long overdue post

Yes, it has been a while! This blog is still connected to life and work at The Gunnery, primarily, although there is a hardcopy literary publication (which is also on the school's website) that collects the majority of the creative and expository writing -- and also some artwork -- that is produced by students in grades 9-12 at our little (just under 300 students) school. Thank you for checking out this space, and we will do our best to post writing and news a bit more often.

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During poetry month, April 2017, we had a very successful reading in school meeting, involving nineteen students:
Sam Johnson
Lexi Nanavaty
Clara Einhorn
Sabryna Coppola
Bella Byrne
Tony Haoran Zhang
Rain Ji
Joey Lin
Tynka Patkova
Noemi Neubauerova
Mark Jinuk Choi
Casilda Alomia
Cedric Andree
Ana Gabarro
Caye Roca de Togores
Clare Costello
Dana Ross
Huy Pham
Thanks to all!

congratulations to the maxi-readers

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who participated in the April 16th maxi-reading!

We heard several outstanding student writers read from their work, including original poems, translations, excerpts from stories, and favorite writing by other authors.

Chloe Coppola
Sabryna Coppola
Lucas Gosman
Philippa Solf
Jingqiong Miranda Yang
Jinuk Mark Choi
Reilly Haskins
Dana Ross
Ataman Uğur
Jeremiah Yoon
Skylar Cluett

The accompanying slideshow included images of fantastic paintings and photos by Emily Williams, Skylar Cluett, Kat Carey, Miranda Yang, and Reilly Haskins.

Congratulations to the poets

Thanks for maxi-reading, poetry in school meeting, on Thursday, April 23rd:

Arkady Ayvazyan
Alyssa Cooke
Aidan Bond
Chloe Coppola
Ataman Uğur
Dana Ross
Laura van Tartwijk
Ele Schickler
Ivy Le
Casey Siemon
Tessa Mackey

 And we had a terrific turn-out for the recitation that same evening: forty-three recitations were heard, and ultimately the judges (thanks, Kevin, Amy, Bart, and Ed!) decided to especially recognize these students:

Best overall: Laura van Tartwijk
first senior: Regan Butler
first junior: Alyssa Cooke
first sophomore: Dana Ross
first freshman: Mark Choi

Congratulations!

Thanks also to Miranda Yang, Miranda Levin, and Ashley Judson for their photographs, shown at the poetry reading (photo above by Ashley Judson).

Four poems by Ned O'Hanlan

Scuttle

I met the devil outside of Barstow –

he was howling at the moon.

I stopped the car and hit the horn, 

thought I’d give the old man a ride.

Well he hopped right in and with a sly toothy grin

Asked me if I wanted a drink.

He said son I know a place, it’s just up the road, and they tend to all appetites.

But I said no, I had places to go –

still I’d take him as far as he’d like. 

It wasn’t but a mile when he told me to stop,

saying something about a change of plans.

He shook my hand and said thanks for the lift – but I had something to say.

Sir, we both know nothing in this life is free –

every favor has a price,

and I believe you’re indebted to me.

I would have sold my soul for a tank of gas, 

but I suppose that I’ve got you beat.

All the devil did was rear his head and laugh

saying this road is long –

and you’ll be back. 

If were being honest

I can paint you a picture of the canals that run through the city of Amsterdam – 

where the moonlight glimmers like a crown atop darkened water. 

I can tell you all about the blends of highland whiskey,

how you’ve never tried wine until you’ve been to Tuscany. 

There is no love as there is in Paris, 

And no greener hills as there are in Ireland. 

The theater in England stands alone. 

Salzburg is awfully beautiful in the winter. 

But I could never take you there,

Or rather, 

would never take you there. 

Asylum

I followed you to hell

And when I turned wrong –

You were gone. 

So I wandered in the dark

And studied the silhouettes.

Trying to piece it all together,

and understand what it meant.  

Airport Bar

From port to port –

To you I left behind,

To you I know not

and to you I return –

you are on my mind. 

And my mind wanders,

to a spec far below.

What am I then?

If not a bird headed south,

a blinking light in the night sky,

or simply a departing thought.

A weary traveler –

creating a nest in any branch 

that can bear the weight.

Only to depart once more 

and leave another piece behind

forever. 

The Average Practice, by Tessa Mackey and Hildy Maxwell

“Up over-heads, out and in”
Two at a time, the rowers slide into their seat, most of the time in the least graceful way possible. Oars are extended strategically, so as not to upset the fragile set. Once past the dock, the boat flows smoothly across the water. The start of the release begins. The world disappears. The excruciating wait for this moment is over.

“Arms Only!”
Trying to keep the rest of their bodies perfectly still, the rowers start to power the boat with their long, strong arms alone. This is secretly a vile ab work out as well. The pain is welcomed by these athletes though, as they know that pain is what leads to being one second faster, the one second that will win the race. As the pick drill continues, the speed of the boat gradually increases. Finally all four are rowing together at full slide. Now the fun begins.

“Build for a ten!”
The first time all day full power is allowed to be used. The oars bend from excitement. The outcome of this is either pure bliss or a disaster. If it is good, the mood for practice is already great. On the other hand, if it is awful, all five people in the boat have to put everything into ensuring every stroke taken that practice is better.

“Ok everyone this is the plan for today…”
That is all the rowers usually remember from the coaches talking, because it is the coxswain's job to remind them of it as they are rowing. All they know is that the bulk of practice is about to begin. Most are mentally preparing themselves to go through hell during these pieces. Before they start, butterflies begin to accumulate, both from the nerves that come with rowing and the anxiety to begin.

“Half way!”
At this point most sane people would wonder why in the world they are doing this to themselves. Rowers are not sane people though. They thrive in adversity and have the willpower to push themselves past their limits. They are tired and are not quite sure how they are going to get through the second half of practice. As a rower looks around, she realizes all of her teammates are going through the same thing. All of them feel the same crying out from their muscles, but they must finish the workout for every other person there. They draw the strength they need to finish from each other.

“Last Minute!!!”
Instinct has taken over as your body begins to break. Your heart is pounding, almost numb from continuous strain. This minute, a tiny fraction of time, seems to last years….interminable, unbearable, yet vital to your success. Finally, as the coxswain calls last 10, you feel the release of pressure as all you have put into the season is exposed, feeling nothing but the sheer spatial awareness of your body. Nothing else in the world matters, only that minute, the final minute. The water. Your oar. All become one in the last minute.

“Way Enough”
The hardest part is over. All that is left is a light paddle back to the welcoming boathouse. Often times there is an unsaid competition between boats on the way back. No one wants to have to wait behind the other boats for dock space. Once back, the boats and oars are placed in their own places, their resting place until the next day.

 “One Two Three…Gunn!”
The team cheer officially ends practice. The rowers leave the boathouse sweaty, exhausted, sore, and hungry. As they walk away though, there is a feeling of being cleansed. They must still face the problems of their everyday life, but they are now refocused and ready to face anything.

Ms. Huck Finn. Story by Miranda Levin

Travelling down the dark roads at night always got Huck thinking about his life. Yes, Huck was rather young, but thinking about all the choices that had been made calmed him. While thinking about his life, Huck began to consider when his hunger for adventure had all started.

Since birth, Huck had been thrown into pretty dresses and forced to play with dolls. Sitting still in Sunday school was never Huck’s thing. Manners, curtsies, all of these typically girly things never worked well with Huck. She always wanted to play outside, the pretty dresses now covered in dirt, dolls kidnapped by pirates. Huck’s parents did not take it very well. This tomboy behavior forced Huck’s parents to accept that their daughter was not going to be their typical child. Hayley soon turned into Huckleberry, then shortened to Huck. The family moved away, hoping to not be recognized, a little ashamed that their daughter, who should be girly, was more of a tomboy. Huck preferred playing baseball to dress-up. However, Huck’s parents continuously tried to suppress her tomboy habits.

After running away from home, Huck became who he really wanted to be. He always wore baggy, boyish clothing, cut his hair short, and his hands grew calloused and dirty from living in the woods so often. Although the living conditions were not ideal for a young child, Huck felt that he could really be who he wanted to be here, in the middle of the woods. He was free from judgment, and no longer Hayley. Hayley would be stuck in silly outfits and going to Sunday school, spending those warm summer afternoons inside because going outside to play was not “ladylike.” Now, Huck was free to run around and play until the sun had set. Huck soon realized that it does not matter the way you are born but what you do with the character inside.

It felt so strange to be back in a dress. Jim had tightly fit the dress around Huck’s lanky body, and Huck winced as she remembered the restraint of dresses, missing the freedom of pants. As Huck walked into the old woman’s house, she repeated her backstory over and over. “My name is Sarah Williams. My name is Sarah Williams,” Huck told herself under her breath. As she walked into the house, the old woman started asking questions.

“Where ‘bouts do you live? In this neighborhood?” she asked as Huck sat down.

“No’m. In Hookersville, seven mile below. I’ve walked all the way and I’m all tired out.” Huck realized that over the time spent pretending to be a boy, she had developed an accent that did not sound very girly. Huck cleared her throat and crossed her ankles, attempting to sit up straight. The old woman attempted to have Huck take off her bonnet, but with Huck’s hair having been chopped to a boy-short length, she kept it on.

The old woman continued to go on about Tom Sawyer, Huck herself, and the six thousand dollars, except the old woman said it was ten thousand. Eventually, the topic of Huck’s “murder” came up, and the old lady asked curiously, “Who done it? We’ve heard considerable about these goings on, down in Hookersville, but we don’t know who ‘twas that killed Huck Finn.”

It was weird for Huck, hearing others talk about her as if she were dead. “Well, I reckon there’s a right smart chance of people here that’d like to know who killed him,” Huck said, lowering her voice to a dramatic whisper, “Some thinks old Finn done it himself.”

“No—is that so?” the old woman asked, clearly taken aback.

Huck didn’t know what to do. She just wanted to go back home, all of a sudden a strange urge overcoming her to make her want to storm out the door. She hated pretending to not be herself, but she was already doing that. She had been pretending to not be herself by being who she actually wanted to be and not the person she intended to be. She was interrupted in her thoughts by the old woman asking, “Come, now—what’s your real name?”

“Wh-what, mum?” Huck’s voice trembled.

“What’s your real name? Is it Bill, or Tom, or Bob?—or what is it?”

She had figured Huck out. She had figured out that Huck was really a boy, or really a girl who had been pretending to be a boy for so long so that she practically was a boy. Attempting to cover it up, Huck stammered, “Please to don’t poke fun at a poor girl like me, mum. If I’m in the way, here, I’ll—”

But she was cut off, “No, you won’t. Set down and stay where you are. I ain’t going to hurt you, and I ain’t going to tell on you, nuther. You just tell me your secret, and trust me. I’ll keep it; and what’s more, I’ll help you.”

Huck breathed deep. She was safe here, about to spill everything to this stranger, but the woman continued talking:

“You see, you’re a runaway ‘prentice—that’s all.”

What? Huck’s mind stopped and words ceased to make sense. This was one of the most absolutely confusing things she had ever come across. Huck didn’t know what to do. For once in her life she felt sensitive, almost in tears, because at that moment she realized that no one would ever be able to know the truth. This was the life she had chosen, and now that her decision had been made, she needed to stick with it. A runaway child is one thing, that happens rather often down South here. Meanwhile, a runaway child who wants to be a boy but is actually a girl is completely unheard of. Huck felt as if a big, black wave of truth was crashing down on her, leaving her forever drowning in her own pool of lies, the very same pool she had started to fill on her own in order to attain her happiness.

'E adesso sul finire del round' by Mario Luzi trans. Nicholas Benson

And now at the end of the round,

he leans on the ropes,

he goes down hard,

he, the giant, first 

artfully,

precisely assailed on each flank,

his face mashed, pummeled in all his flesh:

and now here it is, leaping to action,

shuddering from its own 

sudden transformation,

the arena resounds: fixes

a single, terrible 

pupil upon him, holds him there,

the evil eye, 

to the matt,

down for the count,

without mercy counted down.

                                             And the other,

still caged, guard position relaxed,

yet chained in the mail

of battle, curtailed — while the forcefield 

of undiminished energy vibrates

all around him — and there

left alone

suspended over the black abyss,

on the verge of plunging 

into the dark trench

of sweat and spit, into the churning fire

of violence unexpressed...

he’s done. Each of them are.

Born of struggle,

struck down at its end: cruelly, at once. 

(from “Per il battesimo dei nostri frammenti” (1978-1984), in Tutte le poesie, Milano: Garzanti, 1988. pp. 516-517)

from David Shulman's Spring, Heat, Rains

I dream, oddly, of the Greek poem inscribed on the wall of the burial cave at Beit Guvrin, south of Jerusalem:

Nothing else remains that I can do for you,
or that will pleasure you.
I am sleeping with someone else, but it is you
I love, dearest to me of all.
In the name of Aphrodite, I am happy about one thing,
that your cloak has been left to me as a pledge.
But I flee, I permit you
expanses of freedom.
Do anything you desire, do not strike the wall,
it only makes noise.
We will motion to each other, this will be
the sign between us.

A woman, apparently, speaks to her dead lover. I carry this poem with me in my wallet. Often, when I read it out loud, people refuse to believe it was written two thousand years ago. Amiel sent me the original last year; the translation is faithful, even the 'expanses of freedom.'

David Shulman, Spring, Heat, Rains. A South Indian Diary (The U of Chicago P, 2009), p. 7.

Tradurre poesia è un umile servizio, da fare in punta di piedi, sapendo bene che ogni traduzione invecchia, mostra dopo alcuni anni le rughe del tempo, mentre il testo originale rimane là, nella sua intatta bellezza.

-Antonia Arslan, "Il bisogno di tradurre poesia," tradurre. pratiche teorie strumenti. numero 7 (autunno 2014). 

FM5

Check out new work by Mebane Robertson, poems by Luca Visentini translated from the Italian by Natasha Senjanović, a conversation with artist Jason Wallengren, Anna Maria Cossiga's latest Letter from Rome, and bracing new work by Robert Margolis, all on the new frankmatter, here.

Poems by Virginia Dodenhoff

Someone told me once that the reason we live on this earth is to find happiness, bliss, nirvana.

People say that happiness does not exist.

But my friend said he found it the other day when he looked into the eyes of the girl he loved.

Some kid was laughing.

Is that not happiness?

Happiness is freedom.

It’s letting go.

This world is hard.

We do what we don’t want to do. 

That’s how the world works.

Unfortunately.

Life isn’t easy.

Life isn’t fair.

Those who work their asses off win.

They get what they want.

People who give in will lose. 

They will lose all that they have.

“What is happiness?”

That’s what they’ll ask.

“I don’t this there is such thing as ‘happiness.’”

But that’s because they’re lazy.

I’ve heard it said that if you just say “yes,” you can figure it out later.

People constantly do things they don’t want to do.

But,

Will that lead to happiness, bliss, nirvana?

Carrying things

Sure, I carry things.

I always have a Bible, a pen, a journal.

Maybe some chapstick

Some mints.

My phone, my sunglasses, my hopes.

A book my friend suggested to me.

My past.

My future.

I also tend to carry a water bottle and my keys.

I like having those things that make your chopsticks work without trying.

Regret, guilt, temptation.

Every now and then I’ll bring my laptop with me.

How you call me “fat” almost everyday.

I also like to bring some mascara.

The Hobbit, because I started it last March and I still have yet to finish it.

Scars.

Hatred.

I carry my wallet,

It’s filled with money, coins, a smoothie punch card I use at the gym when I get protein shakes.

Calluses.

Blisters.

My Prayer box.

Another pen.

A pencil.

An iPod.

Headphones.

Fear.

Stress.

Deodorant.

The schedule for the Saints’ season. (We aren’t making it to the super bowl this year.)

Oh, how could I forget?

I always carry a smile. 

Yes,

A smile.

It covers all those things I carry.

Thhooorreeaaauuuu! Thoreau's Last Walk, by Aidan Bond

Thoreau, a man of solitude, is not one who can easily translate from isolation into an environment filled with sociable, conversation-seeking teenagers. Although his first case of contact was perceived as friendly, slowly but surely, things took a turn for the worse. Philosophical conversations were great, temporarily that is, until the best questions ran out. When conversations became too complex, students slowly became distracted. They lost pace, falling behind as well as running ahead, leaving few for Thoreau to lecture on transcendentalism. Listening to Bobby Shmurda proved to be a much more popular pastime, as a result of the poor attempts to ban any and all technology from the hike. In teenager terms, anything that violates the rules is instantaneously cool, whereas a historical figure, in many ways, is seen as lame.

At any rate, as a result of various distractions in play, Thoreau’s group thinned down. It became a more defined and relentless group of followers. They were not simply interested in his ideology, but the sheer reality of Thoreau’s existence is what excited these super fans. In attempting to evade this painful experience, Thoreau came into contact with others from outside his miniature mob. He only managed to express a few words at a time, that is, before he would be cut off by overwhelming laughter, despite the lack of a genuinely comical statement. All of this resulted in an obvious realization: Thoreau needed to escape, and he was going to have to do it quickly. At certain moments along his path there were check-ins, at which large crowds amassed. At the largest gathering he pretended there was too much noise for him to hear, and he unheedingly walked ahead of his companions. He quickly slipped through the crowd, all the way to the front, and hurried along the trail until he was safely out of sight. Only a few minutes passed until his anxious friends caught up to him, out of breath, concerned over his disappearance. This surprise escalated the situation greatly, and so Thoreau stayed almost silent, giving short, relatively painless answers, until he arrived at another opportunity. An agitated swarm of wasps were swirling in the middle of his path. There were hundreds flying about, and many more crawling all over and around their disturbed hive. Thoreau, without hesitation, leaped straight through this extremely dangerous path, kicking dirt at the hive, and screaming like a lunatic in the hopes of further discouraging any attempt to follow him. Surely it would take a complete idiot to take such a risk, seeing as there was an alternative route, shortened in length, created specifically to avoid the wasps.

Despite the odds, as he was inspecting himself for stings, he was interrupted by a high-pitched scream, “Thhooorrreeaaauuuu!” followed by an abundance of heavy, fasted paced footsteps. His closest friends had risked the chance of injury for yet another opportunity to drive Thoreau further into desperation. And so the remainder of his arduous journey was filled with stories of bravery and valor. Or as he saw it, stories of the idiots who ran through a swarm of wasps, in order to follow someone who wanted to be alone.

Eventually he surrendered to his fate. He had decided to be happy, at least, for those he spared from suffering the same fate, had he not been there. Those who will never know of, let alone appreciate the great deed he carried out that day. At the end of the day, however, he would’ve much preferred avoiding this experience altogether, and being Thoreau, it’s not something he’s likely to risk experiencing twice. He most likely will never take a walk through the woods again.