Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XVII)

So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate: there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.
John Milton (Paradise Lost)

I hammer away.  These characters emerge.

After NYU, the book fair relocated to the Park Avenue Armory. The military presence was off putting.  The next year it moved to Madison Square Garden.

During those years I published a series Bard Press poetry chapbooks, including Richard Davidson’s The Gentleman from Hyde Park, a tribute to FDR.

In the spring of 1986 the Waterways Project began a collaboration with the Alternative Schools reaching out to special needs students at Lower East Side Prep, City As School, the Muse School in Our Lady of Pompeii Church, and the Harvey Milk School.

The Office of Alternative Schools and Programs began to enroll special education students.  I provided resource services for the students by engaging them in discussions and writing exercises.

Shelley wrote in his "Defence of Poetry":
“Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts.”

The best writers were inspired by peer writing. We published students who never owned a book. We listened to the voice that was part of the flow of daily discourse and belonged to the conversations that our students were having among themselves. Our students were looking for meaning, trying to find direction, and in so doing pointed the way to their peers.