The Forms of Things Unknown by Savren Shelley;

Author:Savren, Shelley;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Chapter Four

The Urgent Landscape

Writing Poetry on College Campuses

these words I write

open their mouths wide

screaming the most intimate secrets

I am the only one here

I am the listener

I know beautiful secrets

—Krista, from “To My Book”

“Welcome This Graduation Day,” by Shelley Savren

In the swirling gardens of childhood

your imaginations scooped up dreams,

and you rode them, leaping wildly

into laughing clouds and coloring

the grass a slushy blue. You could be

anyone. You could even fly.

Your visions blossomed like wheat

in steaming fields, like tiny sprouts

poking out of concrete cracks,

in classrooms where there’s always

a window to wander through,

always an arm stretching in the distance.

And here you sit, rows

of tall faces, with serious lips

and questioning eyes. Which door

to step through? Which road is a circle

and which a labyrinth?

Which braids and which bends?

Soon you will stand like ageless redwoods

reaching, knowing there is more

to risk in the urgent landscape,

more books to bow your heads into, words

and numbers to rearrange the page,

more gravel to stomp through

in your sturdy, crusted boots.

Everything rooted grows. Every path

has a purpose and a name.

Every pulsing passion opens, like dew

waking up a morning meadow,

like the sound of summer breathing

in the backyard. Even now,

the sun drenches you with light,

and drunk on whirling ideas

you will become navigators

in the boundless playground of thought.

After teaching a few poetry-writing classes at University of California, San Diego and Southwestern College in Chula Vista, California, creative writing classes became part of a full-time teaching load at Oxnard College in Ventura County, California, from 1992 to 2014. Even though the course was creative writing and consisted of four genres, about half the time was spent on poetry because it was often the most challenging genre for students. Sometimes students still needed to get excited about poetry, but enthusiasm was usually contagious. And there have been many success stories over the years.

At the college level, the role of “visiting poet” takes on a new meaning. There really isn’t a visiting poet, just a professor—the sole teacher in charge—and writing poetry becomes serious stuff. The course needs to be rigorous. It’s not just an easy elective. Students pay for the course and take it for credit. This means they have to buy books, turn in work, and get a grade. It’s a whole other world when it comes to academia.

There are plenty of good creative writing texts out there, but often those books are very expensive for students. Many of them have a prescribed way of approaching poetry or teaching creative writing. But trade books can do the job very well. Bill Moyers’s The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (ISBN 0-385-48410-0) has a great selection of contemporary poetry, along with interviews by Moyers with the poets, who talk about their process of writing, how they came to writing, what poetry means to them, and what they are trying to say in the individual poems published in the book.

During the course, students choose a poet, make a five-minute oral presentation with information just from the book, and end by reading a poem. That way, they get to know one poet well.

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