the more I read of June Jordan’s book Civil Wars, the more I reflect on my experiences with people. my mom has been doing a lot of decluttering lately. throwing out things she doesn’t need, but donating what can be reused. we usually take boxes of items to a women’s shelter, or a shelter for unhoused people.
Dropping things off at the shelter reminded me of one of my most formative teaching experiences, when I taught creative workshops at a shelter for unhoused people in El Paso during my MFA. It still stands as one of my favorite moments, and I realized how much teaching is about being able to learn from your students. I think that is a part of June Jordan’s legacy that I am appreciating right now. I am reading about how she came to teach her first classes, where her colleagues were Toni Cade Bambara, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde.
I think about people I have learned a lot about teaching from. My own teachers growing up. My 7th-grade English teacher gave me her secret copy of Interview with a Vampire and encouraged me to read everything. I became an avid Anne Rice fan in middle school. I even once met her son Christopher, and I have a signed copy of his book somewhere. Then there were my high school English teachers — one of whom drove me to Austin when I was about 15 to attend a writing camp. It was my first time visiting UT Austin, and I made up my mind to go to university there.
I have also been trying to clean up my inbox, which means rereading old emails. I am not a nostalgic person, really, but I certainly have my sentimental moments. There are gifts I wish I still had, like a portrait of a hand an ex gave me or the obsidian knife I brought from Teotihuacan that I gave to another ex. There are gifts I never received that I think about — like the annotated copy of the Qu’ran that another ex-lover told me she was going to give to me, but decided not to because we had quarreled. There are postcards from people I have fallen in love with. There was a night a friend and I stared up at the sky and watched a comet fall. And tonight, I came across some old emails from a friend whom I love deeply. If you ever ask me about the first night we hung out, I might tell you. Maybe once we might have been lovers, but it’s been years now. I believe we should all be in love with our friends.
They wrote: “I admire your ability to see some things so clearly, and then to describe them in a way that makes them not only clear but I think deeply felt by other people (me, at least), usually in a few words. I guess that's part of what makes a poet? like translating what seems to me mysterious and ineffable into something that I can see and understand.” And I replied: “I think the role of the poet is to witness, to observe, to listen to what they experience and to translate what they see, what they feel, what they think... I remember that letter. And I remember that while we never have spent a significant amount of time in each other's presence, I feel very strongly in what it is you never say. Growing up in a place of silence, I learned to speak and understand that silence… I began to realize that didn't mean there weren't things going on, it just meant everything was beneath the surface. It helped me understand that something intimate and vulnerable can still be impenetrable.”
That felt like a moment I understood myself as a poet.
And I think about the advice that Toni Cade Bambara gave to June Jordan on her first day of teaching: “Anything you have to give—just give it to them.”