Why do we read books? Have I, in any way, encouraged you to read something new?

So it was a busy week...several nights of turning into a couch bound zombie after all of the energy I had was thoroughly expended at school. We had a couple of big events this week: the all school Poetry Out Loud contest and a Saturday prep session for my AP English students. The Poetry Out Loud thing was actually pretty exciting. We've been doing it as long as it's been around (about five years), but we'd never had the whole school participate before. All the teachers (with a little gentle nudging) got on board this year, so around 1700 kids, from ELL 1 through AP, learned and performed a poem for their classroom contest. This past Thursday and Friday, all of the winners of the class contests(and their classmates) came to a semi-finals in the cafeteria. That's between 250-350 kids in the cafeteria listening to other kids recite poetry on a '50s vintage microphone. Sounds like it would be awful, right? Wrong. The kids - in the audience! - were fantastic, super supportive and respectful. I teach at an urban school, mind you...it's not a war zone by any means, but it ain't white bread suburbia either, so this was something of a revelation. Brought a little tear to my eye...And Saturday was another good day; we have a grant to increase our students' participation and performance in AP English, math, and science classes and part of what it pays for is Saturday prep sessions - in this case, a complete practice exam and a review of the multiple choice. I work with three other schools, so I had to prepare test materials for 250 kids and schlepp them over to a different school. I didn't really get to sit down for about eight hours, but, all in all, it went well.

All that being said to excuse my lack of reading and posting. But I did get to read a couple of books this week, both of which I quite enjoyed. The first (the inspiration for the title of this post) was Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood, a short little novel composed entirely of questions. Although it has no story, per se, the voice definitely sucks you in and some threads do begin to emerge (blue jays...infant squirrels..train sets), but I can't pretend to have any great insight into meaning. Mostly I just enjoyed the tone. At one point, I started reading it out loud to my husband and he started answering the questions, which was fairly entertaining. I could also see using it as a writing exercise in class.

My favorite question of meaning: "Is there anything you might do today that would distinguish you from being just a vessel of consumption and pollution with a proper presence in the herd?"

My favorite pair of questions, just because: "If you were to be executed and, by standard practice in executions, were offered anything you wanted as a last meal, and instead of ordering lobster or an impossibly thick Porterhouse steak or some peculiar fond dish like fish sticks and packaged macaroni, you said, "I want boiled kittens and puppies, and I want them boiled alive, like crabs," do you think there would be amusement, and do you think they would comply? If you were to be executed and you ordered boiled kittens and puppies as your last meal and they were served you, would you eat the kittens and puppies?"

My other book this week seems to be part of an accendental trend of "middle aged literary men have mid- life crises," which would include The Anthologist, which I read late last year, and one or two others that are currently escaping me(only underscoring why I want to keep this blog). This particular one was The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter, a very contemporary work - job layoffs, foreclosures, websites combining poetry and financial advice. I think the genre in general doesn't give men enough credit - I personally know very few men who've made it past thirty-five with as little self-knowledge as some of these characters, but maybe I'm just lucky like that. I think what makes me keep coming back to these types of stories is the sense of gratitude I've mustered by the end, both for my somewhat charmed life and my nice, steady husband (although sometimes they make me wonder a little if he can possibly be as nice as he appears to be...), and the idea that we don't need much, which is what these men seem to learn. Some nice people, something we like to do...that's all.