I Me Me Meme*

Recently I tried to explain what memes are.
I started into a teacherly explanation about how cultural units behave like genes, getting passed on and, in many cases, mutating into new forms and a hundred visions and revisions. I said, “Think of the peace sign logo, urban myths, advertising jingles, jokes that fly around [...]

Finds: American Literature (Two Serious and One Not so Serious)

This week, I’m offering three sites I typically share with my American Literature Class:
The Library of Congress, American Memories, which is site that contains a treasure store of American cultural artifacts, like advertising, maps, dime novels, etc. It will link you to many more external sites as well.
Voices and [...]

Haiku Sonnet 2: Signal to Noise

Just to watch us pass,
the child moves from window to
window—her hands up
to rest on the panes—
She stares as if she isn’t seen.
Her lips move. The half
of conversation
we see is code and—without
her necessity—
meaningless. You’ve said
something I haven’t heard and
the child smiles, waving
behind the glass, knowing now—
the world is outside.
This sonnet is the second after “Departures” [...]

An Exalted Title

For a long time, being called a poet made me uncomfortable, but now I’m beginning to think I could call myself one…and I’m not sure how I feel.
“Poet” feels like a title—Wordsworth was a poet, Keats was a poet, as was Dickinson, Eliot, Hughes, Auden, Bishop, and countless others who, besides writing great [...]

Haiku Sonnet 1: Departures*

source
Spitting city rain
riddles the sidewalk with spots
of ghost animals.
Those who once really
roamed here weren’t so exotic,
their camouflage brown,
grey and tan, colors
of Chicago now. This rain
isn’t wet enough
to bring any life
back, isn’t wet enough to
pool. In the alley,
a squirrel climbs from a dumpster
just to watch us pass.
This sonnet is the first in a [...]

What is an American—Redux

Each semester I write one of the essays I assign my class. The following is the response to an assignment in my American Studies course on a central characteristic of Americans. The idea is to share my work with the class and talk about writing process, but I’m not at all sure I will [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Lost and Unfound

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, “The Empty Museum”
2004, installation, sound, light.
Photo by Hermann Feldhause
In my museum
of lost things, everything is
invisible, marked
only by the scent
of regret. The windows are
never open and
any visitors
weep in corners, unable
to find their way out.
I inventory—
a wince for each item still
not on display. As
night materializes,
I dream of letting ghosts go.

Finds: Wandering In Dictionaries

     My fourth grade teacher had a class set of dictionaries, and some Fridays, she’d pull them out for finding games. I never won. I’d always get lost when another word or illustration distracted me.
Dictionaries are reference tools, but they’re also great places to wander. You may have already noticed Urban Dictionary in my “Places [...]

Déjà Vu All Over Again

As an English teacher, I would love to read more, but the problem is consciousness—not having enough. When I read just before bed, a hypnotist seems to whisper a word deeply embedded in me, and I slip into sleep.
Most of my reading is rereading—I’m in book three of The [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Her Explanation

She wanted to draw
stars over the moon’s black
half—the space cried for
light, for company.
She thinks stars deserve every
seed bed in blank sky—
if they won’t grow, then
let them bury night in flecks
of salt no sea could
dissolve. Let them sit.
In the lost part of the sky,
the invisible weep,
praying illumination
will bring day again.