Poetry and Boys

Some boys. Not all.

They are so conditioned by what the fuck ever to be punished for expressing themselves. Often if there’s no adult monitor around, some other kid will step in, emulating adult behavior as it is dished out as disdain or what the boys involved interpret as disdain.

Poetry can be a disguise as well. Especially for the kid who is so shy, it’s debilitating. My favorites are the boys who have no choice, really. They are going to express themselves regardless of any cultural sanctions are imposed upon them.

Only girls write poetry is the first hurdle. How do you feel about what Johnny’s poetry is saying can take them a good six weeks to come to terms with on a feeling level. Because they do not understand the difference between the poetry and how they feel when it’s actually absorbed.

There is an increased sensitivity to the biology of their sexuality at around eleven. This is really not connected to a focus on relationships. It will almost always be a curiosity seeking its own relevance. The kid can be more focused on the context of the room, the setting, anything that renders another human being as an object sex itself can be explored through without commitment.

It’s okay to write poetry about football.

Swimming. Where typically the use of metaphor is increasingly employed. Contact sports are different. The focus here will be mainly limited to the tactical. Ending are usually about winning and the joy of being dominant.

Abused boys will write in fragments. They will then go back to the beginning of the poetry to see where connective tissue can be constructed to enjoin metaphors of cause and effect.

Self-healing.

Through awareness.

Protest poetry can protest the writing of poetry.

Writers’ workshop paradigms have kids reading their poetry to the group. I will often ask the question in this context: Will you look at us instead of at the floor.

Boys writing poetry can increase their confidence.

It can be both a reinforced social interaction perceived within an intellectual framework. A double wammy for the boy.

The bottom line is about control.

The boy controls the poem. It goes where he wants. I make contracts where I don’t judge or interfere.

Kids who need control in order to feel safe are freed by adult opinion as to where the kid takes the poem whether it’s on a wall or in a journal.

I do not requite boys to correct their spelling.

The laboriousness of spell check programs defeats what I am looking for which is a safe space the kid himself defines by his understanding that emotional intelligence is acceptable as is asking for what you want.

Memoir can be intense. Boys going through whatever stage of parental separation and divorce might be germane, almost always feel they are being asked to pick sides.

The kid picking both sides can be easily enraged.

“I can’t hear you,” becomes my mantra. It goes louder. I want the kid to hear it.

Make it fun if you can. It will become serious soon enough.

You will see poems that have no sides, but instead just leak with pain. It is essential that the kid say what he has to say. He’s way too distracted to correct his spelling, he doesn’t have time, he’s cued into his anxiety in the face of failure, that he is in any kind of empathy for the reader whatsoever.

He knows they’re there, but there’s no there there.

The war this often turns into between the teacher and the boy is NOT worth it, and it’s not teaching poetry, it’s about punishment for being stupid, and the very first thing this does is make the boy hate writing for the rest of his life.

He has to have a place to write it. I don’t care where they write it.

Mine are fragile.

If your alarm bells are going: BACK OFF, back off.

The teacher is the facilitator.

Not the police.

The Poetry Police have to go live in another country.

One reader on the Medium came after me for creating “Wild Children not contained.”

And there it is.

I’m not interested in waterboarding being involved with teaching. I’m not the clothes police. I’m not the nurse police. I’m not the laundry police. I’m not the Stupidville police. I’m not the sex police.

If I am required to be all these various police forces, forget it, resentment is not a place where children learn particularly if they tend to be consumed by a relentless anxiety versus the kind of reinforcements that communicate success. “You made me see that in a different way,” can be expressed itself in different ways.

Callen talks loudly about sex. Callen has never had sex. The kind that is not rape. What he writes about is the Callen who is his second self. He is almost inarticulate when attempting to write at a feeling level. Callen has become the object objectified as a body whose separate parts allow the kid to be in undiscovered territory. He does not know what to say. He does not know how to say it, when to say it, where to say it. And he has no feedback system as to how loud to say it.

Martin is powerful. But not to Martin.

Only when Martin’s second self feels safe, will Martin risk any communication that approximates speech and what Martin is hanging on to is his need to control the focus. Which is as far away from Martin as he can get. Martin is conflicted.

It is imperative that the choices be up to Martin.

Callen’s fragility is directly related to his ability to interpret what might be coming at him next.

The kid feels like he is under constant assault, and he exaggerates his role in the hierarchy of the boys he is a part of as a group.

He’s goofy. It’s an act.

His peers endure it. They will grab his focus and bring it back around.

There should be no term in the language, any language, for what school systems call: worksheets.

Worksheets. Don’t. Work.