I often think about that Leonard Cohen lyric, “I ache in the places where I used to play”. I’m looking for a poetry TED talk or perhaps a doc like Poetry In Motion or who knows, something to penetrate the kind of thinking that sees value in poetic writing, poetic cadence, poetic thinking. One of the students asked me “are you gonna show us any tricks?” He means his writing doesn’t flow and maybe I have tricks up my sleeve to magically make him better. I can’t teach anybody anything, I explain, except show what I know, see if they find it useful. The truth is you teach yourself. I think I’m making him worry but he’ll see over these next weeks and I do have games, exercises, experiential situations but I don’t want to talk as though that is worth more than him frequently writing his own ideas and leading himself to some unchartered place where the good writers hang.