Some scribble words on paper as they listen. Some write intently with barely an ear to the head of the class. His plan in this lesson is to give students a sense of the power of language to create and capture whatever a mind can imagine. He asks them to write about an event they wish hadn t happened as if it hadn t, creating an alternate reality on paper. Turned loose, students flock to the broad windowsill.
Pens scratch on paper, hair falls over pages and lines are crossed out with no mercy.
They are making tragedies into pleasure, exacting revenges that never happened. Some write pure nonsense, laughing at the page and reading out loud the absurdity they have created and can t contain. He talks about rhythm and cars and goats and love poems, always finding the finest line and helping the rest of a poem live up to it. Write it like the divorce never happened. Life s not like that.