POETRY IN SERVICE TO SCHOOLS AND THE COMMUNITY
ED 81, Spring 2000, Wilson 103, Fridays: 3 - 5:20

"let the beauty we love be what we do"
-- Jelaluddin Rumi
(1207 - 1273)

Rick Benjamin
Horace Mann 311
h: 351.4258; w: (Rhode Island
Service Alliance) 331.2298 x18
Office Hours: by appointment
Rick_Benjamin@hotmail.com

Course Description:
Piloted last year as a "special topics" course through the departments of English and Creative Writing, Poetry in Service to Schools and the Community is a hybrid of a poetry-writing workshop, a training ground for poets-in-the-schools in elementary, middle and secondary school settings, and a service project based in schools and community-based programs. Two assumptions inform my own approach to teaching this semester: first, a university classroom can successfully integrate a service project-- one that depends upon the ability of students to quickly and comprehensively assimilate knowledge and understanding about a wide range of poetry, and upon their generosity of spirit, intellect and imagination in translating such knowledge elsewhere, to younger students who need it as much as they do; second, college and university students can both administer and implement a statewide poets-in-the-schools program more typically and traditionally staffed in other states by "professional" poets and teachers.
This is a class in poetry writing and reading, but the transmission of knowledge and awareness from one place to another is its essence, its essential artistic and civic gesture. My wish is for all of you to develop as poets and teachers, and, along the way, to take others with you. In my experience poetry is a powerful medium, a line to sacred places, a mode toward transformation and intellectual, emotional and spiritual awareness. So many classrooms are in need of what it can bring. "When you get it right,/ you pass it on," says Gary Snyder. This is our semester-long undertaking.

Required Texts:
House of Light. Mary Oliver Nine Gates. Jane Hirshfield
Quilting. Lucille Clifton Rules for the Dance. Mary Oliver
Atlantis. Mark Doty Twentieth Century Pleasures. Robert Hass
Human Wishes. Robert Hass poemcrazy. Susan Wooldridge
The Soul Is Here For Its Own Joy (anthology)

This may seem like a lot of books for one class, but given our need to have both common knowledge as well as an invaluable library of resources and references, they all seem to me essential. We may not devote significant class time to all of these texts, but you will, I think, be glad to have them.
I will also be providing you with copies of Jim Haba's poetry and interview anthology, The Language of Life. I periodically rescue these hard-back books from the publisher's paper-shredder (literally true: by law they must pay taxes on their entire inventory, so it's cheaper to the destroy books that aren't likely to sell). I get them for three bucks apiece (they originally sold for almost $40) and "pass them on" for free when I can. I will have available for you the teacher's kits that were meant to accompany the book and video series for use in the classroom.

Other Details:
We will be partnering with four schools and one community-based organization this semester. They are: William D'Abate Elementary School, in Olneyville; Mandela/Woods Elementary School, in South Providence; Community Preparatory School, in South Providence; Central High School, in Providence; and YouthBuild Providence, which is, among other things, an AmeriCorps program. Students will work in pairs, and will be assigned to classrooms for approximately six weeks (once a week).
In workshop, and frequently for out of class assignments, I will more than occasionally conceive of and provide prompts for your own writing, all of which are designed to model exercises you might take into other classrooms. They are also, of course, meant to stimulate your own ideas, which is what you will really be taking into other classrooms.
Class-time, incidentally, will be a mix of discussion about poetry, and about what we are reading, with workshop. Two times during the semester outside of class (for about three hours each time), we will come together to more formally train and prepare for classroom visits.

Syllabus:
28 Jan: Introduction. Shopping spree. Wright's "Beautiful Ohio"; Hughes's "I've Known
Rivers"; Ronan's "The Pickerel"; Muso Soseki's "The Bridge Where the Moon Crosses"; a seven-year-old's poem called "Sea-gulls";: A Sample Lesson on Water.
4 Feb: Lucille Clifton's Quilting; the first twelve sections of poemcrazy.
11 Feb: Quilting; sections 13 - 36 in poemcrazy.
18 Feb: Robert Hass's Human Wishes; finish poemcrazy; "One Body: Some Notes on Form," in Twentieth Century Pleasures.
25 Feb: Human Wishes; "Listening and Making," and "Images" from Twentieth Century Pleasures.
3 Mar: Mary Oliver's House of Light; pp. 1 - 67 in Rules for the Dance.
10 Mar: House of Light; complete Rules for the Dance.
17 Mar: House of Light and other poems by Mary Oliver; poems from The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy.
24 Mar: Mark Doty's Atlantis; "Poetry and the Mind of Concentration," and "The Question of Originality," in Hirshfield's Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry.
31 Mar: No Class: Spring Break
7 April: Atlantis; "The Myriad Leaves of Words," and "Poetry and the Mind of Indirection," in Nine Gates.
14 April: Atlantis; the late/early century AIDS elegy; poems from The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy.
21 April: Rilke's third sonnet to Orpheus; Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Dickinson, Muso Soseki; "Two Secrets" and "Facing the Lion" from Nine Gates.
28 April: Muso Soseki's poems; "Poetry as a Vessel of Remembrance" and "Writing and the Threshold Life" from Nine Gates.
5 May: Celebration of our work