I went to Radio Shack the other day for a can of dust removal spray. My purchase was smooth until I came to the cashier. The twenty-something-year-old sales guy who spoke nearly indecipherable English asked me, “What’s your last name?” What? I couldn’t figure out why my last name had to do with my payment. …
I started my first garden this summer. I finally have the space to grow one. I’ve always wanted to plant, always felt the need to produce. But mostly, I want to learn from the process of gardening. I want to know what needs more water, more sun, what survives cold nights, and what clings tight …
Coming from China, a nation of 1.3 billion people, to the United States, which has a vast landscape, I’ve had many cultural shocks. Many are not only from the comparison with my homeland but also with the stark contrasts between the American states. Speaking of Denver, I immediately think of its NBA team, the Nuggets, …
I gave the students a week off to revise their work. It was nice to have a break, but I found myself constantly thinking about the world around me in relation to the inmates at the jail. I watched Gasland the other night, a documentary about the Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling that’s going on …
Many poets turn to the other arts for inspiration. For painters such as William Blake, Cezanne, and the contemporary Dutch painter Leo Klein, the challenge is to capture the sublime, to visually represent the invisible, so that the painting becomes more than itself, more than an object, more than a picture of what is seen. …
We took a day trip to Lake Placid in upstate New York. Whenever we told people we were going to Lake Placid, they would immediately inform us the place was the two-time site of the Winter Olympics, in 1932 and 1980. Yes, I knew that. But really I just wanted to see the lake and the …
A quote opens our lesson for the week: The art of revision is the art of writing: It’s something I’ve heard before, but I don’t know who said it. The men choose a piece of work that they feel good about, one that they put up on the projector and read aloud to the class. …
Perhaps the richest source of poetry can be found in the language of children. When my daughter was four years old, she experienced an airplane as big on the inside and little on the outside — which, incidentally, serves as a description of a lyric poem as well. She also says Ouch is me when she …