You Were Never Me
“And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. ”
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently started teaching again at a local 2-year school about a 15-minute walk from my house. Although I am making about 50% of what I made on unemployment, it's nice to be back in the classroom. I made it clear to the Universe that I wanted an easy commute; I was less clear about the salary requirements.
Because it is my first teaching assignment in some time, I am teaching a greatest hits course. I trust my teaching muscle memory will get me through this semester, and I’ll start taking risks with new approaches to those standard English 102 course objectives next semester. But, of course, I am already changing things up.
Next week, I am giving them a stack of poems brought together through Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago.” It’s not a poem I have taught before but, since we are in Chicago, it’s a poem that most of my students and I know.
And it is not a difficult poem. It’s Chicago--full of bluster, grit, and unapology. It’s not crafted or nurtured but machined and harvested. Butchered. In each mark of punctuation, there is emphatic spit. Sandburg gives examples of Chicago’s wicked, crooked, bareheaded laughing that happened in 1914 and yesterday. And will happen tomorrow.
You Were Never in Chicago
In 1952, A.J. Liebling wrote a series for the New Yorker labeling Chicago as The Second City and dragging the city through its own bluster, grit, and unapology. Chicagoans were not pleased. His hate mail produced a memorable postcard which read, “You were never in Chicago.” Whoever wrote that card believed Liebling so missed the point of the city that he must not have ever seen Chicago at all.
How we see the world has a lot to do with how the world sees us. My students inhabit small spaces, and the world doesn’t see much of—or sometimes in—them. I’m going to give them a megaphone as big as Chicago. Perhaps the world will listen.
Sandburg’s poem is built on a Chicago built on the experiences of people who are now long dead. I will ask my students to use the form and mood of Sandburg's “Chicago” to write a new poem about people still very alive: themselves.
You can read Sandburg's poem here. The breakdown below is the template I have made from the poem to help my students write theirs. It’s intertextuality if you acknowledge moving into and remodeling someone else’s poem; plagiarism if you don’t.
You Were Never Me
First Stanza. This is what you need to know about me.
1. List 3-4 things that you do well.
2. Write 3 adjectives that describe you.
3. Share your nickname or pet name. What do your friends/family call you that really describes you?
Second Stanza. I’m not always great, but I am always me.
They say I am ________ and I believe them, because (evidence).
And they tell me I am ______ and I answer: Yes, it is true I have (evidence).
And they tell me I am _______ and my reply is: (example).
And having answered so I turn to those who were never me and say to them:
Third Stanza. I’m always me, and I’m always pleased to be me and no one else.
Come and show me another person who can ___________________________.
(This is what I do when people say I am not good enough), here is a (metaphor for me);
(simile for me), (simile for me).
Fourth Stanza. 5 attributes that have helped me get to where I am now.
1. ____________
2. ____________
3. ____________
4. ____________
5. ____________
Fourth Stanza, pt2. Say it—at least five times, in five lines, using the same word five different ways.
(Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!)
Fifth Stanza. Remind the reader of the most important you-nessess of you.
Proud to be _______, _________, ________, ___________________.
So that's the template. Because I am a good teacher, I tried it out first. (Note: I deleted the version of this poem from the original 2017 post—when I first wrote the assignment—and replaced it with an updated version in 2019. This was dumb. I no longer have that 2017 poem—yes, it was crap, but now it’s lost. I have added a 2020 version below. I have updated the assignment slightly, but am not including it here.)
You Were Never Me (2019)
Recovering academic, backsliding poet. fearful technician. collector of cards. lover of odd numbers. Resplendent in yellow.
Bold. Sharp. Resourceful.
Professor Diaz, meanest mother in the world, stop talking.
They say I am difficult and I believe them, because my friends say my sister is the nice version of me.
And they tell me I am determined and I answer: Yes, it is true I believe I am permitted to get what I want.
And they tell me I am stalwart and purposeful my reply is: I have seen friends waste their lives in search of the next person or possession or perspective that will save them, but it doesn’t.
And having answered so I turn to those who were never me and say to them:
Come and show me another person who can leave her job, start a business, post weekly to a blog, volunteer, train for a 5k, go to yoga, hold a family together, and still remember to wear lipstick.
I do not find your argument compelling, here is an effervescent experiment set vivid against shelf after shelf of empty beakers;
Bursting like a star, shining like a leaf in green shadow. I have changed my life.
Expressive.
Intrepid.
Awakening.
Capturing.
Showing not proving. This one is mine.
I did because no one told me I couldn’t or shouldn’t or wouldn’t. And if they did, I did not hear. Your argument is not compelling. I am
each decision I have ever made, replete with what I thought I’d lost and what I did not know I had. Unapology & unregret. I will
collect each moment, amassing a treasure of chipped, outgrown, and cast-off wonderfuls.
In this, my web, my capturing device, my frayed asterisk at the corner.
You Were Never Me (2020)
Backsliding poet. Collector of lost
cards. Lover of odd numbers--all in threes
& fives. resplendent.
resilient. reimagining. Lucia. Bringer of light.
They say I am controlling and I believe them, because if I don’t do it, who will?
And they tell me I am intentional and I answer: Yes, that is what I meant and yes, I meant that, too.
And they tell me I am my own and my reply is: I have seen you hope the next person or possession or perspective will save you, but it won’t.
And having answered so I turn to those who were never me and say:
Come and show me another person who found what they had lost. Who held
what they did not know they had. I bring what’s hidden to light. Each decision I have ever made,
replete with sorrow and raked with sun. I shine each chipped, broken, and cast-off wonderful.
A trove of fragments you could not see. I see. A humdrum star, the morning spilled across the floor, the everyday every day, gauzy, crisp, and close.
Bursting like a star. This one is mine. I can tell all my bones.
Light.
Everyday.
Resplendent.
Shattered
& Fluid.
Cleave the heart, the land. Iowa’s Mississippi cuts Illinois away. Bring it back together. You took
apart the whole when the whole was a part of something. Took us home from home. And now,
cleaving to me is the part of me I left behind, the part I cleave to when I believe you more than I believe me. Leave it. Where it belongs. A secret outside buried, a hole cleaved in a wall
behind which I could never hide. Cleave to this, cleave from this. Palimpsest in three
(then. now. remembered.)
dimensions: my web, my capturing device, my frayed asterisk at the corner.
You Were Never Me (2021)
Unpacker of unopenable language, collector of time and guzzler of Starbucks.
Hamlet-in-waiting, smiling in spite of myself, the only -z in the crowd.
Enthusiastic. Fleeing. Revising.
Professor, mother, M'am not miss.
You were never a revising guzzler of Starbucks also known as professor.
They say I am revising and I believe them, because I always see something new in what is old.
And they tell me I make 1 into 3 and A into Z and I answer: Yes, it is true I have rearranged furniture, reinterpreted Hamlet, and sorted my books 247 times.
And you think I am embarrassed to see the world as bursting from itself when you see it dead, but really I am sorry for you.
Come and show me another professor who can complete her own assignments and who learns from her students and still looks like she knows what she’s talking about.
Unpacker of unopenable language, intentionally making students confront their own words. A collector of time, instilling every moment with the intention to find something new. And I intend to guzzle Starbucks every day, especially if there are stars to be earned. Hamlet-in-waiting who intends to play Hamlet, intentionally smiling in spite of myself, the only -z in the crowd, unintended.
Intentionally enthusiastic.
Fleeing. Revising. Here in this unopened language, collected in time,
in Starbucks, in Hamlet as the only -z in the room.
They may not be the best poems I ever wrote, and I broke my own rules—that’s what rules are for—but Sandburg’s form gave me permission to use some honest, hard-working language and allow the authority of the title and the experiment in intertextuality to lend building, breaking, rebuilding to me every year.
