If you don’t teach online for a while, you forget how time- and energy-intensive it is. My organization, LEARN NC, employs a lot of online teachers, and they’re pretty great. You should see the evaluations they get. They’re awesome.

I’m filling in as an online instructor for a little while, and it’s exhausting. But I really like it– almost immediately, I’ve been able to learn about the students and try to forge a personal relationship with them. It doesn’t happen this way in a face-to-face classroom… some students can be with you for a month before you really know anything about them. I’m not saying that’s good teaching, I’m saying that’s a reality sometimes. In the online environment, they tend to share a little more personal information at the beginning of the course because they don’t see their peers… no immediate feedback.

I don’t know if it’s kosher for me to say this, since I work in online learning, but I don’t know if I like face-to-face teaching or online teaching better. When I teach in a classroom, I have a strong sense that teaching is an art, and one I enjoy. I don’t have that as much online. Which may mean teaching is more science than art, and any gratification I get in the classroom is more my own edification than actual evidence of student learning. I had a boss who used to say, when asked how we knew our program was successful, would reply, “I see that look in their eyes, and I know.” I’ve used that logic myself. And it’s a surprisingly non-measurable metric.

Ah, but that look. That excitement. You don’t see that as much in an online course. Is that look, that excitement the best proof I have that I’m doing a good job? Because, if so, I might really suck at this…

When successful, a short poem immediately launches into its lyrical potential; any narrative grounding happens in service to the lyric. (I don’t think there’s such a thing as a successful short narrative, at least not one in less than ten average-sized lines or so. That’s just not enough to tell a complete story in verse.) The sound and shape of the words must immediately be keener in a short poem; a longer poem doesn’t require such lyric density because there is more potential for variation and rest in a longer poem.

An unsuccessful short poem, however, can do all of those things and still fail. Where I see many short poems go awry is that they describe but never illuminate; they represent a thing but do it no service; they present truth in entirely truthful terms. Where’s the fun in that? Why represent a thing exactly as we know it all to be? These short poems fail to take advantage of trope or figure, fail to imagine their subject in a subjective light, fail to make the objective truth more accessible through the tenacity and frailty of words, or fail to recognize their own flaws as representative descriptions. At their best, the Objectivists understood at least the difficulty of getting it right in a way that was doomed to be wrong: not the thing itself, but the thing captured for a moment on the page; not the thing itself but the essence of the thing communicated in words. Such poems, even when willfully obscuring the speaker, must reveal the speaker in the details chosen to describe the thing…

Productivity blogs I read have recently recommended that, in order to keep some balance, you make sure that you divide your life into several sectors (work, personal/private, social, health) and accomplish at least one goal from every category.  They’ve run features on the importance of social contact with at least one friend per day, and “tickling” social contacts who are at a distance… basically, ping them every so often to make sure they’re still responding.  To keep them friendly.  I had lunch with an old friend, one I’d not seen in almost seven years, and he told the story of how his former drummer had a long list of people, and would go through that list, calling each one to check in and say hello.  When he got to the end of the list, which could take a couple months, he’d start again at the top immediately.  “We had a place to stay in any city we went to,” he said.  “We never had to ask.  If they knew we were coming in town, they offered up their place.  That’s why they were on the list, sometimes.”

I think a lot of poets have this going on, too.  I do not.  I’m woeful at keeping in touch with the people who are important to me.  It feels like at any given time I’ll have about eight in my contact list that I’m a reasonable friend to and will reach out to.   And there will be a small handful who haven’t yet given up on me and will check in occasionally.  But I never feel like I have the mental space, the bandwidth, to keep up with all the people who are important to me.  The Facebooks and Twitters and all those other tools are useful, though with Facebook I don’t always see when people change status. (Twitter seems to be just about perfect for keeping in touch… which is why I have come to value it so.  I wish everyone would Twitter.)  So I’ll drift in and out– more out– of contact with good people.  And if/when people re-surface that I’m excited about hearing from, sometimes I still manage to blow the exchange in some way.  Sooner or later, the malaise strikes again, and I go underground, not responding to calls and e-mails unless they’re essential to surviving… like, I have to answer for work.

I almost wonder if I should do like my friend’s drummer did, get a list and just go through, checking it off, maybe even pruning it every so often if I’ve lost touch and find that it doesn’t bother me. It feels a little overdetermined, a little contrived.  But it would, at the very least, get me thinking about what and who is important to me. How… mechanical.  I never wanted my friends to be a contact database.  I’m not trying to make sure I have a couch to stay on if I come to town.

But I also think about the joy of hearing from those unexpected folks.  I’m not just talking about the surprise contact from high school who found me on Facebook or MySpace, though sometimes those are really fulfilling as well.  I’m talking about the people who mean a great deal, the ones who just drift and drift further if I let them, and eventually drift so far in the universe’s bizarre orbital pattern that they eventually come back around, and for a brief minute– an e-mail or a phone call or a chance encounter at the burrito place– they’re back in my life.  I want to keep them there.  I want to be a better friend than I am.  I got a LinkedIn invite today from someone I last heard from over three years ago… I remember, because it was the day before my wedding that I last heard a peep from this friend. Hey you– if you’re reading, I don’t ever want you to disappear again.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I said I’d be giving away a book? There were so many compelling arguments, but I could not pass up Allen Kromer’s. He went anagrammatical.

Sarah Manguso

O! Sugar Shaman!
Mourns as agha,
sang, “Ah, amours…”
Ragas so human,
ragas so human.

Ragas, so human.

That triple repetition at the end, Kromer, was where you won my heart forever.

In patented Scott Jennings bullet-point format, here’s some miscellany:

• Travis Smith and I wore a path in the highway between Greensboro and Durham this week. On Thursday night, we went out to see Michael McFee and Michael Chitwood read; on Friday, we went to see Natasha Trethewey and Van Jordan. We had the opportunity to hang out for a while after both readings; the chance to be around poets in such high concentration, even if there’s not much talk of poetry, is tonic for the soul. Van and I talked in our last exchange about life after the MFA. Speaking of the intimate connection that the Warren Wilson structure provides to talk about poems, he wrote, “I know how dark it can be.” But I’m starting to feel that I can see what that life will be like, and it doesn’t look dark to me, not at all.
• Remember that song “If You Leave”? Amazon’s offering a free live version, which sounds pretty good.
• Miniature album reviews of stuff I have picked up in the last couple weeks:
  • The Breeders, Mountain Battles - I hope that heaven tastes like carrot souffle from Dillards BBQ and sounds like Kim Deal. If you would like to be thoroughly rocked, listen to “German Lesson.” I suspect German speakers would find their accents deplorable. Whatever, German speakers.
  • R.E.M., Accelerate - It seems impossible that R.E.M., after so many years of middling albums with a few stellar tracks should come back with a stellar album which contains only a few middling tracks. This is the stuff, people. “Living Well Is the Best Revenge” is phenomenal; “Supernatural Superserious,” despite its goofy lyrics that seem so out of place from a guy Stipe’s age, is actually somewhat moving; “Mr. Richards” just flat rocks. I bought the bonus tracks this morning… only one listen each, so too soon to tell for sure, but I think I like.
  • Phantom Planet, Raise the Dead - Disappointment. This is what mediocre pop-rock sounds like. After giving this album a few spins, I’ve come to the conclusion that I want my money back. Not all of it. About half.
  • Nine Inch Nails, Ghosts I-IV - Let me first tell you the story of how I purchased this album: Seeing it on sale for $10 at Target, I tossed it in the cart on a big shopping day with Ladybug. When I got home, I found they’d charged me $13, so I returned it and thought I’d try to catch it on sale. I found it later on Amazon’s download service for $5. Score. Worth $13? Actually, probably; it’s atmospheric, sparse at the right times, and very typically NIN. Which, you know, I prefer to, say, Aphex Twin, who is actually probably the closest comp I can think of for this album.
  • Tristan Prettyman, Hello - I had heard some of her live stuff and got suckered into this, an album which is cute and sweet but entirely overproduced. And you don’t hear me say that often.
• I’m doing my first Sequential Swap in a while.
• Ladybug and I have been working iteratively on Iron Scav 11, Chapel Hill’s most socially retarded scavenger hunt. We have about 40 people who have said they’re coming, but not one team has registered with their members’ names, which means no one yet knows the secret third character.
• Can I just say that as much as I love and support National Poetry Month, I freaking hate this “Poem in Your Pocket” thing they have going this year?  Hated it as soon as I heard the name (proof).

I’ll leave you with this poem, which I read Thursday night at Old Town and immediately took a shine to. Apparently, the publisher feels the same way: this is the sample poem on poets.org.

Among the Things He Does Not Deserve

Greek olives in oil, fine beer, the respect of colleagues,
the rapt attention of an audience, pressed white shirts,
just one last-second victory, sympathy, buttons made
to resemble pearls, a pale daughter, living wages, a father
with Italian blood, pity, the miraculous reversal of time,
a benevolent god, good health, another dog, nothing
cruel and unusual, spring, forgiveness, the benefit
of the doubt, the next line, cold fingers against his chest,
rich bass notes from walnut speakers, inebriation, more ink,
a hanging curve, great art, steady rain on Sunday, the purr
of a young cat, the crab cakes at their favorite little place,
the dull pain in his head, the soft gift of her parted lips.

–Dan Albergotti, from The Boatloads 

Dear Georgetown College in Kentucky,

You have made an exceedingly wise choice in hiring Emma Bolden. I had not previously heard of you, but now I hold you in high regard.  You clearly know what you are doing.

Kisses,
Ross White

…to stay out way too late on a weeknight, particularly when they serve you free beer and you have 50+ people to talk to.

My concertgoing habits have not exactly been the stuff of legends: I have seen some great bands, and in some cases, I have seen some great bands multiple times.  But it seems I’ve found new and interesting ways to miss some of my favorite bands, time and time again, until they’ve broken up and I missed my chance altogether.

By “great bands,” of course I mean the bands that I hold dear.  Whether or not you share my opinion as to their greatness is irrelevant.

Bands I’ve managed to see: R.E.M. (repeatedly… like 9 times now), Throwing Muses (also repeatedly), Kiss (though, oddly, it was without the makeup), Foo Fighters, that dog, Wilco, Ben Folds Five (never solo), Hooverphonic, Living Colour, Sarah Harmer, Nine Inch Nails, The Amps, Tammy & The Amps, eels, Fugazi, They Might Be Giants

(OK, I’ve seen more bands than that… and this doesn’t even account for some of the best shows I have seen, but these are bands that I’ve  listened to so much that I should have seen them.)

Bands I never got around to, or haven’t yet gotten around to: Luscious Jackson (had tickets, but my sister made us late and we missed them, for which I have never forgiven her), Soul Coughing, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Pixies, Radiohead, Decemberists, Metric, Sloan, Jane’s Addiction

Bands which are currently on the latter list, but for whom I have tickets! Duran Duran (May 21) and The Breeders (June 12).  Aw yeah!

If you know me at all, you know what each new Breeders release means to me.  After waiting a week for Amazon’s 2-day shipping to get it to me, Mountain Battles is now in my grubby little paws. Yes!  Pure joy!  Kim singing in German and Spanish!

Tonight

Dean Young reads at the UNC-G Faculty Center on College Ave. in Greensboro.  8 PM.  Dean is the author of several books of poems, including Embryoyo and Primitive Mentor.

Tomorrow Night

I’ll be reading with Ellen C. Bush, Jon Leon, Alyssa Wolf, David Bradshear, and Henry Kearney at Flanders 311, 311 W. Martin St. in downtown Raleigh.  7 PM.  Come on by and see the prints that go with the poems as part of The Illustrated Word, which runs all month at the gallery.