Woke to news of war, like everyone else. Then to teach second grade class. The children were very focused, kept in line by disciplinarian substitute teacher. I got some great "Argument of His Book" poems out of a few of them. Thus ends the week of seeing if Kenneth Koch's poetic pedagogy really works. I'm happy to say it does, and requires no special talent aside from reasonable expectations about what children of certain age can do. I highly recommend the experience.

. . . Then I had them write a short essay on Ron Silliman's The Alphabet in relation to his theory of the New Sentence and the development of American poetry since 1945, Grenier's rejection of "speech," and the 2nd generation New York School poets. I'm happy to say they did quite well with this assignment. Unlike certain college students and famous poets I know, these 8 year-olds are fully literate and well versed in Wittgenstein and Derrida.