Compose and Be Composed

Compose and Be Composed

(Writing as a Life-Long Sport
           aka Liberal Art)

I was released from compositional obligations

some years back because my incommensurate

pedagogy might could demoralize the complicit.

This makes good institutional professional sense.

I allowed no talk-in-class. NBW: nothing but

writing. I’d process their compositions, print.

and pass them out as prompt. Local Food.

Compose as provoked.      Leave. 

That was the course.

Force-it talk-in-air among 8:00  dillar-a-dollar

scholars felt like wasted time, whereas the

atmosphere generated by Mind-at-Work

writing  down bones drenched & permeated

my fluorescent Jensen environmentality like

Rocky Mt Sunshine & January Wasatch
snowfields, .  .. .

 “You’re not making them revise, Sam.”

         The Compositional Shibboleth.

Woodshed & Workshop.

Flows, doesn’t flow, more

here, less there, show, don’t

tell: maybe a bit more tell,

more cowbell. .

I heard an MFA student weep outside my

door early one July afternoon, retreating

from rigorous work-shopping, curled up

beside the totem pole to blow her nose.  

Write yr Ass Off! I say.

Revise, sure. For sound.

Voice is everything.
Content's galore.