(Joshua Folmar, Maxine Hong Kingston, Becca Lachman, Fred Marchant, Kim Stafford) Toxic critique often wounds writers. How might some principles of non-violent engagement transform the creative writing workshop? What happens when writers listen well? How can deeply receptive listening - to texts and to writers - kindle dialogue about new work? Despite diversity of perspectives, how do we seek common ground as writers helping writers? The panelists will explore these and related questions about how non-violent ethics can be profoundly practical in the creative writing workshop.

Published Date: September 23, 2015

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:00:03):

Welcome to the A W P podcast series. This event was recorded at the 2015 A W P conference in Minneapolis. The recording features Joshua Folmar, Maxine Hong Kingston, Becca Lockman, Fred Marshant, and Kim Stafford. You will now hear Fred Marshant provide introductions.

Speaker 2 (00:00:33):

Hi everyone. Thank you for coming. It is Saturday, isn't it? It's the afternoon. I think I'm Fred Marshant and I'm not totally sure of that. And this part I am sure of. This is non-violence in the Creative Writing Workshop. Thank you again for coming in the interest of time, I'm going to jump right in. I think we all recognize the phrase non-violence as it might apply to the Creative Writing Workshop as a slightly provocative and perhaps metaphorical dimension to it. That is to say we're not going to talk about boycotts or in any direct action except metaphorically. Civil disobedience, however is encouraged and I'll try to explain what that means. I think it is most accurate to begin by saying that what we are talking about here is the danger of emotional and spiritual violence that sometimes arises in workshops and how to resist, oppose or perhaps transform that into something more humane and more artistically useful.

Speaker 2 (00:01:49):

Non-violence has as a word always that odd limitation of being a negative, but as I think we all know, you wouldn't be here otherwise in the actual living out of the concept, be it in civic life or in the mini republic of the workshop, it is rich in pragmatic possibilities and that's our topic. That set of possibilities is our topic today. As you might have already guessed, we are a multi-gen and multi-generational group of writers and teachers, and our presentations after I finish will proceed alphabetically by first name. Let me say a word first then about myself. I'm the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which is the Booking House from Gray Wolff in 2009. I'll have a new book with Gray Wolff in 2016 called the Day Later. I'm an emeritus professor at Suffolk University in Boston where I founded and still co-direct of the Poetry Center. There.

Speaker 2 (00:02:48):

After me will be Becca Lockman. Sitting right to my right, she's the author of two collections of poetry, the Apple Speaks and the just released, I mean just released other acreage from Goldway Press. She's also editor of a ritual to read together poems in conversation with William Stafford, part of the centennial celebration of Stafford's life and work of last year. She teaches at Ohio University after Becca will be Josh Morgan Fulmer. Also on my right, Josh is a poet teacher and singer songwriter. He's also a veteran of the United States Marine Corps. Enlisting while he was an undergraduate and was for tour an infantry rifleman in Iraq from 2007 and eight and in 2007 eight in the process right now of finishing up his M F A at the University of New Hampshire. He's also teaching a course in creative nonfiction. The course is called Writing the War Experience After Josh will be Kim Stafford. On my left at the far end of the table, as many of you know, a poet, essayist memoirist teacher and he's also another singer songwriter in our group. And afterwards we're going to sing. No, actually we're not.

Speaker 2 (00:04:07):

Although we did think of it when we came in, somebody said to me, we saw the steepness by the end of this, it was you, Becca. We're going to have to sing a chorus or something, right? In any case, Kim is the author of a dozen books or more the most recent of which is his memoir, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do How My Brother Disappeared, that comes from Trinity University Press came out last year. He's also the editor of several important anthologies of the work of his father, William Stafford. The most recent is asked me 100 essential poems of William Stafford is from Gray Wolf and it is also part of the Centennial celebration last year of the life and work of William Stafford. Kim teaches at Lewis and Clark College. Finally, also to my left and closest is Maxine Hong Kingston, author of the groundbreaking and award, award-winning works such as the Woman Warrior Chinaman, the Fifth Book of Peace, and I love a Broad Margin to My Life among some others.

Speaker 2 (00:05:08):

She was recently grazed with a 2013 National Medal of Arts presented to her by the president of the United States, Barack Obama poets fiction writer memoirist and an emerita professor at Berkeley. She founded in 1993, I believe, the veteran writing group in the San Francisco Bay area. And to this day, just think of it, a writing group that lasts that many years. To this day, it thrives and continues to be a resource for veterans of sad to say, the many wars of our time. She has edited work of that group, veterans of War and Veterans of Peace at the name of that book, and it's an anthology of writing from that group and it's published by COA books, so that's us. Alright, good. That wasn't planned, but that was a good idea. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:06:03):

A few years ago I edited for Gray Wolf Press a book called Another World. Instead, some of you may know it, it is a collection, a selection of the early poems of William Stafford from 1939 to 1949 for those of the life arc of the work of William Stafford. That piece of his life, the beginning years of his writing life was almost completely unrepresented in the published world of his work. The core of that book were the poems that he wrote during his time during World War II as a conscientious objector serving in civilian public service. Most of that service was in the far west and much of it in the wilderness projects of C P Ss. In preparing to write an introduction for that book I read for the first time, and I wasn't a kid for the first time, I read Simone VA's magnificent essay, the Iliad or the Poem of Force, and I recommend it to everyone whether you're interested in classical literature or not.

Speaker 2 (00:07:04):

It is really one of the most profound pieces of writing about literature and I think the life of society and the life of conscience in society. Strange to say that I think as we talk about the Iliad, but her take on the Iliad is really comes out of the fulcrum of an idea that force is the taking of human beings and turning them into things. And she talks about how Homer investigates that subject and then there's some other aspects to it. At one point she starts to think out loud about how odd it is that in the moment of killing, there's never anyone practically who pauses to reflect. And this is what she says. These at those moments, those people never impose on themselves or their actions a halt. That's a quote, a pause, another quote, or an interval of hesitation. We are in lies all our considerations for our brothers in humanity.

Speaker 2 (00:08:07):

That too is a quote. Ever since reading that remark, I've had it, well, I've had it tattooed. No, I've had it deep inside engraved in my mind it has been sort of a guide through much of my teaching, let alone my writing. And I've had it sort of gradually take on the role of thinking, well, what is a writing workshop? What is a gathering of writers? And I think of that in general as a kind of pause to reflect upon our consideration of others, and that comes out of a sense of art as being a transaction that involves more than just one person. No matter how solitary the beginning of that work of art, how do you create then a pause, an interval of hesitation in which one's considerations for other human beings can be present? That is my question for today. What I do in my own teaching is that I use poems to help establish the ethos of the workshop that I'm teaching.

Speaker 2 (00:09:06):

I do it sometimes broadly right at the beginning and then we talk about the poem or sometimes I sprinkle certain poems that have a kind of ethos implied within them. One poem I often begin with is Seamus Haney's rains stick. Everyone knows what a rains stick is, right? And many of you know what the poem is. If you don't know what a rains stick is, you'll know in a minute the rains stick up, end the rains stick, and what happens next is a music that you never would've known to listen for in a cactus stalk, downpour, sls, rash, spillage and backwash come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe being played by water. You shake it again lightly, and diminuendo runs through all its scales like a gutter, stopping trickling. And now here comes a sprinkle of drops out of fresh and leaves, then subtle little wets of grass and daisies, then glitter, drizzle, almost breath severe up and the stick again.

Speaker 2 (00:10:10):

What happens next is undiminished for having happened once, twice, 10 a thousand times before, who cares if all the music that transpires is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus? You are like a rich man entering heaven through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again, I treat this poem as a manual of listening. It invites us into the imaginative world of the poem. Just the way in which any writer in a workshop, first reading a poem to his or her audience tacitly and perhaps terrified Lee is asking those people listening to enter into that imaginative world. I also underline the notion that that can be repeated. There's the tremendous fear at any given moment in a workshop that that moment is forever. That what happens at that moment is absolute and unequivocally the only chance you have with that moment. Of course, there's a great deal of pleasure, sound pleasure, mouth pleasure if you will in that poem, but I think there's an ethical and an ethos dimension, an ethical dimension to that.

Speaker 2 (00:11:26):

It says something like, you don't need to think first of the flaws and failures of what you've just heard. In fact, I think that's why there's all that sound music in that poem. That's to say, we'll think about that later after we do it three or four more times. But the sheer pleasure of that I think is an ethical injunction in a way. I'm reminded by that poem always of how poverty stricken our language or discourse is when it comes to praise, how easy it is to criticize negatively. All right, that's a terrible poem. I mean, no, we don't say that. Of course you say something slightly more couched in a workshop, but that sense that somehow the language of the negative judgment is so quick to come to our minds. How about this? That poem makes me think, okay, what has just happened here?

Speaker 2 (00:12:17):

What a wonderful way to begin the conversation. Alright, you read a poem, read it out loud. What happened? What world have or experience have we been invited into? What has it invented in our minds? These are questions that perhaps sustain a writer's belief that he or she has actually written something. It also allows a platform upon which you could make suggestions, even complaints, but I think that the fundamental matter here is that there is an imaginative experience laid before you and you're invited into it. I'm going to move on to a second poem with another kind of ethical injunction. This is from another world instead and it's my favorite poem in the book and I carry it with me at all times. It's called Shall we Have That Singing? I won't give you all of the background, just suffice it to say that. Imagine that there's a barracks like camp in the wilderness and the World War II is going on in the rest of the world and these are contentious objectors that he's talking about in Tomb. Shall we have that singing in the evening for between the stars and our star? There's no one and we must sleep again. We rest the hands not dangerous on the wall and we place pillows under the turning head quietly now. No moving. Was there something forgotten?

Speaker 2 (00:13:48):

The losing one neglects and calls it winning help each other have that singing in the evening. Well, I do think of that as a kind of really complex pause. An interval falling asleep in the barracks, in the wilderness, in the middle of World War II layers upon layers of pausing, if you will. But I also think that there's a, and of course it's a wonderful human suggestion to help each other, which I don't want to ignore. I think it speaks for itself, but I love the parenthetical. Was there something for forgotten? And then he says, the losing one neglects and calls it winning. And I want to say that in my own workshop teaching the most important question I ask myself and I sometimes remember to ask the group, was there something forgotten? It is so amazing how there's a momentum inside workshop discussion that is heading toward finality of some sort. And I always remember this poem and say, okay, wait a minute, was there something forgotten?

Speaker 2 (00:14:53):

I think a poem like this reminds us that the poem and the writer are not standing before a judge or a jury, but actually a set of people who are in a roughly similar circumstances and a reminder of that I don't make these kinds of observations by the way all the time. I don't make them with moral fervor as I hope I'm demonstrating now. I try to make them in the course of doing our business together as our way of being together. I'm going to end then and if you'll indulge me, I'm going to end with a poem I do use and it's a poem of my own and that's dangerous in a workshop requires lots of trust with everybody, but I think you'll understand it's called a place at the table. A place at the table. It means you can face your accusers. It means there is no place to hide. It means you will not drift off to sleep or carve your name on your arm or give anyone here the finger.

Speaker 2 (00:15:55):

It means you do not have to wave your hand as if you were drowning. It means there's nothing here that will drown you. It means you really do not have to have the answer since there are only a few of you left sitting across from you. It means you can study their faces as you would the clouds outside. You will not totally forget them. It means you are now roughly for a while, just about equal in the center before you. There is nothing unless someone gives it. It means that when you are gone, everyone feels it. It means that when you leave, you feel as if you haven't, that you still have a place at the table later in your life. This moment will we turn to you as a moat of dust that floats in on spars of sunlight. It will search every room until it finds you.

Speaker 3 (00:16:49):

Thank you.

Speaker 4 (00:16:59):

Thank you, Fred. So why bring this idea of what I've come to call creative non-violence into a writing workshop in the first place? Well, I don't know about you, but I need to be reminded that non-violence is not the absence of something. It's bringing something into the world, a deliberate action often in the face of all kinds of injustice and in our incredibly militarized society. Also, you may already know that many of our undergrads, most of our undergrads come from this generation that has one nickname of the nine 11 generation because the violence on that day in 2001 is their first really important memory of any importance. They cannot remember a time in their lives when the US has not been at war. They helped to elect a president who when winning the Nobel Peace Prize defended just war theory and they also when asked what they want to be when they grow up, one popular answer is famous.

Speaker 4 (00:18:23):

So these students are alive and kicking in our workshops. They have an average debt of over $30,000 when they graduate from college and they are used to micromanage schedules and knowing exactly how to reach whatever goal they've set in front of them. So depending on how you are defining violence, there are many layers here in this group of students that we see in our classrooms as workshop leaders. I wonder if we thought about the young men behind the shootings of 2011 in Arizona or in 2007 in Virginia Tech and how these young men once both sat in creative writing workshops or have you also been thinking this week about the young man on trial in Boston and how he's the same age as so many of our students? What was Gandhi who said the first step of nonviolent action is non-cooperation with anything that humiliates us?

Speaker 4 (00:19:36):

I wonder teaching today and writing today, if we can tweak that term or this saying into the first step of nonviolent action is non-cooperation with anything that numbs us. An important part of my teaching a war and peace themed undergrad poetry workshop asks me to be vulnerable with my students and share about my own family. How one side of my family has a very rich military background with one great aunt having worked for the Pentagon, one great aunt being one of the first women in the Army Air Corps and so on. While the Mennonite side of my family have been conscientious objectors since that term came into our language serving in unpaid work camps in World War ii, jumping from ironically military planes into forest fires and like my parents choosing to react to events like nine 11 by doing humanitarian work in war torn nations.

Speaker 4 (00:20:46):

I tell my students that until I moved to southeast Ohio coming from a mostly Mennonite and Amish community, I had never been in the same room with someone dressed in a military uniform. And how that part of the narrative for me when talking about peace and war has been lacking for so long. So many of my students are returning veterans these days or come into classrooms dressed for their R O T C drills and I tell them we need your stories and as the teacher figure here, I really need your stories too. The five people that I've known personally who have been injured, kidnapped, or killed during the last decade and more were training others in nonviolent resistance in places like Cobble or Baghdad or Bogota, but their main task was to listen unarmed to those affected by our war collecting stories to bring back to the American people, including stories from American soldiers on a much, much smaller scale.

Speaker 4 (00:22:02):

I hope and attempt to nudge my poetry workshops to live out a similar model. I hope that we practice listening for a greater good and knowing when not to be silent. Above all, I ask my students in this class to define terms like war and service based on how their unique communities have lived out. These ideas, the challenge and the gift is to honor all the different types of service stories they bring to the table. Some of them having never heard these stories from their grandfathers and so forth, they also bring letters and photographs. We take field trips together. We go to the special collections library to do more research to really bring these stories into their lives. They tell familiar stories that you might expect grandfathers who were in prison camps, brothers in the Marines, but also mothers who are human rights lawyers, house cleaners, fathers who were coal miners and uncle who's a politician or a missionary doctor.

Speaker 4 (00:23:19):

They learn to experiment with retelling these stories of service through different forms of poetry and then take these stories out into their communities through a chatbook we put together in class and through hosting a community. Reading. Halfway through this workshop, I tell my students, okay, I'm going to step outside the room, which I try to do in various ways, not just physically every workshop, but as the teacher, I'm going to step outside the room and you decide what you would change about this workshop. If you could change anything, what are you not learning? What might we improve in the way that we are reacting to each other's writing? And then as much as I can realistically, I shape the rest of the workshop to what their hopes are. In many ways, we practice nonviolent tactics of just simply quieting ourselves, focusing each other and slowing down in this culture of ours.

Speaker 4 (00:24:27):

Well, this Gandhi quote that I brought up earlier also makes me think of the kind of hallmarky mantra piece starts within, and I actually have this on my phone so that every time I turn my phone on, I'm reminded of this because sometimes, quite frankly, I feel like a hypocrite asking my students to dive into these nonviolent tactics not only in their writing lives, but when they leave the classroom. When I've been adjuncting for the last eight years, working three jobs, trying to pay my bills and also having internalized so much toxic critique from three degrees related to creative writing. I say that I'm a recovering creative writing degree collector.

Speaker 4 (00:25:20):

I think about teachers, some of whom I'll never get to meet like William Stafford, who give these amazing examples of bringing nonviolence into your daily life and into your teaching. But quite frankly, I want to say Bill, I hope I could call him Bill, I want to say built as a younger female adjunct. I'm not sure that I could get away with a lot of what you're proposing here. And so that's a question I live in. But what I can do is share with the students who are really gung ho about going to get that M F A and then that PhD and then that full-time job teaching poetry. I can share with them what a part-time writing and teaching gig might actually look like and I literally have them home for dinner to have that discussion so they can see how I live.

Speaker 4 (00:26:16):

Some of them stick it out. Yeah, my hope is to offer right away this example of continuing to widen definitions that we feel we have to live in for one reason or another. And as students begin to bring in these stories of service, then by the time we talk about their own original work, they're open to hearing each other's definitions. And don't get me wrong, sometimes teaching within corporate academia can feel like you're working for the military industrial complex. Yes, but how we react to that, it's very important that those of us who have these concerns about violence and nonviolence stay there as well. So while the Mennonites have taught me the most about everyday nonviolence and sometimes even putting your life on the line for nonviolence just as we ask our soldiers to do, they've also reminded me that nonviolent communication and action are definitely hardest among those we love or who know us best.

Speaker 4 (00:27:33):

And this plays out in a workshop family as I'm sure, but I truly believe that beyond the fight or flight method when facing a conflict, whether it's in your workshop or outside of it, that there is this thing that we can call a third way, a way that asks us to listen and act assertively and with our whole lives. For me as a writer and teacher, this third way reveals itself through asking students and myself to consider how our trust force as a nation trickles down into our everyday lives, even into the way we learn and practice our crafts. As writers, I usually end a workshop by telling my students that for those of us who grew up in families or communities where submission meant keeping silent or unseen, we have the power as writers to redefine and live out a different wider definition of that idea as well. Our submissions can quite literally become the poems and stories, the best parts of our honed selves that we choose to give to a wider community, the best parts of what we want to see in this world that we live in, that we're quite literally building in our poems and writing. So while we live in this world that defends just war, I wonder what would happen if we introduce our students to the idea of a just peace as well. Thank you.

Speaker 5 (00:29:27):

Good afternoon. That was really interesting what you just said, Becca, about listening and to be present in a workshop. And also I never really thought about submission that way either we submit right when we're writing and publishing and all that stuff to submit. It's very interesting. So I want to start out today thinking about the fact I have an addiction. Okay, we're going to treat this kind of like a meeting. Okay. My name is Joshua Morgan Falmer. I'm an M f a candidate in poetry at the University of New Hampshire, as Fred said, a poet and essayist a student teacher and I'm an addict.

Speaker 5 (00:30:11):

Hi Joshua. What am I addicted to? Not narcotics, though they have been ingested a time or a few over the years, nor alcohol, though I steered dangerously down that path for a few years after my first deployment. No, I'm addicted to violence. As Chris Hedges wrote in his bestselling war is a force that gives us meaning. The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction for war is a drug. I'm addicted, I'm violent. I felt it as a child. I felt it exponentially when I hit puberty and I know what it's like to shoot a living thing to though I no longer hunt or wear the uniform, that violence has not left me. Because of it, I am able to recognize the violence in others, and that's something I'm going to keep on coming back to. We are all violent people. If we were not, we'd not be having this discussion right now, but because we can recognize that in each other, we can come to a means of figuring out how to get away from it, how to move past it.

Speaker 5 (00:31:25):

I'm drawn to violence in an effort to understand it within my own poetry, but also ironically, I'm drawn to it in the hopes that I can defeat it. Our individual journeys toward nonviolence means having the conversations that we don't want to have with ourselves and with others. Unlike my colleagues who I'm humbled to share the stage with. I have never been able to claim myself a pass fist. Does that matter? No. Because even though I fought and I would fight again and it was of and I would fight for the defense of something worth fighting for, I find that you can still be and practice nonviolent techniques I have owned and continue to open weapons, their sole purpose being to harm, kill, destroy living creatures. I do so maybe out of fear or solace or the allure of its power, but regardless, I do so out of our shared violence. So how did a gun carrying soon to be N R a certified riflery range safety officer, this is true. Learn to practice nonviolent techniques in the classroom as both student and instructor. Well, let's start in the middle.

Speaker 5 (00:32:35):

We like to start in the middle in writing. So I was in the middle and I'm going to kind of break from the script for a second. I was in the middle of a classroom in a bombed out school in Haddi, Iraq in 2007. I was in this classroom, which was in the middle of what we turned into a fob before operating base, which was in the middle of Haditha. See, there's a lot of middles here. I was in this classroom because it was what was our M W R, our morale, welfare and recreation room. I was there because I was going on patrol 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I was going on post and I was pointing my weapon in the face of women and children scanning corners hoping that we'd not be shot. And I started having to try to rectify that because though I'm violent, I try to be peaceful though I'm violent, I try to be only use it for the defense of the man to my left and right for the ones I love.

Speaker 5 (00:33:37):

And I'm in this classroom and I say, well, if I can find peace anywhere, it should be the Bible. That's my faith, that's my religion. We had all these bibles in this classroom. I open up a combat Bible because it's painted in camouflage, I guess in case you don't want to be going on patrol and have a black Bible. And they say, oh, there he is. So it's a camouflage bible. And I say, well, where do I start? Where do I start finding out about peace? And for some reason I chose the Old Testament. For some reason I chose the book of Joshua because that's my name. I was wrong. The book of Joshua, if you have not read it, if you did not grow up into Jewish or Christian faith focuses on the Israelites taking over Canaan. It focuses on the Old Testament God, Yahweh destroying the Canaanites, man, woman, and child, and what's called rim.

Speaker 5 (00:34:37):

It says that you can kill all if it's for the glorification of Israel. Wasn't exactly the best thing I could have read at the time, but something happened at that moment and this middle of things in this crossroads, I found a place where I can move past it, where I can move past that violence. And even though I consulted the chaplain in this room and I asked him how can I come to terms with this, come to terms with what we're doing here, come to terms with what it says in this book that is supposed to be my place to find peace and solace. And even though he gave me a generic answer along the lines of, will you do it for the man in your left? And you're right, even though I wasn't satisfied with that, I realized that I was on a journey.

Speaker 5 (00:35:26):

And that journey took me home and it took me back to the state of Alabama where I'm from and back into college. And when I got back, I took my first creative writing class in 2008. And when I got back, I was writing things that were very violent and my instructors and my fellow students didn't know how to respond to it. They were writing about things of academia, things of what an 18 through 21 year old goes through. And here I am just a few years older writing about seeing dead children or watching things explode or about a friend of mine that had died in combat. So I would either get a thank you for your service, no comment, or I would get This is violent. How can you write this? This is painful. I don't understand this. And that was toxic to me because I realized in that moment that there were different forms of why we write.

Speaker 5 (00:36:37):

There are different forms of hierarchy within the writing process. Some are writing as we've talked about earlier this morning to publish. Some are writing to go toward a certain standard maybe toward that perfect poem, which I believe Emerson talks about, right? And I was just writing to survive and that's easy to forget about. But thankfully, and I forgive them and I forgive myself because I reacted negatively and I got angry. Thankfully we all learned together and we learned in our instructor, pulled me aside one day and said, Hey, here's this guy named Brian Turner, which I'm very thankful to have met and who I'm actually replaced on this panel. Here's this guy named Brian Turner who writes war poetry and I think this would be interesting to you. And thankfully we found a way to talk about these things together. And part of that was through the empathetic response, which I will always come back to see when they said that they couldn't understand when they said that it was too violent is because the empathetic response was not clicking in that imagination was not clicking in.

Speaker 5 (00:37:46):

And then we found a way together to understand that we've all experienced that violence. We've all experienced those moments when horrible things happen to us and we have to react. So eventually I learned how to handle that toxic critique even though it wasn't necessarily good, but I also learned how to prevent myself from doing it and spraying that along. So when I started writing more and more poetry and people said, Hey, you should try this thing, I was like, I'm not going to try this out. I'm a political science major and I'm going to go work on a campaign or something. Eventually I end up in this M F A and I'm starting to become not just a student, but also a teacher. And I'm starting to try to employ this empathetic response, right? Well now I'm seeing what it's like from the other side of it. Now I'm seeing what it's like when I have freshmen in my class and I'm talking about Dr. Martin Luther King's letter from a Birmingham jail. And I have students leaving and saying, this doesn't apply to us because I'm in New Hampshire and let's think about diversity for a second in the state of New Hampshire, though I do love that state.

Speaker 5 (00:38:59):

And that's where a moment where I realized that I have to step up and I have to say something. Do I have to necessarily correct them? No. But I at least have to open the conversation and say, why do we feel this way? Right? That's what we've already kind of talked about a little bit. And then when it came to being a student again, I was still turning in poetry that was violent and we did form a family, but at first, even a well-respected poet who was a teacher of mine said the first time I turned in a piece of poetry about war, he said, this is a conversation worth having. And he just left it at that. I said, well, thank you. I appreciate that. But now I want to focus on forming content. And that's where you have to move to, by the way, or sorry, forming craft. Because when you're focusing so much on content, it gets in the way, but that's something that's hard to teach. So I eventually was able to move to forming craft and I started to beg for that. But this teacher didn't though he was making a good point and he was pointing that out, he was also focusing so much on the content that he didn't realize it was actually being detrimental in a way.

Speaker 5 (00:40:18):

So if I can give any lessons, I would say that the workshop leader has to open up the discussion and allow us to figure it out ourselves. Has to ask that question, why do we feel this way? Why are we talking about this when it comes down to form? Why are you doing it in this manner? You're staying away from the content, but you're being respectful of said content. Also want to mention this. So as Fred mentioned, I was blessed to get to teach a creative nonfiction course called Writing the War Experience. I'd worked with our director of composition to get a class for the university in which we could give veterans and civilians a place to come together and to talk about war, to talk about conflict, to talk about your internal wars because some of us have not been in war, but we've all been affected by war in some form or fashion, even if it's a war of the mind.

Speaker 5 (00:41:14):

And we came together and it was a beautiful thing. And we even had a Vietnam war vet that joined the class who was a president of a community college. He'd been thinking about war all his life. I would call him as pacifist as you can get. He helped out with immigrants at the college that he was president of and to getting them citizenship and to getting them recognition. So I was very surprised one day when we were reading this essay called Persia on the Pacific, which is a literary journalism essay. And I asked him how he felt about it and he starts railing against Persian culture and Persian men. And I realized it came to a moment where something had to be done. So I simply asked him, I said, why do you feel this way? And he told me about how there was these Persian women that he knew that were trying to have autonomy in the relationship, autonomy in their culture, but they were being held down by their husbands.

Speaker 5 (00:42:20):

And at which point I told him about my roommate who ended up being my best man at my wedding for six years, who's Persian, and about how I knew his family and how they're some of the strongest people I've ever met, and how I didn't see that in that family, that putting that type of mentality upon all the Persian people can possibly be the problem here. But through that discussion and through allowing us all to talk about it, we were able to move past it. So I think we should listen. I think we should be present and sometimes I think we should submit. Thank you.

Speaker 6 (00:43:06):

Thank you, Josh, Rebecca, and Fred teaching peacefully in a world of toxic criticism. So when I first arrived at this conference and I was scanning the list of wondrous sessions, one of the ones that caught my eye is called Thank you for the surgery. This is a line from an Emily Dickinson letter to editor Higginson thanking him for his critique of her poems. I got curious what else she might've said in that letter to Higginson. If Emily considered tough criticism, ultimately kind as this panel implied, why should I shy away from tough criticism in my own teaching? I retired to the Dickinson quiet room upstairs to ponder this. Well, there I put away the talk I had written for this panel and gathered the following thoughts and stories in its place. One in her letter to Higginson, I find besides thanking him for the surgery on her poems, his criticism had performed. She also said this, you ask of my companions hills, sir and sunsets and a large dog. My father gave me a dog as large as me. They're better than beings because they know but do not tell. And the noise in the pool at noon excels my piano.

Speaker 6 (00:44:46):

And I was just caught up with this feeling of what I don't know about my students, the wonders of their imagination that are not yet visible in the text before us. In the quiet of the Dickinson room, I also return to her own poem on surgery. Surgeons must be very careful when they take the knife underneath their fine incisions stirs the culprit

Speaker 7 (00:45:16):

Life.

Speaker 6 (00:45:18):

How can I learn from this witness by Emily Dickinson and my own experience as a teacher, how to help writers grow? Two, I realize in writing class my students are making writing, but I am making writers. This is a fundamentally different undertaking.

Speaker 6 (00:45:42):

I am not teaching them how to write, but creating conditions where they can begin the lifelong process of teaching themselves how to write in this enterprise. I often like Emily's dog know or think I know, but do not tell. I realize that writing in progress is more attractive to me than finished writing. Maybe this is why I'm a teacher. I am drawn to writing in progress writing that's alive, unknown, uncharted, wilderness. And I'm actually more interested in writers than in writing the students that come to class called maybe from war, maybe from a family background to try to do this impossible thing. I'm more interested, I'm more attracted to writers than to writing. And ultimately I'm more attracted to people than to writers, human beings who are suffering emergencies of reticence. One of my proverbs as a teacher is the most important literature of our time is the unwritten. The distance from silence to a page of inequality of writing is more magnificent than the finer gradations of that writing being improved. Three

Speaker 6 (00:47:16):

A year ago we had a gathering in Portland, Oregon, the William Stafford Centennial Symposium. A blizzard came, something people in Minneapolis can understand, but not being, we canceled the symposium. Instead of saying, by God, I'm going to get there, but I just couldn't stand it. So I got out of my car with the chains on, and at 15 miles an hour, I went around the city gathering the people who'd come the farthest. So I brought Wendy who'd come from Hanoi. I brought Ada who'd come from Sapporo, Japan. I brought Abba Han who'd come from Nigeria via Wisconsin. I brought Fard Marshant from Boston and several others. And one of the people I brought was Lee, young Lee from Chicago. And we decided we'd have, instead of the William Stafford Symposium, a reassessment and appraisal, I couldn't believe they chose that name for the conference. You're reassessing my father.

Speaker 6 (00:48:18):

I don't know. We decided we'd call it the snow drift dialogues. And so while the snow fell outside, we went around the circle and each told a story. And I'm just going to tell you the story that Lee Young Lee told because I think it pertains to nonviolence in the classroom. Lee Young said, I just sit and write poems. And my wife said, you've got to get out and do something, get active. So I thought, well, I'll study martial arts because I have a friend who teaches martial arts. So I went to my friend and said, I want to learn martial arts. And my friend said, Lee Young, you are already a poet. There's nothing I can teach you. I said, no ma'am, I want to learn the moves. He said, no, you don't understand. After many years of studying martial arts, you achieve a level of mastery where if someone comes to you with ill will, you must subdue them with violence.

Speaker 6 (00:49:21):

But there is no safety in that. They'll come back with their friends and overwhelm you no matter how skillful you are. After more years of training in martial arts, you achieve a level of mastery where if people come to you with ill will, there is something about the way you carry yourself that makes them hesitate instead of attacking and they retire, but there is no safety. They will come back with their friends and overwhelm you. After more years of training, you achieve a level of mastery where if someone comes to you with ill will, there is something about you that makes them engage you with words instead of violence. And you may engage in a conversation that leads to settling your differences. After more years of training, you achieve a level of mastery that makes you so calm within yourself. You become invisible. They walk through the crowd looking for you. They can't even see you.

Speaker 6 (00:50:32):

After many more years of training, you achieve a state in which you are so filled with the Dao. You don't know if it's from within you or from the earth moving through you, that you walk through the world, strewing, beauty and people want to follow you, be with you, be in your company. The only way Lee Young to achieve this level of mastery is through the practice of poetry, music, painting, dance, theater, the receptive arts. And Lee Young said, I consider William Stafford the quintessential level five. Well, so if this is how one becomes a master, what kind of conditions in the classroom will So fill us with the Dao and the arts of response. That's what we need to find.

Speaker 6 (00:51:39):

Okay, four. The process of transforming one's life into legend by writing is what draws us to the craft. In your letter to Higginson, after thanking him for surgical critique of her poems, Emily says this, I would like to learn. Could you tell me how to grow? Or is it uncon conveyed like melody or witchcraft? I'm just imagining myself higginson, the editor at the Atlantic Monthly, I hope being severely humbled by this question. So how is mastery conveyed? Is it just by melody or witchcraft? I use Emily Dickinson speaking to her critic as my example, not because I think all of my students have her particular elevated genius, but because I believe the dynamic of student writer as primary authority and questioning instructor a secondary authority is how I think writing class works best. It's practical in the end. Five, when my father signed his application to be a conscientious objector in 1941, as I did in 1968, we both affirmed I will not engage in war in any form.

Speaker 6 (00:53:12):

I believe that in his teaching, and I know in mine there is a similar commitment at work that I would articulate like this. I will not engage in war on my students by claiming authority. Foreign to my experience as a writer, a realm guided by intuition, listening, welcome and a kind of personal inevitability that is the writer's gift six. And last. If Emily says to Higginson and speaking of her poems before they are written, this is the thing I have to keep remembering in writing class. It's the poem that hasn't been written yet that I am here to invite. And Emily says, while my thought is undressed, I can make distinctions in its quality, but when I put it in the gown, they look alike and numb. So once it's brought forth, it's this other being. But our primary work as teachers is to nurture the young draft. And in that work, I would be kind and reticent. Thank you.

Speaker 8 (00:54:50):

I am going to speak from here because I'm smaller than the podium. I've been teaching veterans writing and Buddhism for 23 years, and we integrate these two disciplines and writing practice becomes a Buddhist practice. One ceremony that we have just before people read their writings is that we evoke Ara A is the BofA of compassionate listening. This is the bell of mindfulness, and when I ring it, I will invoke the bode's name. And then when I finish the invocation, I will ring it three times and then she, he will appear.

Speaker 8 (00:56:27):

We invoke your name Ara. We aspire to learn your way of listening in order to help relieve the suffering in the world. You know how to listen in order to understand. We invoke your name in order to practice listening. With all our attention and open-heartedness, we will sit and listen Without any prejudice, we will sit and listen without judging or reacting. We will sit and listen in order to understand. We will sit and listen so attentively that we will be able to hear what the other person is saying and also what has been left unsaid. We know that just by listening deeply, we already alleviate a great deal of pain and suffering in the other person

Speaker 8 (00:57:46):

Before. And after each person reads, we ring the bell to remind us that we want to train our ears so that we can hear and receive whatever this person is saying. After the readings, we go on walking meditation, and this is slow, mindful walking, usually in a beautiful place in the woods, in the country. And we walk silently and we walk together. And then now we are hearing the sounds, our footsteps and the sounds, the of the air and the world. Walking. Meditation is especially important for veterans because they have walked patrol in which every step is dangerous. And so there is learning a new walk in which you can trust the earth that you're walking on after coming back from walking meditation, we have our critique, our feedback. I know that we told the abo safa of compassionate listening that we are not going to react, but I don't think this is reacting as much as responding just before we give the critique, I say that we have now lived with these stories and poems for about an hour, and we've carried these stories for an hour.

Speaker 8 (00:59:58):

What stays in our memory after an hour? What is it that has touched our hearts? What is it that we can marvel and wonder at? And we answer those questions. We can say to somebody, here's what I heard. Here's what I liked about your story. Here's what I remember. Here's what touched me. Here's what brought tears. And oh, here's what made me laugh. So what remained with you after listening and going for a walk this way of giving a criticism has changed me. It's changed the way that I criticize. I no longer look for flaws in the writing. I don't just take papers and grade them and find the mistakes. I look for what's good in the writing and help the student recognize what is good, what have you done really well, and then expand on it, tell more of it, and teach the writer to recognize what has been well done and why and when the good parts of the poem and the story are expanded, the rest of the, the writing will be pulled up to that standard.

Speaker 8 (01:01:56):

There is a hot debate going on in Buddhist circles right now. The Department of Defense has invited Buddhists led by John Cabot Zinn to teach meditation in the military. And it has begun with teaching Marines before deployment. The budget for teaching resilience research is what it's called in the military. It's called Resilience Zillions research. It's $125 million to teach meditation in the military. There's also been a $4.3 million grant given to teach mindfulness-based mind fitness training. It's also called mindfulness-Based Stress reduction. There is a 31 million grant given to the University of Pennsylvania to teach positive psychology. And these are all the names for meditation, to teach meditation to soldiers. The desired effects of this teaching is that there will be sharper awareness. People will be awake and they will be better shots, but they will also be better able to discern what and whom to shoot at.

Speaker 8 (01:03:50):

So the idea is that there will no longer be accidental shootings. Like if somebody didn't stop at a checkpoint, but they didn't understand what the signals were. Or if you saw movement, which it turns out to be a child, you do not automatically shoot because you have learned to be aware and more awake and to be able to discern the idea also, and I think this is the main goal of teaching meditation in the military, is that they're hoping that people will come back with less post-traumatic stress disorder, get to people before they get too stressed, and so they can come back without being so wounded.

Speaker 8 (01:04:51):

I've been talking to the veteran writers in our group and also to Buddhist teachers, and we've been asking one another, if you were asked to teach meditation in the military, would you do it? And I decided, yes, I would do it. However, in addition to meditation or stress reduction or mindfulness, I would teach the whole dharma, give them the full Dharma and at least give them the five precepts and at least give the first precept. And the first precept is thou shalt not kill. But the Buddhists, they don't say thou. They say I, here's one translation of the first precept. I vow not to kill, not to let others kill and not to support any act of killing in the world. Okay, so in my class in the military, I will give them all five precepts. That's the first one. The second one is a right livelihood.

Speaker 8 (01:06:27):

And the third one is right, loving or right sexual conduct. The next one is Right speech. Right speech includes listening because there is speech and then there is listening to others. And the last one is write nourishment. I have taught these precepts in the veterans workshops also at my writing workshops at the university. And the way I teach it, it makes it less religious and more literary. And I say, these are master plots, and those are all the plots we have. You can't think of any more plots. That's it. There's only five there. And so write stories and poems using these precepts as themes, as plots for stories. And I have found that that first precept for the veterans has produced the most powerful writing as they struggle with the ethics and morals of war.

Speaker 8 (01:07:52):

Oh, I have found that war and life is chaotic. Stuff that happens to us is chaotic. But if you had an ethical structure, then there's something to hold all that chaos, and you're beginning to find an order to what happened. Moral conflict is the most dramatic and exciting part of a story. And if there could be moral conflict, then you can lift the war story above being just an adventure story. There is a new name for the harm that soldiers suffer when they come back, and they're calling it moral injury. The US military has come out with a study that says troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental health problems were three times more likely to report to having engaged in unethical behavior.

Speaker 8 (01:09:12):

So this practice of meditation, the practice of writing, the practice of the five precepts, they are very good for us. We live in interesting times. We are living in a time when Buddhist nonviolence meets the US military. Yes, it's face to face. Buddha himself lived in a very violent time. There was great violence, a great war, a time of torture. In fact, the Buddhist own home village was Genocided. And even during that time, he came up with these ideas for non-violence. So let's see what poems and stories and what enlightenment comes out of practicing in this way.

Speaker 2 (