Y is for Yawp

Throughout this challenge, I've been posting about my favorite things--things that are important to me, things that inspire me, things that make me smile. I'm excited to have reached the letter Y because the word I've chosen for today, yawp, holds a very special meaning.

A yawp is a raucous noise, a yell. Children are, of course, masters of the yawp. Like all kids, mine love to be loud and boisterous and often exercise this love from the moment they wake up until the moment they lay their heads down at night. Yawp can also be used in reference to clamoring and complaining, which I'm sure describes us all from time to time. I heard the word used in this sense more than once when I was growing up: "Dana, quit your yawping and clean up your room." (I never thought I'd one day be saying the same thing to my own kids!)

However, the yawp I want to write about today is a different kind of yawp--it's the barbaric yawp that American poet Walt Whitman described in his "Song of Myself":

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Who can forget that wonderful scene in Dead Poet's Society where English professor John Keating (played by Robin Williams) encourages his timid student (Todd Anderson, played by Ethan Hawke) to find his yawp--that indefinable something that lives inside each of us, waiting to be given its voice. In this clip, Todd hasn't been able to complete his assignment, which was to write a poem, and Mr. Keating uses Whitman's idea of the barbaric yawp to help Todd express himself through poetry in a way Todd had never thought possible:



I cry nearly every time I watch this scene. I used to teach college English, and I hope that I was able to inspire at least one student the way that Mr. Keating inspired Todd, showing him that not only does he have a barbaric yawp but he can express it--and needs to express it. We all do.

I, too, sound my barbaric yawp. This blog is my barbaric yawp, my conduit for expressing myself. It's where I give voice to that something deep inside me that aches to be heard. Every time I post, I sound my barbaric yawp across the blogosphere.

We all do.

And I think Mr. Keating--and Mr. Whitman--would be proud.



What's your barbaric yawp? What have you chosen to give voice to today?

K is for Kaffeeklatsch (and Kooser)

Once again, I couldn't choose just one "K" word, so I present you with two:

Kaffeeklatsch:

Photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com

I used to be a college English professor, and nearly every morning before classes started--and sometimes in the afternoons as well--a few of the other faculty members and I would grab our coffee and meet in the cafeteria or on benches outside the school and chat. These gatherings were often the highlight of my day--our own little Kaffeeklatsch! When I left teaching, one of the things I missed was this time I spent drinking coffee and talking with my coworkers, who had become good friends. 

Then a few years later, I became a stay-at-home mom. Mothering is often a lonely job. It's hard to get out, especially when the children are very small, and I found I missed my daily Kaffeeklatsch even more.

Before long, though, I realized something: the Internet had become my new Kaffeeklatsch!

Every day I sit with my coffee and log on to Twitter or read blogs and post in chat rooms and forums, and every day I talk online with like-minded people doing the same things. I've made so many friends on Twitter and here at my blog. (A big welcome to my new followers!) Some of these people have become close friends, ones I chat with nearly every day, and I sometimes imagine that we're sitting in our respective houses, sipping from our coffee cups and enjoying our own little Kaffeeklatsch. (And we don't even have to comb our hair first!)

Kooser:

Those of you who have visited my blog before probably know that I enjoy writing poetry. One of my biggest influences is Ted Kooser, who served as the United States Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. I admire him for being able to look at simple, everyday things--a tattoo, dishwater, applesauce--and see so much more. He writes mainly of the Midwest, where I was born, so perhaps that's part of the reason I can identify so well with his subjects and themes. His poetry, though, is universal, and it's the type of poetry I long to write: finding new, creative ways to look at the ordinary, to capture the heart of the simple things in life.

If you're interested in poetry, I recommend that you visit his site: www.tedkooser.net. He also writes a great weekly column, American Life in Poetry, which features contemporary American poems. You can find it at www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/


So tell me, have you enjoyed a Kaffeeklatsch lately or read any of Kooser's poems? Are there other poets you enjoy? I'm always looking for recommendations.

Decisions

I wrote today's 100 words about being a high school senior asked to decide on a college major. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Up until that point in my life, I had already changed my mind a million times: I'd wanted to be a singer, an archaeologist, an orthodontist (back in my braces days), a journalist... I had no idea what to tell the people who asked. I finally decided on broadcast journalism as my major but ended up switching to English by the end of my first semester. English stuck; I went on to graduate school for a master's, then taught college English and journalism classes for several years. I've never regretted the switch!

This morning's 100 words:

All the college applications had a place for us to select a major, and I remember how weird it seemed that I, a seventeen-year-old high school senior, was being asked to make what seemed to be such a life-altering decision--a huge, can't-go-back, set-in-stone decision--and I felt so ill-equipped to even know, to even pretend to have an inkling of an idea about what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. I was facing a test I hadn't studied for. I didn't know the answer.

My, how times change

Today's 100 words:

I'm only thirty-eight, but until I started graduate school in 1994, I did all my writing assignments on typewriters. Computer labs were available at my college, of course, but the professors didn't require that we use them, and since I had a typewriter in my dorm room, I typed. As a graduate student, however, I had my own office, which was furnished with a tiny, medieval-by-today's-standards computer, and I abandoned my typewriter. When I started my teaching career two years later, I discovered that the computer in my office was so high-tech that I hardly knew how to use it.

Frozen in time

Today's 100 words:

I taught many students during my years in Nebraska, and I realized today as I was thinking about that time that I hold those students in a state of suspended animation. I see them as they were then, as I knew them, and I can't imagine them as they must be now--for some, nearly fifteen years later--older and more mature and in the midst of their careers. I wonder if that's how they remember me--as I was and not as I might be. Maybe people from some parts of our lives will always be frozen in time.

Much more than tomato/tomahto

Today's 100 words:

I used to live in Western Nebraska, where I taught English and journalism at a college on the plains, an area so different from where I grew up. I remember talking about a forest one day in my composition class, and when I said the word "woods," I was met with blank faces. My students weren't familiar with the term, one that was such a part of my own life growing up in tree-filled Upper Michigan. Even after I defined the word, I'm not certain they truly understood, showing that our comprehension does depend somewhat on where we're from.