Message Clear

I was in the middle of teaching my fourth hour APEs (AP English) when our principal (name withheld) barged into my room and slapped a piece of paper on my podium.  "What is the meaning of this?" he asked.

The paper contained a phone message from an outraged Catholic youth minister concerning a poem by Edwin Morgan, "Message Clear."  It seemed, according to the message the youth  minister left with our principal, that two of my students came to the parish offices to show him the poem.  They were "extremely disturbed."

So was our principal.  This was, after all, his first year at good ol' GMHS and he had heard disturbing things about me from the powers that be.  And here I was, just as promised by outgoing administrators, distributing inappropriate material.

Don't worry.  There is a point to all this.  Let me explain.  "Message Clear", in the jargon of insufferable AP Literature teachers, is one of the truly great examples of Technopaegnia, poems whose shape informs content and theme and whose theme and content inform shape.  "Buffalo Bill" by e.e. cummings is a great example.  In "Message Clear", Morgan takes the line from John 11:25, "I am the resurrection and the life." and typographically places it at the bottom of one of those old univac computer cards, the kinds with the chads hanging all over the place from a grid of square holes waiting to be punched out.  Above the final line filter different phrases that can be made from that one declaration.  Of course, all the letters maintain their place hovering above the final sentence.  The result is this increasingly thrilling accumulation of one liners all combining in the final, "I am the resurrection and the life."

So, there are individual lines like,
"i am ra
i am thoth
i am erect
i am erection
etc."

It was the "i am erect" line that fired the imagination of the youth minister and compelled him to grab the phone and call for my head.  My principal, not particularly skilled in the parsing of poetry, was only partially mollified when I told him that it was a poem taken from an actual AP test.  "Oh, ahem, well, that's okay then."  (I lied about the test, but it would have made a great question.)

The next day in class, furious, I explained the concern of the youth minister.  He didn't think it appropriate to suggest Jesus had an erection.  I explained to him and to my students that if Jesus was who he claimed to be, he certainly had an erection or two.  After all, that homespun cloth was really itchy.  I'm sure if the youth minister had been there, his outrage would have been renewed, but hey, "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

Outside of my life as a newspaper sponsor, that was the only time I came close to being censored.  I couldn't help think about all that when I read the coverage on the whole student art controversy in DPS.  As part of a public school art show at the city's Webb building, a jury of evaluators chose a Kunsmiller sophomore's work for display.  It depicted a police officer wearing a KKK hood pointing a gun at a hoodie wearing toddler whose hands are up.  As a backdrop, the confederate flag usurps the stars and stripes fading into the background.

It is a powerful piece.  Timely.  Well executed.  Centered around a single idea.  Evocative.  It is all those things.  By anyone's standards, it is a work of art.  Of course, it caused a firestorm of responses from all ends of the political spectrum.  The sophomore wisely chose to have the piece taken down.  At least that's the story.

I have a variety of reactions to all of this.  First of all, I would like to applaud DPS in general and Kunsmiller's principal in particular for standing up for this student's expression.  After all, as Denver attorney Daniel Recht said, "a juvenile has the very same first amendment rights as an adult."  I shudder to think how some of my old principals would have treated the same situation.

I like the ultimate reaction of Denver police and the mayor.  "It was a teachable moment," the mayor said.  But from what I've read, the mayor came away with the bigger learning spurt.

My main reaction is to the supplementary article written by Post art critic Ray Mark Rinaldi.  His thesis is that teaching art to kids "can be tricky."  You have to encourage their free expression, but then you have to deal with their output.  That's hardly shocking information, but then he goes on to suggest the special responsibilities a teacher must take on when dealing with high school kids.

For instance, Rinaldi says that adults have "free rein to express themselves, and they live with the consequences, good and bad."  But he goes on to say that 10th graders don't really know how their work will be taken by the public.  I don't know about Mr. Rinaldi, but I spent most of my career working with 10th graders.  They know exactly how their work will be taken by the public.  That's the whole point.

Rinaldi goes on to ask if a 10th grader would really want to offend police officers.  Is this a trick question?

I'm sad that the piece in question has been taken down, but it has served its purpose as art.  There has been a dialogue, a "teachable moment."  After thirty-five years in the classroom, it has always been my experience that all the best "teachable moments" came from kids.  Mr. Rinaldi take note.