From the Catalogue of Cruelty

Many years ago, let's not say when, I designed the Oral Interpretation (COM241) course with the focus on a culminating final performance at a forensics tournament away from the campus. The culminating final performance/tournament offered a trophy, cash, a paid trip, food, camaraderie, peer-work, observation of other performances, evaluations from other judges, and a real-world comparison of choices. The students would aim toward the last PSCFA (Pacific Southwest Collegiate Forensics Association) tournament in the spring, called the Cool-Off. The PSCFA provides students with an orientation in speech communication to enable them to better order their own affairs; to extend forensics to all participants regardless of race, age, gender, sexual orientation, and/or disability; to provide means of education for students and to maintain and advance the ideals and standards of speech communication. The tournament would only allow novice competitors, which was ideal for my Oral Interpretation course. The timing worked, the events fit the course competencies, the forensics team would fund the trip for the students, and the forensics coaches would travel with the students, and even supply one-on-one (or 1-on-2) mentors for the students to prepare them for the competition. Good. There were other options, such as a GCC campus public performance or even the ARTa (American Readers' Theatre association) National Competition. 

Students would not buy-in or be motivated if I did not include them in the decision making and present them with the big questions. Students would never gain the abilities to do well in their performances if I didn't walk them through the thinking. Students would try, sure, but would they know why they are trying? I needed to present the goal, and the map, but start with idea and the big question. To do this, I wrote my syllabus, but I did not print it. I crafted the modules in Canvas, but I did not publish the course. Rather I presented a challenge. A poem.

On the first day I presented a poem. I found a poem in the most current New Yorker Magazine, entitled "From the Catalogue of Cruelty" by Donika Kelly. I passed the poem in the magazine, and asked the big question: how can we bring literature to life? Literature, or in this case a poem, is a record of humankind, of its strivings to know and express itself. Literature is a vehicle of learning by our society. As John Dewey wrote in Art as Experience, a poem is more than information, as it is "communication and participation in values of life by means of the imagination and works of art (or literature) are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding individuals to share in the art of living." 

The first student read the poem aloud, flat, hollow, and with no pause or breath. "Once I slapped my sister with the back of my hand we were so small but I wanted to know how it felt" He read, never looking up from the page, and ignoring meaning, punctuation, emotions, expression, etc. I responded, "Did he bring the poem to life?" The students, with their kind eyes, said, "Yes." "Really? That was life? Is that how hitting your little sister feels?" They stared at me like dead birds. I encouraged the first rushed student reader to pass the magazine to the next student. She said, "You want me to read where he left off?" "No," I said. "Read the same line again, and bring it to life. But this time, think about it this way. You're not amassing facts, but gaining insight into a life. Bridge the gulf that is between you and this person who slapped the little sister, and bridge the space between you and us. Treat the poem as the mediator between you and us. Bring us to life."

The second student read the poem aloud. She paid attention to the punctuation. "Once, I slapped my sister with the back of my hand. We were so small, but I wanted to know how it felt."  I gestured for her to continue. She read, "My hand raised high across the opposite shoulder, slicing down like a trapeze." She never looked up; she never gestured with her words. 

Again, I asked, "Did she bring the poem to life?" They, again, said, "Yes." "How alive? Does the poem breath? Did she connect with you?" I explained how the general purpose of all literature is to transport the audience. When I asked if anyone felt the slap, they all shook their heads. 

One student, an older man who spent years in the Navy, said, "It's just a poem. Do we need to know this?" 

He asked the great question. I explained that literature is a necessary experience, not the reading, but the transportation. While experiencing the poem isn't a key to happiness, it is the up-most valuable way we can understand and experience what it means to be human beings, sympathetic, sensitive, and aware. In short, to be in the best sense "a person". I gave the small class of eight some hints on how to bring the poem alive. Look at the verbs. Think the verb, imagine it, and from impression to expression. Tie a gesture to how the verb makes you feel. Follow the signs of the punctuation. Period? Stop. Comma? Breath. Every three to five words, pause. Long words? Feel them on your tongue.  React to the image, and look at us when you think. 

I gave the sailor the poem to read. He read aloud, with feeling, and pausing. "I slapped her in our yellow room with circus animals on the curtains. I don't remember how it felt. I was a rough child." He stopped. "Hell, I was." 
"You were...? What?" I asked.
"A rough kid. That's why I enlisted."
"And you connected to the poem."
"Yeah. I remember hitting my sister. I try not to, but I do remember it."
And he had. He responded, he touched the art, he remembered the slap, and he was transported, and in so doing, by that touch, he was changed and we all discovered our humanity.
"Can I continue? Read the next part?"

We did not go over the syllabus on the first day. We did not address the "goal" or the options of the FC and we did not open Canvas, or look at all the rules. With the eight students we tried to make the poem "From the Catalogue of Cruelty" connect us. We approached the poem as an organic, not fixed set of words, to help us find meaning in the small cruel things we did or thought about doing to our own siblings. We discovered communically and shared our insights of our own cruel actions. We addressed how reading the poem aloud was like sharing a secret, like confession, and how our discussion, and sharing of our own cruel acts became the glue which holds us together, and makes us relate on emotional levels.

A small Hispanic female busted out with, "I want to try! I want to read it, too!" My turn, she glared.
"I would love to hear you bring the slapper to life, but we are ten-minutes over the class time. And the other teacher keeps peeking through the door window. We can pick this up on Thursday. Please come back ready to bring the poem to life, and I will present to you some goals for the class in an email. I want you to pick an option. I will put the options in the email. You can contemplate the dates, and check your calendars. Let's show others how we can bring these words to life."

Guess what? On Thursday, I presented the options, the goals, and we discussed with excitement how alive they felt reading the poem. They wanted to prove they could bring a poem to life. Before we returned to "Catalogue of Cruelty" the students voted. Overwhelmingly they selected to attend the PSCFA Cool-Off. With one caveat.
"If we suck, if we're bad, let us back out."
As an answer I read the end of the poem.

"Did you know you could throw a star?"