"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude
to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw
material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul
of the child."--Carl Jung

I am teaching again this semester- even though daunted by the fact that I will again have to teach to absurdly large classes, I am at once filled with fascinations and drive to push the limits of my teaching skills and to learn from others as well. I think that is how I have come to fall into the folds of my latest read: Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks. The challenge of making the classroom a place of social practicing seems to escape the curriculum - how can we nurture our students without coddling them? teach them the necessary skill that the world requires of them and, simultaneously, give them courage to break those constraints and limitations. Is being 'real' with my students, distracting them from the seriousness of their goals? I am teaching english composition one and two again, in a place where the majority speak spanish for business and life. The most difficult stride has been getting students passed the idea that being able to write well and being able to articulate one's ideas and understanding is optional in a world that seems so hungry from change and bravery. This book is a step in that direaction.no doubt and I am trying out many of the concepts that hooks has that long on.

This is an excerpt I found online from her book in relation to her teaching philosophy:

"...No education is politically neutral...

We must combine theory and affirm and demonstrate pedagogical practices engaged in creating a new language, rupturing disciplinary boundaries, decentering authority, and rewriting the institutional and discursive borderlands in which politics becomes a condition for reasserting the relationship between agency, power, and struggle...

By recognizing subjectivity and the limits of identity, we disrupt that objectification that is so necessary in a culture of domination...

We must insist that students participate in education and not be passive consumers...

I tell students not to confuse informality with a lack of seriousness,

to respect the process...

In principle, the classroom ought to be a place where things are said seriously -

not without pleasure, not without joy -

but seriously, and for serious consideration..."

-bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress -Education as the Practice of Freedom

7 am classes are great! Building F, Miami Dade College- Homestead 2006 Spring

At Miami Dade College -Kendall Campus

Professor A.P. Stone serves intrigue to her English Composition class...

Above, students are working on their Mobius Strip : Defining Self projects in Fred Shaw Plaza. Inspired by poet, Denise Duhamel's mobius strip poem Forgetful from her book of poem Two by Two, the students came up with their own defining word and created a mobius strip 'poem' of their own. The activity resulted in an essay that used the definition pattern at the end of the week.

"Today my students are working a scavenger hunt- inspired activity. Many of them are incoming freshmen and transfers and really haven't growm acquianted with all of the programs the college has to offer. Besides, we live in south Florida and the weather is gorgeous! The purpose of the group project is to create awareness of the services that are provided by the college, and also to give them a bead on where these services are located. This is also away to get the student familiar with one another, which will make group projects less intimidating and awkward later in the semester."


Dear Students,

Your next go to clue is:

First, post a brief response on this site.
Next, on this website find the famous "Cougar" photo.
Identify the "Cougar"'s location in real life on campus.
Log out of this computer and head to the "Cougar".
At the base of the "Cougar" you will find an envelope with your class printed on the front. Open the envelope and read the next clue.

Good Luck!

The Catwoman

Pictures from the BIG CHEESE!

'

The Burnett's trying the decide from the goliath of a menu and our favorite Nurse' s first time at the popular UM community hangout.

The Stone and Long Sisters posing with the memoribilia littered cover walls and my personal favorite Shrimp Scampi Parmesian!

The Big Cheese
One of my most favorite restaurants in South Miami is The Big Cheese, a local Italian style eatery just north of Dadeland Station Plaza. Named as such , they have the best and cheesiest Shrimp Scampi Parmesian that I have ever had. The restaurant is small and cozy with seating outside; inside, the aromas of the smokey wood burning oven enhances whatever pizza is being toasted to perfection. More than famous, The Big Cheese's garlic rolls are baked fresh every other minute. I always end up ordering one more basket to take home. The garlic is fresh and strong enough to pull most patients out of their comas or revive any finals suffering college student out of her end of term blues.

Recently, I was there with my sisters and brother-in-law, and our friend who is a local but had never been there.

The Big Cheese is a proud sponsor of my Alma Mater, the great and green, University of Miami, which is located just a few blocks north of the restaurant. Inside the restaurant, lover's of the local sports teams (the CANES, the FIU Golden Panthers, the Dolphins and the Heat) can view sports memoriable from as for back as the late seventies- early eighties.

The Big Cheese is a great place for those seeking to reminisce on their good ole college days and the interesting and glory years of South Florida Sports.
So, happy eating, Florida!

-Go 'CANES!

for more information, click the link
http://www.bigcheesemiami.com/flash.html

Today

remember being a kid
rain coming down like tears on the glass funny
patterns on your face on your arms
and you're somewhere between no where
and almost strange fat guys in jumpers
take your toys away some of them
you might never see again?
mommy and daddy faces too tight today
and even though you thought you would
just go invisible and leave for nine
years in an empty cardboard box
in the rain you were still in the way whole

world seemed made of paper
and today you can't say goodbyes you wouldn't
ever say another goodbye condemned
to remember every Ericka,
Shital, and Jefferey and everytime after
there was a tragic shift in the world like a box
too small on moving day....

A. P. Stone
Copyright ©2005 Alissa Patrice Stone

The 1st

We can talk

about souls and like college students

we can romanticise
struggle with a sort of borrowed wisedom,
borrowed words. And you talk
and I listen and I can only agree,
as though you've somehow achieved encompassing
God. Then I struggle
again
with what I am worshipping.


-A. P. Stone
Copyright ©2005 Alissa Patrice Stone

bast

...before darkness

The Fun Ones:

poetry forms and poetry games pt.2

Abecedarian: "...next time won't you sing with me!"

Photo montage: "don't blink!"

graph

little

Shavings

three in the abecedarian photo-montage series
Photography

by

A. P. Stone
inspiration, harmony in the F sharp 'Vanilla Sky' at Miami Dade College
Kendall Campus

The Fountain at Night at the end of Memorial Drive

University of Miami, Coral Gables in Florida

photographed by A. P. Stone

The FUN Ones:

poetry forms and poetry games pt.1

Collage: "Waste not, want not."
List poems:"So many things to do and too few people to do them."



"Lessons from Poems"



1. suddenly cooler at night, I stand on the street with my mouth like
the Wide Mouth Frog

2. The digital clock beats out slow vermilion time

3. when are you getting rid of that; I looked at my typewriter and cried.

4. You don’t like being splashed, but the ocean lashing your back soothes.

5. The steam lets up and you have stopped grappling for the soap; I pause listening to the worries in the bubbles, then I go back to sounding out sounds.

6. we fall on the bed, pinch it love it grateful for its coolness.

7. I bury my face in the downslope of your back

8. Hammmhhph, luv

9. Take out the measuring type.

10. You bought Jergens this time, I thought about being 9 and about being burned alive in grandma’s bathtub about how I learned to levitate over water.

11. Put it all back into the poem, she said.

12. You make me angry when you whistle, pinch my sides under the water

13. some white, some blue, some all spark and twinkle, but, oh


-A. P. Stone
a collaged 14 line prism poem using discarded text from journal
©2003

The Watercolor

The proceeding post is a poetic reading by A.P. Stone
copyrighted 2005

The MIB and Downtown Miami- November 2005



"PLEASE HOLD HAND" by A.P. Stone

"Molten on the City" by A.P. Stone

"The Second Coming" A.P. Stone

"Garden" by A.P. Stone

"Vortex in Miami" A.P. Stone

from top to bottom: poet and architecht, Richard Blanco, poet and professor, Denise Duhamel, and professor and room host, Michele Debenedictis.

The MIB, view from the People Mover station at Wolfson Campus. The People Mover is a free tram system that serves all of Downtown Miami.


THE MIAMI INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR- MDC WOLFSON CAMPUS 2005

For any literary buff residing in Miami, November is the Christmas of the love affair with books. Pickled with sarcastic and enthusiastic writers from all over the country and the international writing community, readers who represent the young and the old, the occasional and the fanatic, flock to the pristine spirals of the Miami's multicultural downtown. Held for a glorious eight days, in the season of the hawks that encircle the bayfront high rises and banks, the book fair provides a little of something for everyone. For me, the MIB is one of the best public events in South Florida for providing fantastic opportunities for great photograpy.

Read something great,

the Cat Woman

The Miami International Book Fair 2005!

The MIB is back and once again has me spending money on all things literary. Some of the highlights of this 8 day book extravaganza was listening many of the public poetry readings. My buy of the weekend was Ricard Blanco's book, Directions to the Beach of the Dead and Art and Cook: Love Food, Live Design, Dream Art by Allan Ben, whose Surrealism and Dada inspired cookbook comes in a little eggcarton. Clever!

In ode to hunger and other sensual appetites!

To my gorgeous, buene provecho!

THE TAO OF POOH by Benjamin Hoff

One of my personal favorites that I encourage my students to read (to foster relaxation and focus for the hurried and anxiety ridden), quick and painless- you should read it too.

Some excerpts from Hoff's enlightening and amazing book:

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast? said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.

And for a little heart thinking I leave with these famous words today by Tao Te Ching as translated by John C. H. Wu, from The Tao of Pooh (Chapter 54):

What is well planted can not be uprooted.

What is well embraced can not slip away.

Your descendants will carry on the ancestral sacrifice for generations
without

end.

Cultivate Virtue in your own person,

And it becomes a genuine part of you.

Cultivate it in the family,

And it will abide.

Cultivate it in the community,

And it will live and grow.

Cultivate it in the state,

And it will flourish abundantly.

Cultivate it in the world,

And it will become universal.

Hence, a person must be judged as person;

A family as family;

A community as community;

A state as state;

The world as world.

How do I know about the world?

By what is in me.

Have an accidental day!

With Love,

The Catwoman

Cat Funk, photo by K. Fletcher, at the poet's birthday.

Statement of Poetics:
From A Place In-between



"I would have become a lawyer.
Run for political office.
Have children. Maybe a husband by now.
I would have read every bestseller and every not-so-bestseller buy now.
When someone mentions Odin I would know exactly what they mean.
I would talk theory and own a gallery and be in sync with the literary scene.
I would have seen more indie films and speak Italian and Tagalog by now.
I’d have two canaries and a cat by now.
I would not be in voluntary debt right now."



I learned too late in life (my early twenties) that I have a slow brain. Not any kind of disability, but that my perception is not where the norm seems to be. Slow motion. Everything is slow motion. My attention is devoted, too much, my concentration in a death grip. I don’t consider what ends up on the page as poetry. I have to get this junk out of my head some how and I have to do this right now. The world is too efficient for me. I walk slowly, I react far too slow, and I daydream as though I’m paid to do it. I wonder about my soul and the hereafter, because I can’t focus in church. I don’t go to church sometimes, because I will end up writing during the sermon anyway. I am not revolutionary, I am not reactionary. And this is not a record. I will spend a week thinking about only sunlight.

This is not a filter. Had I a more steady hand I would be a photographer. My poems are the steadied hand, the pens are the lens, the words are the grade and available light and focus, the images are close-up or long shots. I take pictures. The viewer assumes that there is a small part of the photographer even in the most relinquished photograph. I hate photographs of myself. They prod the knowledge of, too many, disembodied moments. I am not all there, yet. I am an amateur photographer. I take pictures that only mean things to me. I cannot justify their being, however unbearable, however light in my effort to conjure Kundera. I am already too busy looking at something else to decipher them. I shrink them down. I may blow them up. I explode them. They become mosaics of small things we don’t ever really see. Grass, a dead squirrel on a side walk without a culprit, people we thought we used to know, joy.

The passing of time is vague in my poetry, even when I present a real time; the actual moment I am trying to capture is all but a few minutes. More often there is a time in between time or world in between worlds. Gloria Anzaldua spoke vehemently of a ‘borderland’, these poems are the oasis of that borderland: fleeting, momentary, forgotten at the turn of the page; while a lingering of synesthesia is triggered again as I write again that same line, again the same image, photographs of the same object minutes apart. Claude Monet was a poet. If the work is a memory at all, it is a distant one, one that I hope burns the heart in the chest or weights it with boulders of color and dashes of déjà vu.

-A. P. Stone
April 19, 2005

from my newest collection of poetry

simple things fairytale: other Anguillian excursions and hypothesis

Bliss Villa like a Key West postcard:
a tourmaline jewel
the wide plantation porches
where the young women
sit Nair-ing each other
the cream cat with the smoky blue eyes
peeps around the corner amused by the chatter
and the assortment of bare breasts
the high arched brow odor of dilipilitories
and salt

the ocean breathes again
this time





in dark blue

A. P. Stone

©2005

Pictured above the view from Pimms at Cap Juluca in AXA, go to www.capjuluca.com for more information. Beside, the artist's own work inspired by a visit with her wonderful and ever catty friend who currently resides in the beautiful and residual Anguilla.

Drink Me










Drink Me, a visual poetic piece created during the graduate course on Visual Poetics, taught by Nick Carbo at the University of Miami. The art piece focuses primarily on Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking- Glass, the classic tale of the accidental adventurist. Drink Me employs the tale's charactors and themes as vehicals in expressing other ideas of conservative social circumstance and the absurd insistance of racism in modern times. The artwork/ book was created using a basic book binding technique as the catch-all and also, by collaging found images and texts to tell the first surrealist installment of the poet's story. (Above, selected scenes from the book and below, excerpts from the text.)

“…and eternity, much shorter than realized,

can do the dishes in the morning,” she mused. ...

...They were infinite in their control,

virtue being rewarded with operas

and silly maps of accidental stars

from the comedy called Pamed by Mr. Edgar, the white rabbit....

....The hillside so verdant and fragrant,

she fell in love with, at least, the word ‘verdant’.

“What a curious place,” she mused....

a visual poetic piece by

A. P. Stone