Today\u2019s Post \u00a0\u201cLove in the Classroom\u201d Afternoon. Across the garden, in Green Hall, I stand in front of my students They\u2019ve come from all parts They bend over their books and begin. The melody floats around and through us \u201cNevermind,\u201d I want to cry out. Instead, I keep a coward\u2019s silence. <\/p>\n \u201cLove in the Classroom\u201d by Al Zolynas. Text as published in\u00a0Under Ideal Conditions: Poems\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>(Laterthanever Press, 1994; no bookseller link available).\u00a0<\/em>\u00a9 Al Zolynas. Monday February 3 \u201c . . .\u00a0a sudden,\u00a0sweet, almost painful love for my students.\u201d On Monday mornings, I often begin by looking for a post in one or another books of poetry. \u00a0 Some of the poets I have not … Continue reading
\n<\/strong>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2015\/03\/Art.jpg\")
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\n\u2014 for my students<\/p>\n
\nsomeone begins playing the old piano\u2014
\na spontaneous piece, amateurish and alive,
\nfull of a simple, joyful melody.
\nThe music floats among us in the classroom.<\/p>\n
\ntelling them about sentence fragments.
\nI ask them to find the ten fragments
\nin the twenty-one-sentence paragraph on page forty-five.<\/p>\n
\nof the world\u2014Iran, Micronesia, Africa,
\nJapan, China, even Los Angeles\u2014and they\u2019re still
\neager to please me. It\u2019s less than half
\nway through the quarter.<\/p>\n
\nHamid\u2019s lips move as he follows
\nthe tortuous labyrinth of English syntax.
\nYoshie sits erect, perfect in her pale make-up,
\nlegs crossed, quick pulse minutely jerking her right foot. Tony,
\nfrom an island in the South Pacific, sprawls
\nlimp and relaxed in his desk.<\/p>\n
\nin the room, broken here and there, fragmented,
\nre-started. It feels Mideastern, but
\nit could be jazz, or the blues\u2014it could be
\nanything from anywhere.
\nI sit down on my desk to wait,
\nand it hits me from nowhere\u2014a sudden,
\nsweet, almost painful love for my students.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter about fragments.
\nFinding them or not. Everything\u2019s
\na fragment and everything\u2019s not a fragment.
\nListen to the music, how fragmented,
\nhow whole, how we can\u2019t separate the music
\nfrom the sun falling on its knees on all the greenness,
\nfrom this moment, how this moment
\ncontains all the fragments of yesterday
\nand everything we\u2019ll ever know of tomorrow!\u201d<\/p>\n
\nThe music stops abruptly;
\nthey finish their work,
\nand we go through the right answers,
\nwhich is to say
\nwe separate the fragments from the whole.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nReprinted by permission of the poet. \u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.russian-globe.com\/N46\/Zolynas.About.htm<\/a>
\nArt credit:<\/em>\u00a0\u201cOpen Window,\u201d acrylic on canvas, abstract\u00a0painting<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Filomena De Andrade Booth.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
![painting<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Filomena De Andrade Booth.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday February 3 \u201c . . .\u00a0a sudden,\u00a0sweet, almost painful love for my students.\u201d On Monday mornings, I often begin by looking for a post in one or another books of poetry. \u00a0 Some of the poets I have not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3345,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions\/3345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"http:\/\/media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com\/736x\/72\/c3\/4f\/72c34f2365ce6f1c5c9ba06bf425cc6a.jpg\"){kind=link}