I have spent the morning lying in bed, reading poems in The New Yorker and The Sun. My lover is dozing on the couch, our dog on his chair. And now, I have a half hour to write before I go to work. I’ve lit a candle, a baroque music CD is playing. I feel [...]
Entries from October 2007
October 20, 2007
La Cucaracha
Growing up as a budding young writer, it seemed anytime something difficult would happen to me my mother would say, “Look at the bright side, at least you’ll get a good poem out of it.” Granted, when I was crying my eyes out over my latest heartbreak, those words could be cold comfort. But of [...]
October 14, 2007
What Counts as Success
I was rushing from my office to another, trying to get a few things done before my next class, when I walked past one of the tutors, a retiree who comes to our school once a week to help students with math. He was sitting alone at the tutoring table, which is in what amounts [...]
October 6, 2007
Poems my Students* (*mostly Puerto Rican teen moms who’ve dropped out of school) Love
My students have seriously influenced my taste in poetry. After years of teaching the subject to teen mothers who’ve dropped out of high school, I’ve started to see poems through their eyes.
If you’ve never spent time with my students, you might think there’s a danger that my tastes have been dumbed down; that I [...]
