Pure Manaʻo

I was asked to talk on the last day of an Ed.D program cohort II at UH Mānoa. I graduated with cohort I so sometimes they invite a few of us back to talk about something. They wanted to know what we did after we graduated, how we changed jobs and what advice we had. I am always the one that doesn't really answer the question, but they ask anyway, so I wrote this poem. I think in poetry form and Linda Tuhiwai Smith did a keynote by reciting a poem using the Green Eggs and Ham structure so if she can do it, then that gives me permission. Here is what I'm sharing today: What an Ed.D can and cannot do for you One View, One Story I still come from the mud flats of Kaunakakai the Kūkalahale rains of Mānoa. The ashes and bones of my kūpuna still travel the watery Lahaina Roads in the middle of the ʻAuʻau Channel. My Ed.D does not erase that. I still come from colonization and isolation, desks lined up in rigid rows, concrete and tile separating m...

Source:   Lehman, D. (2014, July 18). Sing to me o muse (but keep it brief). The New York Times . Retrieved from http://goo.gl/HsCl5e What is Sacred: This article/essay by David Lehman is about the changing face of poetry. We no longer buy poetry books. Poetry readings have turned into spoken word contests. The poetry I read online is more likely to be on a tweet or on Instagram. So Lehman's point is that poetry in our society is found in different places. The idea of reading a poem in the traditional sense is as obsolete as a journalist writing on a typewriter. The article even hints at the demise of the humanities, liberal education and canonical literature, all results of the death of poetry. But is poetry dead or are the places where poetry live just different? So what is sacred? Have the conservators of culture embraced the acceleration of change that may endanger the study of the literary humanities as if — like the clock face, cursive script and the ...

I came across this poem, "Eating the Bones" by Ellen Bass while I was actually looking for something else, but it just struck me that she is writing about us. Maybe it is a fish and not a piece of beef, but this is my family. Podcast episode 1.02 Eating the Bones The women in my family strip the succulent flesh from broiled chicken, scrape the drumstick clean; bite off the cartilage chew the gristle, crush the porous swellings at the ends of each slender baton. With strong molars they split the tibia, sucking out the dense marrow. They use up love, they swallow every dark grain, so at the end there’s nothing left, a scant pile of splinters on the empty white plate. From  The Human Line  by Ellen Bass. Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Bass Similar to the poem "Sonrisas" by Pat Mora - how do I show this world, how do I show the people through this type of close study of a simple act like eating? I also look to Juliet Kono's "Pearls" in Hilo...

My grandmother was a woman of deep emotions but little words. Perhaps it was the broken English way she spoke, or the many hours alone in the back room with her foot-pedal Singer sewing machine, the dust threads flying into the stifling Lahaina heat like a gossamer shroud. But always, when she spoke, it was about the value of use, the shame of frivolity the decadence of   wastefulness. Study hard, wear clean panties, no waste water, paper, fabric, food, money. . . no make shame, no shame the family, no shame yourself, be a good girl, be smart,             no be like the neighbor girl, clean your ching ching good, clean your feet before you come in the house and marry Japanese. - Cathy Kanoelani Ikeda 4/5/12

A student asked me where the stories come from to fill up my blank sheets of paper on the Elmo as they furiously try and make their 5-minute daily writing word count. I write, you write. Five minutes of furious drafting times three classes a day. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I’ve put in my 10,000 hours of writing on blank sheets of paper. Making something out of nothing. But really, it’s because I’ve always had big ears. The kind that stick out when I try to make my hair lie flat against my face, the kind that pop out from under the edge of the hat. Big ears to sit silent under the breakfast table until everyone forgets I’m there and then the stories come they always come if I wait long enough and stick my big ears up into the sky like an antenna they always come.

Take my right slipper when you break yours Take my jacket button to hold up your pants.. Take my prayers floating skyward, let them whisper you to sleep. Take my eyes to help you search for what eludes you. Take my book when words betray you, Take my hands to tether you. Take my intestines to center yourself and at the end of the days when I have nothing left to take but my left earring, take this poem and know love.

Words trickle lazy Honey droppings of verbs fall Effortless as mud   -- Cathy Kanoelani Ikeda 4/2/12

Arrivals and departures the same black screens cities scrolling by in steady waves Houston, San Francisco Johannesburg, Atlanta San Juan, Honolulu. . . Which leg am I on? How many tickets are stapled together? Which airport am I at? I check in on my Foursquare The local time is 6:26 am, this morning I’m in Newark leg three of four Each airport looks like another Starbucks, Hudson News, Best Buy, Wolfgang Puck’s I file through TSA laptop in a bin shoes on the belt jacket stuffed in my bag passport out - but I’m always in the slowest line behind babies and foreigners hiding six-packs of water in their carry on bags the story of my life, learning patience from the airport queue some things cannot be controlled arrivals and departures wanderlust solitary journeys anonymity of the gate aisle seats near the bathroom a preference for silent seat mates and redeye flights my life made up of arrivals and departures the safety of being strapped in a seat stuck in a metal bird with no...

April is Poetry Month, but as a language arts teacher, I know that amongst language arts teachers, there's a dirty little secret, especially in the secondary... we tend to relegate the poetry unit to the end hoping that we've run out of time. Have I exposed a nerve? Am I talking about you? Am I bringing up your own schooling demons? Have you analyzed poetry to death only to be told that you're way off base? Are we guilty of doing the same in our own classes? Have we just totally killed poetry for the next generation? April is the month to go back to your childhood and remember what you liked so much about poetry. No one reads a poem like "There Was an Old Man of West Dumpet" to a child then has that child analyze the motive of the old man. Poetry is to immerse yourself in sound and emotion and imagery and taste the words as they're going in your brain and coming out of your mouth. There was an old man of West Dumpet, Who possessed a large nose like ...