On Teaching and Performing

I was walking home from the train station tonight and thinking about the teacher’s comment last week about defending one’s country, when the lyrics to Alix Olson’s “dorothea tanning” poem started running through my mind. (It’s funny how we sometimes think in lyrics.) Her poem doesn’t directly answer the questions posed by that particular situation, but it does pose some related questions of its own.

Those of you who know the poem can recite it along with me:

there's this dorothea tanning painting
and the arm of the artist is barely breaking through
there's a gash in the canvas and that's how i feel standing here in front of you
it's a furious grief
it's fear scoping out the mad
it's this submarine of artists launching towards their shore of sad
see, we were all eaglespread under america's weight that day,
eyes starry, striped in steel bars, hate-studded
with the slogans and logos of manifest destiny,
shoulders slumped in homage to our shriveling, shuddering century.

As retaliation became our password,
and the username: three thousands lives spent
and the message sent was in jingoistic text
and we all got sick fast from the warnacular virus attached.
As F-16's quickly colonized our city
and brown deli owners scrambled for flag mercy
and activists gambled with emotional heresy
and the budget of the death toll was quickly tabulated
and balanced against capital and CIA fabrications

See, that day grabbed us all by the collar of our questions
and held us hostage there
and to second-guess the quarter truths was a sudden double dare.

And still, we hacked up history like hairballs,
quiet cats on tiptoe
reaching towards subversion
flip-flopping on our tiny block
generationally uncoached in our courageous contortions
and sometimes it seems, there is nothing left to protect,
liberty decivilized, freedom kept in Dow Jones check.
As Donny and George grab the rings and steer us clear towards nuclear brink
And i guess i thought life was meant to be lived
But then again, I ain't been asked to think

Since that day my sister crept from her publishing house
across the bridge and towards the highway
And my best friend balanced on a Brooklyn roof
as the silvering slipped towards a charcoal skyway
And my station wagon, for once, hushed her rush,
surrendered fire trucks to the freeway.
And this hot head leaned on her cool hood,
and calculated harm's way.
And her radio was mumbling and her cell phone was buzzing
and some guy somewhere was screaming something
and all she could think was "my god, are they okay?"
But she was one mile of water away
from where she could do anything.
See, there's this Dorothea Tanning painting
and the arm of the artist is barely breaking past
and the media screams "she is cruel, duped, and crass."
But, I squinted, saw her fist, it was not clenched up to swing.
It was a gesture towards dissenting hearts, and it's beckoning us in.
There's this Dorothea Tanning painting
and the arm of the artist is barely breaking through.
There's a gash in the canvas,
and that's how i feel
standing here in front of you.

I performed this poem a few weeks ago for a class that I taught on slam poetry, which turned into a class on poetry and performance. (We need a second period to really put the two together.) The sixteen-year-old students certainly didn’t understand every word of Alix’s poem here, but they did understand the gist of it and by the end of the period, they also understood the importance of performing a piece, as opposed to simply reading, or rather mumbling, it aloud.

/////As a quick sidenote: it still astonishes me how a noisy group of teenagers can suddenly become silent when I start talking about certain dramatic moments, such as the day the Twin Towers fell or the day of the shooting at Virginia Tech. I asked a group of sixteen-year-olds if they remembered where they were the moment they heard the news on 9/11. If I were to write out their comments for people to read, you would think they were American, not Austrian students thousands of miles away. /////

But back to the topic of poetry and performance: Having to stand and speak at the front of a room has repeatedly reminded me how much I enjoy performing. I didn’t necessarily expect to enjoy teaching before I came to Austria—and honestly, I don’t always enjoy teaching when the students are completely disinterested in the material—but more and more, teaching reminds me of performing. If I can go into the classroom and put on a show, engage the students and connect with them in a way so they learn the material without realizing they are learning, then I have achieved my goal. Right now, the students see my lessons every couple weeks as a (hopefully) welcome break from their regular schedules. I’m trying to make these periods not only special because they are “different”, but special also in terms of content and quality of the material. Of course I have a long way to go to reach this goal, but I can honestly say I am enjoying the journey.