Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Glynn Young

Poetry at Work, Chapter 2: The Poetry of the Interview

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Poetry at Work Poetry of the Interview

It was the strangest interview I’ve ever participated in – on either side of the table.

A friend had talked me, or conned me, into interviewing for a job with St. Louis Public Schools – the director of communications. 

The school district was in chaos – an outside management firm had been brought in to run the district, schools were being consolidated and closed, services were being outsourced, central office layoffs had emptied more than half of the headquarters building, and protests by parents, students, employees, former employees, teachers and the teachers’ union were daily. School board factions were fighting each other through the news media. The news media was already showing up early each morning at the district’s administration building – knowing there would always be a new crisis to report.

And I wanted to insert myself into that?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

What Was Jason’s Motivation?

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Jason in A Light Shining

What Was Jason’s Motivation?

“I don’t think Jason was setting up a stable of thieves and prostitutes,” Michael said slowly. “I think he reached out to these kids, odd as that sounds. They all needed protection of some kind.” He paused. “And something I found out today, strictly by accident. Jason has the makings of a first-class artist. When I came home at lunch, Sarah was painting, and Jason was sitting there, drawing a picture of her working. And it was incredibly good.”

“These children are full of surprises,” Father John said, “and not just bad ones.”

Photograph by Warren Wong via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poetry at Work, Chapter 1: How to Recognize a Poet

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Poetry at Work

If there is such a thing as a poetic movie, the 2016 film Paterson is perhaps the archetype. The actor Adam Driver plays a bus driver named Paterson, who listens to the conversations of his passengers, colleagues, and friends, and to his own interior conversations, and writes poetry. He works in Paterson, New Jersey, and the man Paterson and the town Paterson eventually come to be seen as of the same essence. Person becomes place becomes person. Poetry constitutes a sizeable portion of the dialogue.

Not coincidentally, Paterson also happens to be the hometown of the modernist poet William Carlos Williams, who practiced medicine there. Over a period of decades, he wrote a five-book collection entitled – what else? – Paterson (among a lot of other works). Williams was a physician, and he was a poet. Like the bus driver in the movie, Williams recognized and recorded the poetry of his daily work.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.

Michael’s First Glimpse of Sarah

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She was sitting two rows down the amphitheater-like lecture hall and four seats to his right. Soft brown hair with blond highlights, tied in a ponytail. A white starched blouse like a man’s dress shirt. Jeans. Slender almost to the point of thinness. High cheekbones. Light makeup.

She’s beautiful, he thought. Who is she? She must be new; I’ve never seen her before.

His heart pounded. He felt his ears become hot. He looked at the syllabus in front of him but couldn’t see anything. He looked up again. She was still there. This wasn’t his imagination.

Photo by Riccardo Vicidomini via Unsplash. Used with permission. 

At the British Museum

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At the British Museum

An older American couple stood in line ahead of them. “You have a beautiful child,” the lady said, turning toward them.”

Sarah smiled. “Thank you. Right now, I’m thankful he’s chosen to cooperate and just stare at all the pictures.”

The lady smiled and then looked at Michael. “I suppose people have told you how much you look like King Michael.”

Michael laughed. “I think I’ve heard that a few times.”

Photograph by Grant Ritchie via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poetry at Work Series at Literary Life

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When it came, it came as a BFO – a blinding flash of the obvious.

I was working in communications for a Fortune 500 company. A large portion of the day-to-day work was meetings. We had a team-based culture, and to our work, our teams had to meet. 

The teams, and the meetings, proliferated. We had departmental meetings. We had cross-functional meetings. We had committee and subcommittee meetings. We had telephone meetings, video meetings, and online chat session meetings. We had one-on-one meetings. We had staff meetings. We had briefing sessions, strategy discussions, and crisis planning meetings. We often had meetings to plan meeting agendas.

I often wondered if the curse placed upon Adam and his work for eating of the Tree of Knowledge possibly included meetings.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Literary Life.