I was at Columbia University at a reading by Sonya Sanchez…and, it turned out, a number of her students. The young men and women got flow...some more than others. One guy looked my age or better, did a thing called "Frankie and Johnie Re-do." That's how he said it, and I'm pretty sure that's how he wrote it, "re-do" not "redux."

I have a weird relationship with poetry. There are poems I like and poets I like but I'm not sure I like Poetry the Capitalized Essence. I used to write it but at the moment there's no poetry in me.

I brought my cheapo voice recorder with me because I'm still experimenting. You get to hear none of it though, for two reasons:

1. Being a Capitalist Nationalist™, I care about copyrights, so I asked Ms. Sanchez' permission to post the recording. Not knowing my ass from Adam but having the request presented to her by a professor who knows I show for that sort of thing on the regular and so probably ain't evil (though Ms. Sanchez is, in a good way...later...) she wanted to talk to me about why I wanted to post it. Good enough...and to save time so she could get on with the show I gave her a card with my sites' URLs and my email address. I asked her to look around to see if it's the sort of site she could accept having her work appear on, and promised not to post it unless she sent me permission by email. And since I just got back she can't possibly have sent me a message yet. So you can't possibly hear it yet.
2. The recording sucked because of ambient noise, so I ain't gonna do it anyway. If you read this Sister Sanchez, thanks for the open-minded consideration. I may use a 10 second sample for this concept but trust me...with the ambient noise it's not recognizable as you or your work.

It would have been a goodie, though. Surprisingly, it turns out what I'd like to post is her lead-in to the poetry. She started out by saying it was good for the students to read before an audience because you talks about stuff in class,tell them something needs works and when the read in front of a bunch of people they find out yes, it does need work. Maybe you had to be there, but we all thought that was hysterically evil.

And then she discussed her approach to teaching. And this was interesting.

She feels teachers are provided knowledge but aren't taught to teach. If I understand correctly, her approach is to foster openness and provide freedom to say whatever, BUT there is to be no "terrorism," which is to say no one is going to dominate the class but her. She's bring the knowledge equally to all and all have equal opportunity to express.

I need to tell you, I think that might be suicide for of Political Science professor in this day and age…at least a new one. The personal power of the person in the position will determine if this can be pulled off and Sister Sanchez has the standing in many communities to pull it off.

Which brings us to the next interesting point.

Being comfortable enough to speak freely, her students naturally speak freely...and it's new enough to note. Her response is, in essence, that freedom is only real is you can do it outside this room.

Yeah.

And the last noteworthy point in the lead-in to her reading is the task she sets before them: what does it mean to be human.

Ah, you People of the Book.

When I approached that question years back, I couldn't find a meaning. Not an inherent one, just a pattern of probable responses to a pattern of likely conditions, each modified by a finnagle factor to account for surprises.