse than the poems I had to read and workshop in my intro poetry class, and that includes in the beginning of the class. (Actually for that intro poetry class, I was the first to be workshopped, and I put much effort into that first poem partially because I am serious about about my writing, but also because I was subtly trying to set a standard. I wanted my peers to take the class as seriously I was, and for the most part they did.)  

In my other night class, reading prose, a professor I had last quarter handed out two poems, "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche, "Decorum"  by Stephen Dunn  and Nabakov's Good Readers and Good Writers. I'm not going to compare my peers' poems to those by Dunn and Forche, because that would be grossly unfair, but Nabakov points out the three things a writer can be considered: a storyteller, a teacher and an enchanter. I agree with him, and what interested me the most about his view was the writer as a enchanter, magician , etc. None of my peers left me enchanted. Hell, they barely taught me anything. I'm sure my peers have read authors who have left them feeling as their head were chopped off or there spine tingling or as if they had just been kicked in the balls, so they should know what kind of writing that is. Knowing/identfiying is much easier then being able to produce it, though. However none of their poems left me feeling anything except sick, and not like pain in the stomach while reading "River of Names" by Dorothy Allison.

You may be thinking, what the frak does this kid know? My poems may not be enchanting yet, but that is what I'm striving, in all of my writings. I may as well reveal to you the two poems (the former the prompt poem, the latter the free verse my peers will workshop) I turned in:

The Prestige

Ladies and gentlemen, life is one long magic trick.

But I, the Great Provisioner, have no cards up my sleeve.

The best magic trick involves killing one’s self, night after night after night,

and the secret is from a man who harnessed the falls. 

I am telling you the secret that I built my career on.

My pathetic rival never killed himself for three straight weeks to sell out crowd

and only lived half a life.

But, my grasp exceeds your and his wildest imagination. 

Step up on stage, smell this cabinet, try to see through the wood.

This cabinet can murder and give life.

The electricity you will see will strike me and leave me cold.

You will see me, and then you won’t, so it must be magic, right?

No hocus pocus, no Avra Kehdabra, just watch.

My ghost will smell of death, but you’ll be able to see me.

The bewilderedness of the yawl’s imagination will soar.

Then there will be deafening silence, then roaring applause.

And if you could only see below this stage, you would see me dead.

Our Hands

She’s fingering my cuticle

pushing it back, showing me more and

more of my nail. I don’t know what’s worse

her trying to get to get inside me

or her showing me what I don’t want to see. 

Her fingers are strong, from

griping 12 inch neons and

her big palms are calmly,

bleached, but her knuckles raise

like bronzed hills.

Her hand alternates from

looping notes two rows wide

to playing whack a mole

on my crotch, leaving damp

marks on my school belles.

When we walk in the halls

she strangles my hands, as I

try to escape, and she holds on

and puts my fingers in her mouth.

 I feel her tongue on the scar I have

on my middle finger, that slices out

of my nail. I don’t tell how I feel

every taste bud where the stitches

once where.  

I don’t realize I’ve forgotten how

to snap my wrist, or arch my back

or follow through. My repetition wasn’t

as thorough as I thought, and nothing ever

seemed to curve or fall or move again. 

I hadn't looked at my poems since I turned them in. I can now see many areas I can improve, but hopefully my peers feedback will better than their poems. I did see some themes from the 20 poems, and previous classmates' writings that I would like to to list and a  few lines that really made me sick.

~"Menopausal women are fiery hot flashes"...............um, yeah, cpt. obvious, but so
~Not wanting to eat, after getting dumped (one example said tomatoes had no taste, but fruits then tasted toxic)
~lines about cigarettes
~"O saintly Muse?" grrrrr
~"Marshmallows are fluffy." opening line. wow
~guys in leather jackets, that smell like cigarettes
~mentioning the Golden Nugget, without mentioning which location, or for non Chicagoans what the Golden  Nugget is
~a poem about spilling coffee. that's all. i dislike coffee. i hate the smell of coffee. i dislike coffee poems
~ending a poem with "I'm a poet and I didn't even know" without coming to that conclusion originally
~It may be a stretch, and I could have read it wrong, but I think one of the poems is about a baby sitter fantasizing/romanticizing about the child she is watching, well, at least until when the kid grows up (still creepy!)
 ~a poem about a person running late, and then not being the late, and me not knowing what the narrator is running late to or what that says about a person. oh, and clichéd time examples and made up excuses
~Morton Grove, or any mentions of suburbs, without a meaning why they're in the poem

[Note: I read this these poems after receiving bad news. I was in a bad mood, and on looking at them a second time, they weren't as bad as i thought. I was in a I-don't-give-a-shit-about-anything-mood, to the point that school seemed pointless and i'd never felt that before. On second thought, I think I could be a professor, by which I mean I could handle reading less than acceptable poems and/or short stories. I think one of the potential benefits of being a professor is reading actual good, entertaining writing, but sometimes I worry if i would ever use some of my students material as a jumping off point, and if that would be morally acceptable. I should ask my professors about that, hopefully one night over drinks!]

I think one of the good things that came out of the 20 poems was that it temporarily got out the bad ideas of my head, and was flooded by good ones. That night, at around 2 a.m. I woke up, switched on the lights and outlined a story I have to write for my novel class. It is actually just an addition on a story I wrote a quarter ago.

 I wrote this blog while watching SNL. It almost disappointed me as much as those 20 poems. It barely delivered on the Black Swan skit and pretty much everything else blew. Lorne Michaels, please, please, please get ride of Kristen Wiig. Let Andy Samberg be in more skits. Or make a whole episode of digital shorts. Luckily The Black Keys came though and saved the night.

Now I shall watch Ken Burns' the Tenth Inning. I will take notes and hopefully knock about my poem about Cal Ripken and hopefully get an few more ideas for poems.

[Note: Pedro Martinez speaks as a poet, and threw like one too.]