I was told that I had to give grades to the students,
which I wasn't particularly interested in doing
Merce Cunningham
So there they are in front of me
A pile of papers
student papers for me to grade
Is that a tear stain I see in the corner of this one?
Or did something drip on the paper as he worked?
Thousands and thousands of words from hundred and hundred of students
Have come across my desk over the years
Some appearing from careful thinking
and placed up the page like self portraits
Others slapped and slung like a Jackson Pollack
but with no less need to be understood- perhaps more
Perhaps genius lay within both
or neither
How will I know?
What were they doing as they wrote?
Were they huddled in a corner table at Starbucks...
as I was when I wrote the last lines of my dissertation
somewhere on the Upper West Side
A table at the library?
In front of their TV?
What are they hoping to say with all those carefully- and some not so carefully- typed words?
I do not know as I begin to read- and sometimes when I am finished grading,
I still am not certain
But as I try to follow their train of thought -
sometimes having to run to stay on their track-
Other times, I find myself sitting by the side of their rhetorical road
awestruck by their mental travels,
I understand Merce's reticence to "grade"
but grade I do...
because that is my part in this little drama of words
and that's poetiquejustis
Be diligent to present yourself approved to
God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling
the word of truth.
2 Timothy 2:15
