WORTHINGTON -- A few days ago, some friends gave my family an old upright piano. They needed to clear it out of their garage to make room for a graduation party. The piano is as heavy as a Grizzly Bear, smells a little like hog barn and gasoline, and has beautiful dark red and brown whorls in the woodgrain. A couple of its keys are twangier than Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, and one key doesn't play at all.
Of course, that one is not a key my kids use very often. They like the other eighty-seven that make noise. All three kids experiment with riffs they've made up, repeating them loudly, softly, Bom-bum-Bom-bum-bum, with two hands, with one hand, with the pedals, without. A couple of their little tunes have become earworms I can't get out of my head, so I've been humming them all week.
I love the noise and hear the music in it because I love the kids. If I sent them over to your house with their commotion, though, you'd start making public nuisance complaints and placing ibuprofen-delivery calls. A few of you might pull me discreetly aside, slip me a music teacher's phone number, and suggest "lessons."
And you know what? That would be great advice. The kids are full of creativity, playfulness, feeling and even music. But they don't have much ability, and no way to share the good stuff inside them. A little training and practice would go a long way toward helping them make beautiful, interesting music.
Most of us don't think quite the same way about poetry. I bet we've all tried our hands at writing poems, especially when we were young, when times were difficult, or when our lives were filled with emotional events. We couldn't help it, there was poetry in us! Then when we finished writing, we rolled up our notebooks in fat rubberbands and buried them under the yearbooks, toaster warranties and slide carousels in the back of the spare closet. Possibly we had the guts to show our poems to a few people first, hoping that they would be like dad or mom and enjoy them because, well, they actually loved us. It never occurred to most of us that with a little training and practice, we might make something beautiful, interesting and true.
ADVERTISEMENT
I'm here to tug your sleeve and say, "Hey, have you thought about 'lessons'?"
On Tuesday evenings this fall, I'll be leading a class called "Writing and Reading Poetry." We'll read good poems together (some I choose, some that the students will). I'll keep the lecturing minimal so that we have plenty of time to try out techniques we've appreciated in those poems. We'll spend time giving honest, respectful help to each other about the poems we're writing. We'll go out and attend poetry events together. The semester will end with a celebration -- a public poetry reading of poems we've written. The audience will leave applauding, not trying to massage the headache out of their temples.
There are other creative writing opportunities at Minnesota West, too. One is the "Creative Writing" class that Dan Roos teaches every spring semester. His students read good writers and have the chance to improve not just their poems but also stories they've written.
Another is UnCover, a brand new art and creative writing magazine by members of the Minnesota West community. We're releasing our very first issue this Tuesday, April 29. (Come on out to the Minnesota West Fine Arts Lobby between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. to have some refreshments and pick up a copy!) Next year we'll need editors, writers, artists and sponsors for the second issue of UnCover.
I know you've been writing. If you've been banging away and making more noise than music, I invite you to come out to Minnesota West and enjoy some training, some practice, some getting better.
Karsten Piper is an English professor at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Worthington campus.
