Tom Kim

Mr. Kim,
I can’t write these poems. it’s not that it’s hard, it’s just against what I believe. I believe that creative writing shoul not be forced, especially with poetry. We’ve found that poems have to come from the heart, that they have to have a meaning only found by it’s writer. this is a poem that I wrote tonight. It’s not what you wanted us to write with the dactyls and all of that, but it has a meaning only I can understand. Poems have to have a deeper fell, whether they are funny, or sad. So please, read this. (And print it out would you. Mine isn’t working properly) To my class, this is just another boring course. To me, this is killing creative writing. I used to love to write. Sometimes in my spare time, I would write, or think up of what to write when I get a chance. But since that Short Story unit, I haven’t been writing as much. I am currently writing a movie that I’ve been developing for 8 years, and I would hate myself if I didn’t feel like writing it anymore. sure, to some of my classmates might think this is just
another easy A that they can lie about their feelings, but to me, this is something you can’t pull out of a hat. This is a lifestyle. Also, we are just looking at stupid poems, (No offense) We should be looking at deeper poems. We should be looking at Emily Dickinson, of Edger Allen Poe. Poetry is not all happy and hippish about love, man. Poetry is one of the darkest writing-styles I’ve ever seen. So Mr. Kim. If you have read this I congratulate you in writing that you are the first person that has read a crazily long E-Mail of mine and that we should be looking at the darker and deeper side of poetry. (Men marry what they need, I marry you? what were you
thinking?)

I see.

Yes, poetry is creative expression, but it’s also an art–and like all other arts, it has a history of tradition, forms, and discipline. Dancers have to go through years of doing unpleasant exercises and drills to perform those soaring ballets. Painters learn to copy the masters before they find their own style.

Can you do something simply from the heart that’s pure and artless and meaningful? Yes, absolutely. I’m not saying you can’t. But I’m also saying that to truly appreciate some of the greatest poetry in the world, you’ve got to understand that they’ve toiled at it like you wouldn’t believe.

While it’s true that a child can just sit at a piano or guitar and just bang out something that (with talent) might sound half-decent, you haven’t really lived until you’ve heard a Mozart symphony or a John Coltrane concert. And art at that level takes work, drills, scales, theory… lots of unpleasant stuff that eventually pays off.

It’s the same reason we make you take band. You might not ever get the chance to play in a concert orchestra, but I bet that after taking band, you’ll appreciate the sound of Bennie Goodman a lot better. You might not ever get to write like Robert Frost, but I hope that after suffering through me a little while you might find something in Frost that you wouldn’t have appreciated before.

So… I hear you, but I encourage you to stick with it.

Mr. Kim

P.S.

Just because sonnets are love poems, doesn’t mean they’re bright and sunshiney. Love can be a pretty depressing thing. You’ll see.

language arts, poetry

Recommended, but not yet checked out yet:

NYPD Pizza
11th & Chestnut
215-229-6973

for thin-crust NY style pizza.

philly, restaurant, pizza

So I just got a notice that my Make subscription is about to end. I’m going to miss it. Make deserves all the hoopla it’s getting; it’s a truly unique magazine that whose archives will be cherished by generations to come. It is our generation’s Popular Magazine, and in some respects, Sears Catalog.

Anyhoo, I thought I’d take this occasion to list the magazines I wish I could afford (in time and money) to read and receive regularly:

• Zoetrope All-Story: Artsy but accessible short story magazine.
• The Believer: Reviving the art of the essay. Also whimsical but substantial interviews with interesting cultural representatives.
• Education Next: Education policies, pedagogies, and reform. Not only opinion, but research articles as well.
• Harvard Business Review: I find there to be considerable overlap between teaching and managing.
• Fast Company: More effusive than HBR: both good and bad.
• Wired: Speaking of trend-spotting. Excites the geek in me.
• Make: My inner wannabe geek and punk embrace and jump around in joy.

Oh, there’s others: New Yorker, Harper’s Review, etc. but I’m usually content reading their stuff online in small doses.

I won’t update this post, but here.

Any others you’d recommend? (Hint: I LOVE getting comments on posts. ;) Except from spammers. :evil:)

magazine, want, education, business, technology, language arts, literature, make

I’ve organized a flickr set of photos regarding my TKAM project. I’ll keep adding onto it as I get the files from my students.

For those of you who don’t know, my creative project for To Kill a Mockingbird involved assigning small groups of students key locations in the book (we have a geography theme this year). I also specify a location in the middle school where students are to re-create their setting using props, decorations, and costumes. Each group is to take at least three photographs depicting three important scenes that take place in that assigned locale. The photographs are to be accompanied by a written justification explaining what the photos are supposed to depict and how the details of their re-enactment were informed by specific references in the novel.

It turned out kind of messy, but other people seem impressed.

Note the good looking guy in the jury.

to kill a mockingbird, flickr, photo, project, penn charter

After hearing a sample of this at a friend’s house, I just had to put in an order for this audio reading of the ESV Bible. (About $40 including shipping and tax). You can get it at the Westminster Bookstore.

Apparently Max McLean goes to Tenth Redeemer. I’m going to get his autograph.

tenth, mp3, bible, book, have, esv

What? You don’t know what a feed is? Ah, er, for all practical purposes, it’s a way to subscribe to a web page so that every time that web page is updated or altered, you would find out about it. So instead of surfing through the same seventeen blogs, news sites, online magazines, or what have you periodically in the hopes of finding something new, you just check one place and see which of your subscribed web sites have changed.

If you’re using Firefox as your web browser (which I heartily recommend), you have the option of subscribing to feeds right from the browser. Usually, though, you need a special kind of software called a news reader, RSS feed reader, or news aggregator. There are several free news readers for both the Mac and PC that you can easily find and download–just root around in Google for a bit.

Alternatively, there are several online news aggregators that will allow you to collect and read your feeds from a central web site. Most are free, and many of them are quite good. I can personally vouch for Bloglines; you can actually take a look at all the feeds I subscribe to on my Bloglines page.

Most web sites that have a feed feature it as a button or link on the sidebar or footer of the page. It might simply say “Feed,” or it might specify the type of feed it is: “RSS,” “RSS 2.0,” or maybe “Atom.” RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and is the most popular type of feed–for many people feed and RSS are practically synonymous.

Anyhoo, clicking on this link will take you to a scary, complicated-looking page. That’s because a feed is actually an XML document that specifies to your news aggregator what type of content on the web site is updated in what manner. You can think of it as a set of instructions that tells the news reader software what to look for on the web page.

So go back. Don’t click on the feed link. Instead, right-click on the link and select “Copy link location” to copy the URL address for this link. This is what the news reader needs to know: the locations of the feed instructions for this web site. Paste this address into the news reader or news aggregator site, and now you’re subscribed to the site’s feed.

Yeah, it can be a little onerous to go through all the web sites you surf and subscribe to their individual feeds, but trust me, once you’ve got it all set up, you’ll be amazed how much more (or less) productive you can be on the Internet.

BTW, if you decide to use Bloglines, check out Lifehacker’s collected posts on Bloglines tips.

Link: The Read Me First page has a compendium of the various feeds this site features.

Update: I just received word that Google now has their own online news reader service.

web2.0, feed, rss, aggregator, bloglines, firefox, webapp, google