Three Ravens

I'm teaching the Medieval Period.  One of my favorite days of the year is coming up tomorrow and Friday, when we discuss some medieval alehouse ballads.  Here's one of my favorites, "The Three Ravens," performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary:

I'll also be playing and singing "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" by Bob Dylan.  It's a version this old alehouse ballad, "Lord Randall":

"O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son! 
And where ha you been, my handsome young man!" 
"I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon, 
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down."

"An wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son? 
An wha met you there, my handsome young man?" 
"O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon, 
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down."

"And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son? 
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?" 
"Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon, 
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down." 

"And wha gat your leavins, Lord Randal, my son? 
And wha gat your leavins, my handsome young man?" 
"My hawks and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon, 
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down." 

"And what becam of them, Lord Randal, my son? 
And what becam of them, my handsome young man?" 
"They stretched their legs out and died; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down." 

"O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son! 
I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man!" 
"O yes, I am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon, 
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down." 

"What d'ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d'ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man?"
"Four and twenty milk kye; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and I fain wad lie down"

"What d'ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal, my son?
What d'ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man?"
"My gold and my silver; ; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and I fain wad lie down"

"What d'ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d'ye leave to your brother, my handsome young man?"
"My houses and my lands; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and I fain wad lie down"

"What d'ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal my son?
What d'ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man?
"I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and I fain wad lie down"

A Window Into My Classroom

The following blog is the most recent post from my English Lit class blog, Senior English. I thought some of my readers at Dirt Bombs might enjoy it. There's a link to my class blog on the sidebar if you're interested in reading more. Have a nice day.

That's Wyrd

I did a little research on the Old English, Anglo-Saxon concept of the wyrd. Simply put, it is most easily defined as a notion of "personal destiny" or fate. The word wyrd derives specifically from an old Germanic word and has cognates in ancient languages spanning from regions all across Europe, Central Asia, and all the way to northern India that date back to the Copper Age in the 5th and 4th millennia BC (5000-4000 BC). So this notion of a personal destiny runs deep in the blood and spirit of humanity.

What fascinates me the most, in the context of this course, is the collision between Christianity and personal fate on the British Isles during the Roman Empire. In the literature that you are reading right now, you can see how the monks embraced the notion of fate. After all, they would already have had both unconscious/subconscious and intellectual/academic exposure to the notion. But from what I can tell in my own reading, they saw it as the best avenue into the spiritual concerns of the "natives" of the lands that they conquered. As I said in class, in a world where it was highly likely on any given day that a child could die of sudden illness or a warrior could die in hand to hand combat, this notion of fate was just a matter of fact. Weather very directly affected survivability on a month to month basis. There were constant local battles for resources and security. Nothing was a given. Everything was hard. So if it was your time, it was your time. I don't mean to suggest that people only associate fate with death. It's just one of the most prominent associations that people make.

It seems that when the Roman Empire monks, who came from a much more "civilized" and secure place, picked up on the Anglo-Saxon locals' aforementioned spiritual, practical (and understandable) reliance on the concept of wyrd"ness" they ran with it, and the rest is history. Since then, as far as I can tell from both historical research and personal observation, the concepts of "personal destiny" and the God of Christianity have melted together more and more--to the point that we can observe it in popular American culture ranging from soap operas to politics (and yes that was a clever joke and yes it is sad). As I mentioned in class, I have a hard time accepting that some things are just meant to be--especially when they come from "religious" angles. Was 9/11 unavoidable? Was it predestined by God? That's not for me to answer for you, but I don't mind admitting that I have a hard time accepting it. Did God "kill" my mom with breast cancer when she was in her 40's? Was that divine fate? Maybe so. But I'd rather think of the fate end of it in more modern, scientific terms. She had genes that were more prone to cancer than other, healthier women. Yeah, God may have created those genes. Once again, it's not for me to say in this setting. But I don't mind saying that I don't think God gave her those genes In The Beginning. It just happened. My mom fought a valiant battle against a deadly disease, she contributed to research that has helped many women since survive breast cancer, but in the end, she "ran into a sword." If she'd have lived 5 years longer, they probably would have saved her. It was just wyrd, man. Those firefighters that heroically ran into those buildings trying to save lives and died--that was their personal destiny, and we will always venerate them for it. That's all I know to say.

I hope you will think about these types of things all year long on a deeper level than you have in the past. It's never my intention to "change" your belief system. But I do want you to question it so that it will grow stronger and more sound. This is why we read literature.

See you in class.

I'm a Teacher, man?!

McCourt's memoir Teacher Man is a great read. I blew through it in about 3 sittings. Anyone who wants an unblushingly frank, funny, and heartwarming look at the teaching life should check it out.

For the last two weeks, I've been attending professional development classes, working in my classroom, reading, organizing, despairing and praying in preparation for the school year. It's one of the strangest times every year. I'm well-rested, relaxed. I feel optimistic and hopeful and inspired, determined to attack some weak spots, holes in my repertoire. Then we go to these meetings--these meetings that I describe as soul-sucking meetings--and in about 12, maybe 15 hours, it's as if they try to kill any ingenuity, passion, or motivation that we might have cached away over the summer. I'm positive that this is not any one person's intention or motivation. But these meetings rarely fail and just to be frank, they are excruciating more often than not. Some years, I've had a horrible attitude. I've sat through these things grumbling expletives, fidgeting hot-faced and teetering on the cusp of mental breakdown, cardiac arrest. I tried calling-in well, saying, "I feel entirely too good to come to work today! Doh!" Other years, I've tried getting involved in order to control some of my own destiny--presenting little workshops for my colleagues. I've usurped other workshops, standing to proclaim in front of anyone who would listen that what we were doing was not a valuable use of our time--and that I intended to use my valuable time in a way that was productive. It only took once or twice to learn that these were both bad ideas.

I'm not here this morning to write an expose on professional development in public education. Maybe later. Probably never.

I'm just saying that this year I'm trying yet another mindset: it is what it is. And to use one of my colleague's lines, this is what we do. And so far, it's gotten me through cleaner than any other methodology to date. As a result, it seems as if all I have to do now is make it through 3 hours of "Nuts and Bolts" this morning and I'll be home free. I got this afternoon after lunch and tomorrow in my classroom to do everything I really need to do, and then the kids arrive Monday. I'll close my door and teach and everything will be fine.

Hey, I'm a teacher, man! It's what I do.

Another

by Robert Herrick

Here a pretty baby lies

Sung asleep with lullabies:

Pray be silent and not stir

Th' easy earth that covers her.

All four of these poems are fabulous! We're discussing the tribe of Ben in my literature classes this week.

"Out Upon It" by Sir John Suckling

"Why So Pale and Wan" by Sir John Suckling

"To Althea From Prison" by Richard Lovelace

"To Lucasta on Going to the Wars" by Richard Lovelace

Carpe diem quam credula postera.

--Horace

Paradise Lost Quiz Key

A) The speaker is Satan.

B) He has just fallen from Heaven and is making lemonade out of lemons.

C) See photo.

(Click here to see the original quiz.)

Paradise Lost Quiz

1. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

A) Speaker:

B) Significance:

C) Diagram it:

John Milton's Cosmos

Today in class, I get to talk about John Milton and Paradise Lost. We only read a few famous passages from the work, but I take some time to put the piece in an historical and philosophical context. The setting of the story is what fascinates me the most.

Milton's Heaven surrounds a fountain of indestructible, fiery light, out of which everything in Heaven is created. Angels swirl around, appearing as rainbows, and clouds veil the fountain of God to protect the angels' eyes. If they were to look directly into the light, they would be blinded. It's interesting that Milton claimed that much of the work came to him directly from God--in the form of a blinding light--in strange fits in the middle of the night. Much of it was written down by his daughter/slave after he went blind as an older man. I secretly hope she changed a few words here and there.

Directly below Heaven, as if it were hanging on a chain, is the fledgling Universe--God's comfort-food creation for Himself after the notorious revolt on His throne. In relation to the whole Cosmos, the Universe is tiny , and at the geometrical center is Planet Earth--the Garden of Eden--a mere spec of sand on a vast beach compared with the rest of the Universe. Extraterrestrial life is possible, even likely. In Book XIII, an angel tells Adam that on another planet, "clouds may rain, and rain produce/Fruits in her soften'd soil, for some to eat/Alloted there." Angels can leave Heaven and visit Adam and Eve. They disclose little secrets of the Universe and of God, but they don't tell too much.

Engulfing everything below Heaven is a realm Milton called Chaos. Chaos is simply an infinite "womb of space," swirling matter out of which the Universe and Hell are created. The place is described as "warring atoms." Milton was an accomplished astronomer (a composer too by the way); he had many stellar secrets figured out on his own. He missed a few important ones too though, like Earth being the center of the Universe.

Below everything is Hell. Hell was created for Lucifer and his army long, long ago. When God kicked them out of Heaven, they fell through Chaos for 9 days--so far and so fast that their rainbows were melted into grotesque lizard skins. Hell is not only a physical place, burning lakes of sulfurous darkness. It is also a psychological place, at the heart of Satan when he cries. Hell, like the Garden of Eden, can be fun though. Demons lounge around at Pandemonium, Satan's castle, and sing sentimental songs of self-pity, wax philosophic, have tournaments. Satan comes out on the balcony every so often and rallies his men. The demons can leave Hell too and fly around the Universe creating havoc, which has always puzzled me.

It's fun stuff to think about and say aloud. We really believe this stuff a lot of us.

Short Story Links

These are some short stories that I've recommended over the past year or so. I'm taking them off my navigation sidebar to use the space for other things, but I wanted to preserve the links. Here they are:

"The Great Stone Face" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Swimmer" by John Cheever

"The Artificial Nigger" by Flannery O'Connor

"Curt Schilling and The Lord of Hosts" by Walter Maroney

"The Grave by the Handpost" by Thomas Hardy

A Song of Loss

--William Blake

Dreamin' Like Joseph

H and I went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Saturday evening with some friends. It was my first time at the theater in over a year; H hadn't been since college.

I came away with a couple of things to write about:

• Live theater is enthralling. We used to go regularly in college to support Drama Major-friends and to accumulate "green cards" required for graduation at MHC. On the drive home, we both vowed to go back at least a couple'times a year from now on.
• And this particular production was a hoot! Austin Miller played Joseph. (H and I recognized him because we're devotees of Mad TV.) Also, a former student of mine from both Dunbar Middle and Central High, Katye Dunn, played her first professional role as Mrs. Potiphar, the temptress. Let's just say she stole the scene.
• In preparation for the show, I got a Sunday School lesson from Dad on the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. Genesis 37-50. You ought to read it! Here's the King James Version. I hope to write more about this later.
• I've been dreamin' like crazy for the last two nights. Maybe God touched me at the show, and I have the gift now.

S.T.C.

Every school year, I look to the spring and the Romantic poets for academic, professional, and spiritual rejuvenation.  I bounce around the room and sing lessons about rainbows and the revolutionary spirit, moon phases and intuition, Nature and non-conformity--wild flowers that grow in the cracks of the sidewalk.  I urge my students (and remind myself) to listen to the morning, to ignore the commercials, to talk to themselves while they walk somewhere they would normally drive.  We examine the works and the lives of the big 5:  Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge is my favorite.

But this year, I've started to turn on my old friend.  I don't so much get it anymore.  Maybe cause I'm a father?  Maybe cause I'm getting older?  Coleridge (crazy crazy) is just not as much fun as he used to be.

from "Dejection: An Ode"

There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man - 
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

I love the man, and I hate him too.  He probably wouldn't have had it any other way.  

The world is too much with us

by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not.--Great God!  I'd rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on the this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Jerusalem

by William Blake

AND did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

 

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

 

Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

 

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

Natural Burial

I started 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry this week with my classes, and yesterday one of the poems we discussed was "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne.  It goes like this:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The poem is one of Donne's Holy Sonnets.  He had unenthusiastically entered the ministry at the insistence of King James, and his quick wit, his flair for the dramatic, and his rolling intellect had established him as the mega-rock star preacher of his era.  In the poem, the speaker condescendingly confronts Death and personifies him as a tool, a cocksure pawn of Fate, Chance, and desperate men.  For the believer, death is really a peaceful little nap at the start of eternal life.  Yet he runs around like a bluffing bully.  The cacophonous  couplet at the end reveals that the joke is on Death.  While we wake eternally, death dies.

I'm not sure about all that, but what I do know is that I dig the gist.  

So naturally, I had a dream last night about my death.  It wasn't a morbid or a disturbing dream.  It was one of those dreams where I was thinking, sort of awake.  I was contemplating my own little nap and how I hope it goes down.  Here's what I dreamt:  

When I die, dig a hole in the woods about two meters deep in Newton County, Arkansas or in the Blue Ridge somewhere, 20 or 30 yards away from a waterfall or a bluff or a big, old tree where woodpeckers hang out.  Wrap my body in a linen shroud and place it in the hole.  No embalming fluids, no incineration, no concrete vault.  Cover me up with some soil and relocate a dogwood, a wild blueberry bush, blackberries and raspberries for the bears, some dwarf lilies, mayapples, and ferns.  I love ferns.  Or just spread some rich duff and fallen leaves; it doesn't matter.  One short sleep past, I'll wake eternally and death shall be no more.  Visit the waterfall, the bluff, the tree and see what I become. 

I'll send you off with a tune in your head if you know the Dave Matthews Band:

Gravedigger,

When you dig my grave,

Could you make it shallow

So that I can feel the rain?  

                                 --David John Matthews 

Romulus: Part Two

by Plutarch

translated by John Dryden

"Others think that the first rise of this fable came from the children's nurse, through the ambiguity of her name; for the Latins not only calledwolves lupoe, but also women of loose life; and such an one was the wife of Faustulus, who nurtured these children, Acca Larentia by name. To her the Romans offer sacrifices, and in the month of April the priest of Mars makes libations there; it is called the Larentian Feast. They honour also another Larentia, for the following reason: the keeper of Hercules's temple having, it seems, little else to do, proposed to his deity a game at dice, laying down that, if he himself won, he would have something valuable of the god; but if he were beaten, he would spread him a noble table, and procure him a fair lady's company. Upon these terms, throwing first for the god and then for himself, he found himself beaten. Wishing to pay his stakes honourably, and holding himself bound by what he had said, he both provided the diety a good supper, and giving money to Larentia, then in her beauty, though not publicly known, gave her a feast in the temple, where he had also laid a bed, and after supper locked her in, as if the god were really to come to her. And indeed, it is said, the deity did truly visit her, and commanded her in the morning to walk to the marketplace, and, whatever man she met first, to salute him, and make him her friend. She met one named Tarrutius, who was a man advanced in years, fairly rich, without children, and had always lived a single life. He received Larentia, and loved her well, and at his death left her sole heir of all his large and fair possessions, most of which she, in her last will and testament, bequeathed to the people. It was reported of her, being now celebrated and esteemed the mistress of a god, that she suddenly disappeared near the place where the first Larentia lay buried; the spot is at this day called Velabrum, because, the river frequently overflowing, they went over in ferry-boats somewhere hereabouts to the forum, the Latin word for ferrying being velatura. Others derive the name from velum, a sail; because the exhibitors of public shows used to hang the road that leads from the forum to the Circus Maximus with sails, beginning at this spot. Upon these accounts the second Larentia is honoured at Rome." 

--MJF

My friend, T. Wiz, would destroy him.

Bruce Lee playing Ping Pong with nunchackus.  

School starts back today.  

I'm ready to go.  No soul-sucking P.D. (Professional Development) this time before the students' return.  The District took our day(s) of winter holiday teacher meetings away from us this year because so many teachers failed to take advantage of the opportunity in years past.  Awww...

Timeout.  Idea:  I will compile a list of acronyms in education for you.  We're [they're] getting worse than the military.  You're not going to believe it.  I hate acronyms.  Obama, can you criminalize acronyms in education?  Executive order?  That's CHANGE I can believe in!  

We have a week until semester exams, time for intensive, style analysis, writing workshops.  Then we get down to the business of Poetry.  Dead white dudes first:  John Donne (DUN!), George Herbert, Andrew Marvell; Ben Jonson, Suckling, Lovelace, Herrick (We laugh at him.  Probably shouldn't, but we do.); Thomas Gray, Robbie Burns, William Blake (My favorite.); William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (My other favorite.); Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats.  I've never made it any further than this.  But this year, I sit poised to hit some modern American poets.  Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Roethke, Ginsberg (I had wine and cheese with him after a reading at UNC Asheville and gave him my poem, "Ginsberg Wears Gap Khakis."  We were both obviously out of our elements at the time.  He read the title and folded it in thirds and put it in his tweed jacket-pocket [over his heart].  He was kinda cross-eyed up close.  I think he threw it away.  It wasn't mean.  Not nice.  (See Rolling Stone advertisement, mid-90's.)  As he was tucking it away, he half-smiled and took time to tell me a story about two times that he visited with W.C. Williams.  In hindsight, the point of the story must have been that he didn't use the precious time to criticize W.C.  He was mumbling awful all night, like the whole right side of his face wouldn't work, so I might have missed something.), Michael Harper.  Gimme some women, please some diversity.  Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Anne Sexton, Nikki Giovanni, Margaret Atwood.  And I'd love to find time for Wilfred Owen, T.S. Eliot, Yeats, W.H. Auden, Henry Reed, Dylan Thomas, e e cummings, D.H. Lawrence, John Crowe Ransom, Anne Sexton May Swenson, Jean Toomer, Richard Wilbur!, James Wright, Hart Crane, Countee Cullen, Philip Larkin, Archibald MacLeish, Rita Dove, Billie Collins, Jorie Graham, Gary Soto, Robert Penn Warren, Adrienne Rich, Cathy Song, Lawrence Ferlenghetti, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, and Louise Erdrich!  

I can't wait, but I need help; I need to cull the list, and I'd love specific suggestions.  How can I group those guys after the Romantics to get them all in? 

Influential poets and poems from your own secret educations?    

Y'all have a great new year now.  I may vanish like peanut butter fudge.

--MJF

Auld Lang Syne

for H

by Robbie Burns

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

  And never brought to min'?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

  And days o' lang syne?

We twa rin about the braes,

  And pu'd the gowans fine;

But we've wander'd monie a weary fit

  Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl't i' the burn,

  Frae mornin' sun till dine

But seas between us braid hae roar'd

  Sin' auld lang syne.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere,

  And gie's a hand o' thine;

And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught

  For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,

  And surely I'll be mine;

And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet 

  For auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,

  For auld lang syne,

We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet 

  for auld lang syne.

 

for all my homies

by Jimi Hendrix, Live at the Fillmore, 1/1/1970

(Click on the link and scroll down to the music player.  Hit play.)

http://www.playlist.com/HAPPYNEWYEAR2009

--MJF