Bulletin Vol I, 2004: Continued

Our Spring 2004 issue of the Santa Catalina Bulletin centers its theme around poetry at Santa Catalina. Below are the continuations of the noted articles in this issue.

Justice is a beautiful meal.
Imagine scrumptious justice!

Love, peace, hope, freedom--a self-aware dream
alive with funny morality, strong with capricious compassion--
love of knowledge
tranquillity and dedication
hope, oh beautiful ambition
freedom, significant, omnipotent liberty.
Wish-memory becomes reality.
Dare to hope. Don't close your heart.
Trust hot emotion. Feel life.

Here's super-spiffy truth: freedom, love, courage, justice.
With beautiful tranquillity and willing-though-powerful humility,
with empowering modesty and omnipotent happiness,
we are giving lovely liberty and touching happy stars.
Courage, Justice, Freedom, Love.

Remember to be, powerful female angel.
I'm giving you seven spiffy words:
barbaric yawp, fantabuloso, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,
and (its doppelganger) yabba dabba doo.
These words are pretty good.
Save them and their truth forever.

Teaching Poetry 2003
All-School Ghazal Project

Last September, as part of our school's observation of the September 11th anniversary, I distributed the handout overleaf to every member of our school community during morning assembly. After I presented the project, students had several days to contribute. Although I jokingly suggested that we should aim for several hundred couplets (and thus a world record), I was actually very pleased to receive 72 responses. The poem below is an edited version, 13 couplets that I particularly admired and that seemed to work together well. I would be glad to email our entire ghazal in its full, 72-couplet majesty to anyone who would like to see it (Simon_Hunt@santacatalina.org).

Ghazal of Remembrance, September 2002

As autumn comes we strive to remember
all the things that we have to remember.

Death flies for free in September-
too late to forget, too early to remember.

From the sky fell manmade thunder, black, thick,
suffocating, crushing loved ones-do you remember?

Forgiving and forgetting, if ever,
is what we sway toward-don't say never.

I cannot appreciate the sorrow of lost days.
You grieve; I am a pretender.

Imprecise parodies prick at my pride,
wrestling with references I can't remember.

We sketch a gravestone with our fingertips,
sketch the name as we strive to remember.

Night thoughts-unconscious neurons move,
her eyes spring open and she remembers.

Do you know what it is to see a goddess cry?
Tears bottled, now I weep and remember.

What the hell was I trying to say?
Now I can't remember.

Fall colors prompt anew the poet's ageless quest:
to find a rhyme for "orange" or, in this case, "oranger."

Make the passing from sun-up to moon-rise fruitful,
not letting yourself forget the beauty you promised to remember.

Trying ghazal here at Catalina,
we embrace, move forward, and remember.