Anne Waldman Teacher Guide Story and Art: Ruth and Jim Keegan

Discussion Questions: Elementary/MS/HS

• In the second panel, Waldman states, “I always thought of my own voice as an instrument.” Is a voice an instrument? How can it be used as an instrument for good? • Why is poetry described as “…essential as food, water and breathing?” Do you agree? • “I am interested in the MAGICAL properties of language – its sound and image.” What is magical about language? How can language create images in your mind? • Final panel – “These are my people; this is my tribe. This is where I’m going to put my energy.” Who are the people in your tribe? What do you want your tribe to accomplish through its energy?

MS/HS (also see above) • ”I wrote from an early age. It was a human, natural circumstance. It was also a way of life – marginal, subterranean – maybe there was a decision there – that I’d never ‘sell out’” “I took a vow at Berkeley in 1965 to never give up on poetry or on the community – to serve this high and rebellious art.” What do you think Waldman means when stating that “writing to be a human and natural circumstance… a way of life? “ How can someone sell out in life – musicians, politicians, friends, etc? How can poetry be a high and rebellious art? • According to Waldman, what is the importance of poets in society throughout history and modern times?

Lesson Ideas English • Elementary/MS – use the first stanza of Revolution to discuss – who are “the networks” or people who “fill us with joy”? • Use Waldman’s “Light and Shadow” to discuss free verse and figurative language – allusions, parallel structure, contrasts, metaphors, alliteration, etc. • Use Waldman’s “To the Censorius Ones” to answer – who are the men who wrote history? How can women change the message? Why does her poem have a feeling of anger? • Students could compare The Iliad and The Odyssey to Waldman’s poems – how much truth and artistic license is present?

• Students can research the historical figures mentioned in the comic (Shakespeare, Li Bai, Dante Alighieri, Walt Whitman, and Maya Angelou) and explain their connection to Anne Waldman. Why are they included in the comic? They can also decide on one or two other historical authors who should have been included in the comic (Poe, Herodotus, Homer, etc) – this can be turned into a persuasive essay and the class could vote on the most convincing. • Students can be assigned to watch a video of Waldman reciting a poem. The focus question will be on why is this type of poetry so important to hear/see? A follow-up discussion can he had when watching VS reading Shakespeare.

Social Studies • Students can research and put together a short biography or Anne Waldman. They can create a timeline of her life and major events to be tied into her poetry. • Students can research the historical figures mentioned in the comic (Shakespeare, Li Bai, Dante Alighieri, Walt Whitman, and Maya Angelou) and explain their connection to Anne Waldman. Why are they included in the comic? They can also decide on one or two other historical figures who should have been included in the comic (Poe, Herodotus, Homer, etc) – this can be turned into a persuasive essay and the class could vote on the most convincing. • Students could compare The Iliad and The Odyssey to Waldman’s poems – how much truth and artistic license is present? This can be an introduction to historiography and source credibility. (http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.html and (http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html) • Students can read and annotate Waldman’s “History Will Decide” – the focus of the annotations should be on picking out historical references to be discussed and deciphered. (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/anne- waldman#about) • Waldman’s poetry and biography can easily be included in a study of counter culture, protest movements (civil rights), and Buddhism (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and- poets/poets/detail/anne-waldman#about) • Use Waldman’s “To the Censorius Ones’” to answer – who are the men who wrote history? How can women change the message? (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and- poets/poets/detail/anne-waldman#about) Music • Compare Waldman’s free verse type of poetry to hip-hop, slam poetry, rap battles, and 80s rock ballads. Discuss the power of one’s voice and lyrics as poetry. This can be linked to Shakespeare and the lyrical links between poetry and music. Comic Analysis • 4th panel, multiple historical figures are depicted and named. However, four are not labelled – students should discuss and label the four remaining figures, as well as their significance. • As mentioned above, students can decide on other historical figures that should be included in the 4th panel. Once decided upon, they can they create their own caricature of the personality.

• Panel 7 – have students discuss the choice of an embryo and woman in the water – why were these images chosen? • Panel 8 – students can create their own book title and image to be placed in one of the blank ones. • Final panel, students can be asked to reflect upon their own personal tribes and to draw a representation such as seen in the comic. This idea could be also be used to create a panel about a local, school, city, or national tribe. Resources • copies of Waldman’s poems can be found on https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and- poets/poets/detail/anne-waldman#about • http://www.annewaldman.org/ -the official Anne Waldman multi-media site. • https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ - all things poetry

Anne Waldman is not only a famous poet, but she also loves performing her poetry live in front of an audience. We wanted to tell her story exclusively in her own words, and frame the comic as though it were one of her spoken word concerts. We read numerous interviews with Ms. Waldman, and carefully chose the following quotes:

Anne Waldman: A Vow to Poetry

I always thought of my own voice as an instrument.

Orality goes with the description of poet in the primary sense when poetry was composed by people who didn’t read or write ... telling the story of a particular tribe, a particular battle and defeat or victory that sort of thing.

No human period has ever existed without poetry — oral or written. I think we are originally “wired” for this in our larynx-zone — it’s as essential as food, water and breathing.

Epic and ballad are the narrative forms. Ten there’s incantation, love song, lament, dirge, curse, spells, mantra, songs for fertility, etcetera. I’ve worked in all these forms and extended them and come to my own shapes.

I am interested in the magical properties of language--its sound and image, its logopoeia. To see the world, its exigencies, tragedies in a “new light” or a refreshed light through a heightened perception of language is what I try to do.

I wrote from an early age. It was a human, natural circumstance. It was also a way of life––marginal, subterranean–– maybe there was a decision there––that I’d never “sell out.”

I took a vow at Berkeley in 1965 to never give up on poetry or on the community––to serve as a votary to this high and rebellious art.

Artists need to stay on the pulse, be vocal in their lives. See where you have voice and can reverberate and articulate your care, your concern and tenderness as well.

Point out the beauties, the possibilities, the extraordinary power of empathy and love, in art and in life, as well as the horrors of our greed and ignorance.

We need a world-wide Department of Peace. Te will is just not there yet, the other way is still so darkly lucrative. Poets have to keep pushing, pushing, against the darkness, and write their way out of it as well.

Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado is sustained by a sense of the world needing a Buddhist-inspired non-competitive contemplative zone to study and hone one’s craft and serve the troubled world.

Alan Ginsberg and I founded the School of Disembodied Poetics – which is Naropa’s creative writing department. We invented our own “academy of the future” ourselves! a community of likeminded people with a certain kind of adhesiveness and connection and sharing of this ethos.

I took my vow to poetry; this is where I’m going to be. Tese are my people; this is my tribe. Tis is where I’m going to put my energy.

Te quotes listed above were pulled from a combination of seven interviews available in their entirety at the following links:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/annewaldman.html

http://www.raintaxi.com/an-interview-with-anne-waldman/

http://www.vidaweb.org/vida-interview-with-anne-waldman-“from-the-larynx”/

http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs15/roark.htm

https://www.marialoveswords.com/interview-with-anne-waldman/

https://www.poetspath.com/Scholarship_Project/waldman2.htm

http://logosjournal.com/2011/summer_waldman/ Next, in Photoshop, we created a grid of boxes and placed the text into them to establish the pacing and see how much room we’d have left for our drawings. We wanted to establish a sense of initial conformity (later to be violated), so we started with 8 equally- sized boxes. Tis is how we write our scripts. We make the text that will print in the comic black, and notes to ourselves in red.

Color plays a big part on page one. For that page we created a Photoshop color dummy to establish how the color would function. Tis was done very quickly, without much regard for making the drawings particularly nice because we only needed to understand the placement of the elements, their shapes, and how the color worked from panel to panel. We do small pencil drawings of each element on separate pieces of paper, and composite scans of them onto a grid in Photoshop. Tis shows only the primary fgures, but each individual element was drawn out and positioned in the same fashion. Ten, on a large piece of paper, we redraw the pictures for the fnal comic—frst in pencil, then in ink. You’ll notice that some parts are drawn in red ink. Tis allows us to easily seperate those parts from the rest after scanning. Tese are called color-holds; parts of picture that will not have an outline and are only made of color. Lettering and fnal colors are added later in Photoshop.