Yesterday, at the behest of anselm23, I spent the day at the Rectory School in Pomfret CT doing my thing with the students.

The morning began with an assembly of 8th and 9th graders, where I:

— performed “Jabberwocky” for the first time in years

— scared the hell out of a room fulla semi-bored kids with “Punk” (“BOOM!”)

— embarrassed the hell out of a lovestruck couple in front of the student body (heh heh heh)

— answered a bunch of questions including “Do you like soccer?”

— and last but not least…demonstrated an impromptu head to head slam with Andrew (Mr. Watt), judged by audience applause. He won.

After that, it was on to combined classes of 7th, 8th and 9th grade students. I did more poems, put them through some analysis of them, talked about everything from punk (“do you like Rancid?”) to bipolar disorder to hip hop to the nature of cats.

Several of the classes had actually been assigned four of my poems on which to write brief papers. (Boy, that was interesting news…) The teacher had assigned four poems from “1 Spark:” “Cats,” Edward in the Office,” “Morning Departure,” and “Recovering a Dead Woman.”

If those of you who hear me regularly don’t recognize those titles…well, I NEVER read these poems out anymore. Having to reconnect with them on the spur of the moment was a trip. (I couldn’t even recall what “Morning Departure” was about until i opened the book and looked at it.)

I did those poems and answered questions. All in all…an excellent day.

A final cap on it…the teacher who assigned the poems showed me a couple of papers. One of them was really good. So I wrote the comments on it and signed them…I hope he is pleased.

Y’know, I could do a lot more of this.

Thanks, Andrew, for the opportunity.