Here's one last thought. Just because a poem is funny doesn't mean it's not serious. Sometimes the best art is funny and serious at the same time. This is one of my favorite thoughts, but for me it's a conversational black-hole. If I don't stop now it's just a hop-skip-and-a-jump before I'm pummeling you with Aristotle's Poetics, Horace's Art of Poetry, Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and Nietzsche's Thus Spoke. Even now I find it hard to stop myself, because it's that important that....STOP!
Jennifer: To divert your attention, why don't you tell us about the books you've published?
Brod: I have five books of my own poetry for adults, two for young adults, and ten for children. The adult books include Steel Cables: The Poetry of Permanent Love; A Bullfrog at Cafe' DuMonde; Alaska: Twenty Poems and a Journal; Throw Me Somethin' Mistuh: The Mardi Gras Book; and Rainbows, Head Lice, and Pea-Green Tile. (Editor's note: Brod's other books can be found on the previous pages and are linked for purchase with more information.)
Jennifer: What age range of students do you typically target?
Brod: I have books for all ages, but I think my favorite is 3rd grade. They're old enough to think, but young enough to still have fun. Then again, there's nothing quite like breaking through with an audience of middle schoolers. But preschool and kindergarten! Is there anything in the world more exciting than the high-energy response of an entire room full of just-emerging human beings? Yet there's also nothing quite so gratifying as engaging powerfully with the minds of young men and women in high school and college. Hmmm... I guess I'd have to admit that I find it impossible to stick to a typical audience.
Jennifer: Tell us all about your latest project.
Brod: I've been writing poems for
teachers to use in their classrooms, a
body of content literature that teaches
the curricula, kindergarten through 8th
grade in science, social studies, math,
language arts, and character development.
I've been working on this
for upwards of twenty
years. In the beginning,
I didn't talk about it very
much because it seemed
a little too grandiose. I
didn't want people to
dismiss me as a quixotic
dreamer. But working in
isolation was hard. For
me, writing poems is like
hugging someone I love, and I needed readers to start hugging back. That's when I put together The Muse Project, a group of classroom teachers (just over 3,000 from all over the U.S.) to whom I send advance copies of my work in progress. Muse-teachers use the poems in class, give copies to their students, and send feedback, which gives me the inspiration I need to keep writing.
The teachers have been no less than spectac-ular. The science material now consists of some 250 texts, about 95% complete. The social studies, some 75 texts, about 35% complete. Over the years, I've gotten better at doing it, I'm in good health, and I have every expectation to see it finished, or at least finished enough to inspire others to pick up the gauntlet. There's a world of very talented writers out there, and it would take only a few of them to put us over the top. Imagine what schools might be like in just ten years. "IT'S ALIVE!"
Jennifer: Why did you start focusing on content area poetry and performance?
Brod: It has always been my conviction that poetry is an oral-performance art, so I've been focused on performance from the very beginning. Along the way, I wrote a few poems that included content, one of them a poem called The Food Cheer. Teachers started telling me how they used it to teach carnivores-herbivores-omnivores and how none of their students ever got it wrong on the standardized tests they had to take. Never. Not even in the so-called low-performing schools. This is when it occurred to me that classroom teachers need more of this kind of material, lots more. Especially now.
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