Augustow 2: Trip to Vilnius
general
Augustow 1
Writing about Literature
Why am I no longer interested in studying literature? Is it simply that I don’t understand most of it, particularly contemporary poetry? Perhaps, but regardless of whether I understand it or not, it all feels so fake to me, so much like a game. The rules of the game are simple: Make nice flowery language that doesn’t necessarily mean anything in particular; make nice vague language that sounds nice but doesn’t necessarily many anything. It’s as if poets are not writing for people but for other poets. Even the criticism and analysis of poetry seems as if it’s coded for poets. I read descriptions of poetry and it tells me nothing. I understand what the words mean, but I don’t see how you can possibly describe poetry in that way and it mean anything. In that way, poetry critism is its own form of creative writing. No one simply says, “This is what the poet is getting at,” but the critic must turn her essay into a prose-poem itself.
Take for example Christian Wiman’s essay in the January 1997 issue of Poetry. He says of Heaney’s “The Harvest Bow,” “The poem has an equable, utterly accomplished feel to it, a pleasing sense of formal fulfillment and completed experience.” Or comparing Heaney’s work to Ruskin’s “sacred laws”: “Both are as yet unrealized, but they are not merely illusory expectations; the promised revelation is implicit in the work at hand.” Of course I am taking these quotes completely out of their context and not even supplying the poems about which Wiman is writing. All the same, while I understand what each word means, the sentences themselves tell me nothing about the poems. In what sense are they “unrealized?” How would an “utterly accomplished feel” differ from a “partially accomplished feel?” Indeed, what would be the opposite of “an utterly accomplished feel?” The words sound nice; they sound academic and deep; but they don’t tell me anything.
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry is filled with examples of empty and meaningless description. J. D. McClatchy, the editor, writes a brief biographical introduction to each poet, but when he sets about describing the poetry, he often loses me. He introduces Mora Van Duyn by saying, “Her intellectual balance, as well as her preferred narrative and formal strategies, serve to heighten the ordinary (what she calls the ‘motley and manifold’), and control the bizarre.” What exactly does he mean by “intellectual balance” and how does this manifest itself in Van Duyn’s poetry? He describes Robert Penn Warren’s later poetry as “craggy.” This tells me nothing.
Some of McClatchy’s description makes sense, but seems to be more than a little overstated. Concerning J. V. Cunningham, he says, “Though small in bulk and scope, Cunningham’s work is honed to a mordant precision of style and feeling.” I read this, and I have no idea what he’s talking about. Even after I read Cunningham’s poetry, I think, “How does McClatchy mean this is ‘honed to a mordant precision?’” Not all of Cunningham’s work is filled with the biting sarcasm implied in “mordant precision.” And once again, what would the opposite be?
It is not as if McClatchy writes entirely like this. About May Swenson’s work he says that she “relies on wordplay, odd viewpoints, unexpected juxtapositions, and puzzling riddles.” That tells me something; it gives me an idea about what to expect concerning her poetry. He describes Richard Wilbur’s work as being “grounded in a detailed observation of the natural world.” I read that I come to anticipate many physical details in his poetry.
I believe this style comes directly from the forms used by poets when they write about other poets. Robert Lowell wrote to Theodore Roetke and said, “One of the things I marvel at in your poems is the impression they give of having been worked on an extra half day.” What does that tell me about Roethke’s poetry? About Anne Sexton Lowell wrote, “Her gift was to grip, to give words to the drama of her personality.” The latter half I understand, but what does he mean, “to grip?” To grip what?
Wigilia 1997
It’s the day before Christmas and all through the house, I’m bored senseless. I really have no idea what I’m going to do to pass the remainder of this holiday. I should go somewhere — rather, I should have gone somewhere, for it’s a little late now. But the question is always, “Where?” And the related, “With whom?” So I plan on sitting in my apartment, passing the time somehow, doing something — alone.
Last night Kamil and I went out for a beer. We talked about the possibility of having a party at my place New Year’s Eve, but I don’t know that that’s going to work out. We don’t know who can come, and the biggest problem couched within that dilemma is, “What about women!?” We have no idea if we can get any women to come to this and if not, it could be decidedly boring. If this doesn’t work out, I don’t know what I’ll do. The thought that I might spend New Year’s Eve alone, holed up in my apartment, looms with a gloomy certainty which I’d rather not think about.
I have spent an incredible amount of time alone in the past eighteen months. In a sense it has been very nice, but enough is enough, really. I’m tired of being alone all the time. It really does get old after a while. Yet I see no alternatives. I don’t want to go hang out with drunks in the bars, and that seems to be my only option. I could invite people over, but whom would I ask? It’s the same problem I’ve been mulling over ever since I first arrived in Lipnica. There’s just not a hell of a lot to do in this place.
What will it be like when Chhavi is here? I’ve a feeling we’ll get into a few arguments because she’ll want to be doing something and I’ve gotten accustomed to doing nothing. I do want to travel on the weekends, but not every weekend — we couldn’t afford it to begin with. I really don’t know. I think she realizes the potential boredom and that’s why she wants to get a job in Warszawa or Kraków. Yet what’s the point of staying in Poland if I go somewhere else to teach? The only reason I want to stay here rather than trying to get some kind of job back in the States is that I want to work with my students for another year. I’ve pointed this out a thousand times, both to myself and to her — we both realize and understand it.
My apartment is ridiculously messy — I’m going to clean.
November Projects
My anal-ity about writing in this every night has certainly disappeared. I really have nothing on my mind to write about tonight, but I thought I’d jot down a few things before going to bed.
I finally sent Jarek the stuff from my presentation next week. It’s good to be done with all of that, but I’m still plagued by those thoughts of, “Do I have enough material to last me forty-five minutes?” It’s just like the worries I have every night as I prepare my lessons, but here it’s a little different: I cannot just fake it without everyone knowing it. I’ll spend some time Sunday (probably more than I anticipate) preparing a little something extra. I’ve been thinking about having an open discussion about lesson planning in general, but to what ends? I can’t really think of where I’d want to lead the discussion, so what’s the point? I’ll do some more thinking on that as well.
Today we had the presentations in IB and they went rather well, I thought. Their projects aren’t quite as elaborate as IA’s or IC’s but they’re good all the same. Their presentations were much more effective because we had each person teach the class two or three new words from their projects and then had a bit of a review after every group had gone.
I think on a whole the projects were very successful. I think the students enjoyed doing them and probably thought it was an original assignment, coming from English teachers. The other teachers have all commented on the projects. (We’re keeping them in the teachers’ room while we grade them.) Everyone says they look nice and that it’s a good idea which should promote learning. I’m really pleased with how everything went. It gave me a nice feeling this afternoon looking at all those projects and think, “Hey – that was my idea.” I came up with a highly effective and educational learning project. Certainly it’s not original, but I thought of it myself with no outside help. I’m quite proud of myself. Ha.
This week has gone by so quickly. The time is just flying. November seems like it just began and it’s almost two-thirds over. Next week will go by rather quickly because I only have two days (because of the IST). Then we have three weeks until Christmas break begins. And then we’ll have just a few weeks before winter break. It’s really going to go by quickly now. And in some ways it can’t go by quickly enough. I have trouble going to sleep sometimes because I keep thinking about my homecoming, and that is happening more and more frequently. Two years stretched before me endlessly – now I’m down to a little over seven months. It’s almost three-fourths over . . .
Plums
It’s amazing how quickly plums can roll. You would think that since they’re not really round but more oblong—more like a small American football than a soccer ball—that they wouldn’t roll as much as they would wobble, doing a strange dance which could look like a drunken lame man hobbling down the street. But they did scoot through the bus with amazing speed.
When the bag full of plums sitting in the aisle tipped over, I didn’t imagine the comedy of the ensuing scene. Its owner, a drunken Polish man in dire need of a belt, was completely obvious to the fact that his plums were making their way throughout the bus, rolling down the aisle and under people’s feet. Finally, whether by intuition or chance, he realized what was happening and with a groggy grunt he turned around, bent over and began picking up the plums. First, he had to put the bag back up, and this resulted in an immediate and new deluge of plums.
Containing my own amusement—for it’s not a good idea to laugh at a drunk man who’s losing all his plums—I helped him put the bag back up and then grabbed a few of the plums and plunked them back into his bag.
After he replaced the fruit in his immediate reach, he began moving people’s legs aside with a gruff “Przepraszam” as he lurched for the plums which had rolled under passengers’ chairs. Pleased with the unexpected entertainment, we sober riders which him, glancing up occasionally to smile at each other as if to say, “If only this poor guy knew how stupid he looks.”
Finally he retrieved all the fruit that was within a few feet of him, but then he revealed just how tenacious he could be. Swaying with the bus which, combined with the high level of alcohol coursing through his veins, seemed to make him look a shade of nauseous green which is not healthy even for folks with the strongest stomachs, he stood up and stumbled toward the front of the bus, grasping the chairs for balance.
His destination: a small trove of plums which had rolled all the way to the front of the bus.
He brought back three or four, dropped them in his bag which he carefully rearranged to prevent the catastrophe from happening again, then slumped down into the floor—there were no empty seats—and leaned over in a drunken stupor. A lone plum, which had somehow eluded the man, sat balanced in the middle of the isle. Though the bus was swaying back and forth fiercely and though his comrades had set an amusing president, the plum did not roll at all but sat still, content to be alone and free.
And that was what kept me amused for the rest of the bus ride from Kraków.
Journals
I got journals from IIB and IIIA today. I’ve already graded the journals from IIIA but I really dread starting on the big stack from IIB. It takes such a long time to grade those things because I always want to be fair. I don’t know if it’s possible in such a subjective thing as journals, but I try nonetheless. In some ways I wonder if they’re more trouble than they’re worth. That’s really a stupid thing to think because it does a great deal of good for the students—it provides an opportunity for them to write without worrying about mistakes or the eventual grade (for correctness, that is). The question is not whether or not to continue the assignment, but how to grade it more quickly and effectively.
I just noticed a drawback to the new grading system I’m using this year. I can’t get any kind of grade whatsoever until I have at least one grade in each area (test, journal, projects, etc). That will mean that we have to give a lot of assignments to each class. That won’t be too difficult, but it will be terribly time consuming to grade all those things and then put the grades in the computer.
One thing is certain: I am not doing all the grading like I did last year. I did it because I had so much more free time than Danuta did, but this year I’m going to get her to grade a few things. Of course that wasn’t the only reason: I was also worried that she would grade them too harshly. I always thought of those tests she gave IIB last year—some students received no credit whatsoever. I could never convince her that giving no credit for a test item is a bad idea. Perhaps this year I can talk her into it—but she is so stubborn at times.
Light
I survived the first of many Wednesdays, all of which will certainly be hellish. Eight lessons without a break is tough. But I will admit that it wasn’t as tough as I was expecting. I rather enjoyed each class, most of which are with the first class (group A, B, or C). I have IIIA to begin with, and then I have only first year students. And just as I did last year, I’m finding that I really like the first class. They’re all great, and even though I thought I had a good start with the first classes last year, I think I’m doing much better this year. I’m really connecting with them more effectively than I did last year.
I’m trying to learn students’ names of course, and there are already a few who stand out. In IA there’s a girl named Alina who has really marvelous English and seems eager and willing to use it. (I was surprised by the willingness of the whole class to use English, to be honest.) Rafał in IB reminds me of someone with his good-hearted mischievousness, but I cannot remember who. (Dominik during practicum in Radom?) In IC there’s Ba ka who reminds me of Żaneta from IIA. They even look similar.
I find now that the despression of Sunday night seems so very far away. I’ve no idea how I could have felt so bad. I look around and I think of how I’ll miss this place, even during next summer while I’m back in America. I’ll miss speaking Polish and teaching English. And I’ll even miss the smallness of this place, that which can cause such boredom if I’m not careful.
Today I got both class IB and IC to speak a little English. It was so simple, but it sounded so wonderful. They were only saying things like, “This is Bob,” or “What’s his name?” But to hear that from someone who has never before put together that many words in English was almost magical. I had forgotten how good I felt last year when IIB was beginning to say a little bit in English. It is that which makes me prefer first year classes in some way. To begin with, their easier to prepare for. But more importantly, I get a much greater sense of accomplishment from working with them.
New Classes
We had the opportunity to meet two of the three first classes today—IA and IC. It turns out that there are not as many students from class VIII that I taught last year as I thought there would. I recognized a few faces, but not many. Strangely enough there are almost as many boys as there are girls in that class. That’s a shock for Lipnica, especially when one considers both second classes and third class. I began talking to them in English and then Danuta gave a few rules and regulations in Polish. I think it will be a good class, but Danuta said it would be a difficult class. “Why?” I asked. “Because they responded much like IIIB always does,” she answered. I pointed out that it’s impossible to judge them from only one short class which had almost no interaction at all.
Class IC is a different story altogether. There are twenty-eight students in that class, and not a single boy. I walked in and said, “Hello girls and girls!” I talked to them in Polish at first to show them that my Polish is not perfect but it is understandable. I made the point that I don’t really worry about my mistakes because if I did, I would never be able to say anything. I said also that they will speak English much like I was speaking Polish. “We’ll speak like children and make a lot of mistakes, but it’s not a bad thing. We [Danuta and I] will never say you’re a bad student because you make mistakes.” I tried to encourage them and show them that making stupid mistakes—even funny mistakes—is to be expected. They were fairly quiet, but I think it was simply from nerves and not really from anything else. I now have the experience of IB last year to remind me that classes that begin with such difficulty often turn out to be the most rewarding.
I had IIIA play “Taboo” today and they were really speaking a lot. I heard more English in those forty-five minutes than I’ve heard in a very long time. I was thrilled, and it seemed that they were actually enjoying it. I really don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow, but I’m not as worried about it now. I realize that they are willing to speak English if they have such tasks that allow them to make their own constructions as they need to.
Planning and Lonliness
Part of the problem is loneliness. I haven’t seen anyone today and I don’t know that I will. I’m thinking about going across the street, but what prevents me from doing that is the simple understanding that I still haven’t finished planning for tomorrow. I could say to myself, “You don’t have class until 9:50 tomorrow morning. You can wait and throw something together then.” But that’s exactly what I did last year and where did it get me? What did I accomplish? What did the students learn? How as my sanity? So I want to try to finish writing a lesson plan for tomorrow. But I know (or rather, “I expect”) that when I go back and sit down with a fresh outlook (as fresh as I can manage at this point), I’ll run into the same brick wall. “What the hell am I going to do tomorrow?”
That was a nightly battle last year and I assume that it’s going to be the same way this year. Every evening I struggled to come up with a lesson, forty-five minutes of business and productivity. When I finally came up with something and finished all the planning, I thought, “Whew—did it again. But I’ve no idea where I’ll get another activity from.” Yet somehow, I always managed to come up with something. It’s just that toward the end of the year, my “somethings” were turning out to be rather boring and ineffective. The students didn’t respond well at all and I was left wondering what the hell I could do differently. Part of my trouble now is that the same thing is happening at the beginning of the year. I think, “Well, I survived about four or five weeks of that last year, but I can’t do nine or ten months of it this year.”
I just don’t know what the problem is. Is it that I’m not doing enough planning? Am I leaving to much up to chance? Am I too often saying, “Okay, that’s a good idea but I’ll improvise the finer details tomorrow during the lesson”? Am I planning with the wrong objective? What is my objective? I guess if I’m honest, I’m still running on last year’s fourth-quarter improvisational objective: “Let’s fill these forty-five minutes.” I need to shift my priorities and not worry so much about filling the time as teaching them English and giving them opportunities to use the language authentically. […]
Part of the problem I have is with providing structure within the lesson. I come up with fairly good ideas for activities, but I then expect (today’s magic word) the students do come up with too much stuff on their own. I provide only the barest frame and then expect them to go out and buy the paint and canvas, think of a proper subject, and finish the piece of art. Take my last lesson with IIIA for example. I told them that since we weren’t going to be using books this year, we must decide on what we want to study and how. Now that was entirely too broad of a topic. They really don’t know what the possibilities are (both in subject matter and methodology) and so to expect them to discuss that (even with the gimick of “alter egoes”) was asking entirely too much.
I also don’t have enough of a long-term plan. I told IIIA that I hope to give them a syllabus at some point which gives them at least a rough idea of what we will be doing in the coming weeks. I need also to establish a routine, a weekly schedule so that I have some idea of where I need to go with the lesson before I even start planning it. And yet I’m really not sure how to go about doing that.
Once again, I know what I need (more structure; more long-term planning; more control over the class; more enthusiasm from my students), but I’ve no idea how to go about achieving these things. It’s the seemingly unbridgeable gap between theory and praxis. Even with a year’s experience, I don’t know how to overcome these problems.
I’ve no idea.
I’ve no ideas.
I’ve no ideal.