Celebrating That Which Has Lost Its Meaning (or Why I Like Phil Kaye's Poems)

 

Watch the video first.

 I first discovered Phil Kaye when I saw a video of him performing “An Origin Story” with Sarah Kay (no relation) back in 2012. I immediately started bingeing other videos he produced, my favorite being “Repetition”—simple enough for junior high geeks to understand, deep enough for them to ponder and connect with. Every so often, I recycle it as a scribble prompt. Earlier this week, I used it again for my Comp II class at BU. For those of you who don’t know, students are allowed to write anything they want after the prompt is shared. This time, every single student who shared his or her writing discussed the ideas of the poem (and none of them are English majors!) and how they interpreted the poetic device of repetition and the word choice. It was a beautiful moment. Here are my thoughts from those few minutes of writing, only edited for punctuation and spelling. The rest still hovers in a first-draft state. Keep in mind I wrote this before the students shared their writing and their thoughts:

 Using Phil Kaye’s “Repetition” was definitely the right choice. It created, as far as I can observe, a pensive mood in the classroom. Maybe it struck a chord or two today.

 I think that it’s poignant that the overuse of an action or a word or phrase can take away its importance or significance if you let it. However, human beings tend to take for granted the small, repeated instances of our lives. And that’s one of the reasons my poetic heroes include Phil Kaye, Sarah Kay, Ted Kooser (recently read in more depth), and Billy Collins. Each one of them takes something mundane—a setting or a situation--and makes the moment extraordinary, something worth celebrating.

 Each time I read one of their poems, my mind recalls when I taught Ben Mikaelsen’s Touching Spirit Bear to seventh graders. The hardest concept to help my students connect with was Garvey’s advice about the hot dog. (If you haven’t read it, take an hour to devour it. Reading it aloud with a reluctant teenage boy is even better.) In short, life is not a meal, its only purpose to refuel your body. It is something to relish (pun intended), something to celebrate, to enjoy, savor, and appreciate. Most importantly, it is something to share. (Draw your own connections here.)

I suppose that’s another reason why I write—to share the celebrations and the setbacks of life—the small repeated moments that most might overlook. I love to others (and myself) find meaning in the mundane.

Maybe I can turn this into a 2021 resolution of sorts.