Bring images to life

Yesterday was my workshop at C.A.B. This program is the one that I am most singularly proud of, I started there three years ago. It was something for as little as a 6 week trial basis. Now, I am full fledged involved in everything in the program. I have two workshops a week for the next 36 weeks. That means I will meet with these kids for a total of 70+ times.

Yesterdays class was one of the better ones thus far. I brought in two poems that I felt was image heavy. The first one was by Patrick Rosal, My Mothers in Los Angeles. This poem is great because of it's subtlety. If you don't read it and critique just enough, you will lose site of what Patrick is really trying to say. The images are as beautiful as possible demonstrating the love of a lost one.

The Next poem was by Ross Gay from his book Against Which. The poem was A Late October in Easton. I love this poem because of it's dynamic turn between the stanzas. You have to really think why the author went from what seems one story to something that makes no relevance to the first stanza. He still manages to tie it up nicely.

The kids in my workshops loved both of the poems. They were broken down and assessed by each line and they understood the messages. This made me happy.

I gave them an exercise and I wanted them to focus strongly on images. Without pictures, we could never visualize. So based on the poems, I told them to take passages from the poems and write about something that reminds them about another event in their lives. S0rt of what Ross does in Easton.

They completely ran with it and this would make any teacher proud. It came down to the point where I had to force them out of my class. They start writing and I can't get them to stop. I bet you hundreds of teachers wish they had that problem.

I love my CAB kats. Tommorrow I am headed to ERC where I run workshops for transitional students coming home from jail. It should be fun as I am given a little wiggle room to teach whatever I want.

Fish Vargas