Intermediate Ethics
Since November, I've been wondering about the fate of my credibility as a parent and as an instructor.
In a country where "alternative facts" are brazenly defined and used in conversations about America's identity and safety, how do I show students that sound, persuasive arguments are supported by truth, and they must discover truth rather than fabricate a more convenient "alternative"? How do I keep believing this myself? Sometimes it seems like humanity is doubting science and the world it lives in more than ever.
And while I'm at it, as a citizen affected by this administration that hurts and threatens people without restraint, how do I teach my daughter that she cannot hurt people to make herself feel better?
I need to keep reading.
I've been playing with formal verse more, since the end of last year, finding the restrictions more like writing companions than nuisances. A pantoum here, a pantoum there. Sometimes a sestina. I am still telling all the writers who will listen to me to write piles and piles and piles of shit, to compost, to keep an eye open for good blooms. Do not write for praise. Write whenever you can, however much you can. Keep communicating.
And I'm seeing students at UWT come together just a bit more than they did last year, around writing, forming groups and meeting to talk about what they've read. I'm also seeing my daughter stop and think before hitting her friends on the head with a plastic shovel.
= progress, I think. Here's a poem for the month ahead, which is meant to celebrate the power of poetry.
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In a country where "alternative facts" are brazenly defined and used in conversations about America's identity and safety, how do I show students that sound, persuasive arguments are supported by truth, and they must discover truth rather than fabricate a more convenient "alternative"? How do I keep believing this myself? Sometimes it seems like humanity is doubting science and the world it lives in more than ever.
And while I'm at it, as a citizen affected by this administration that hurts and threatens people without restraint, how do I teach my daughter that she cannot hurt people to make herself feel better?
I need to keep reading.
I've been playing with formal verse more, since the end of last year, finding the restrictions more like writing companions than nuisances. A pantoum here, a pantoum there. Sometimes a sestina. I am still telling all the writers who will listen to me to write piles and piles and piles of shit, to compost, to keep an eye open for good blooms. Do not write for praise. Write whenever you can, however much you can. Keep communicating.
And I'm seeing students at UWT come together just a bit more than they did last year, around writing, forming groups and meeting to talk about what they've read. I'm also seeing my daughter stop and think before hitting her friends on the head with a plastic shovel.
= progress, I think. Here's a poem for the month ahead, which is meant to celebrate the power of poetry.
Intermediate
Ethics
The worst of
it: I tell my daughter
there are
consequences
for those who
hurt others.
It is 2017.
We are Americans.
There are
consequences
for those who
fabricate truth,
even in 2017,
even in America.
Science is
the new poetry,
and those who
fabricate truth
are the new advisors.
Scientists
are the new poets,
obsessed with
the wounded.
The new
advisors
wish we’d
fall asleep already,
stop singing
to the wounded
and build a more
pleasant truth.
There are
consequences
for the worst
of it: I tell my daughter
it is 2017,
we are Americans,
-->
and we
continue to hurt others.
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