NCTE Verse - A. Van Jordan

Poetry highlights in honor of National Poetry Month!

Poet of the Day: A. Van Jordan

A. Van Jordan is the author of four books of poetry. A graduate of Wittenberg and Howard Universities, he holds two MFAs: one for screenwriting (Vermont College of Fine Arts) and the other for poetry from the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers, where he was also in residence as a Beebe Fellow and later served on the faculty. He is now a professor at the University of Michigan.

This poet belongs in our classrooms because . . .

A. Van Jordan’s collection M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005) is definitely one that belongs in our classrooms. It reveals the story of MacNolia Cox, who in 1936 became the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Bee Competition. Wielding and inventing different poetic forms, including a ghazal, the text of an imagined interview, and interwoven narrative voices, Jordan uses a reverse chronology to illuminate MacNolia’s experience. The sequence begins as MacNolia Cox Montiere is dying of cancer at age 53, and winds backward through her work as a domestic servant, her marriage, and her days as a state-champion speller. At the national competition in DC she is not allowed to stay in the hotel with the other competitors, nor is she allowed to enter through the front door.

MacNolia was the first person of color to reach the final round, and she was defeated by a word that was given to only her, one that was not on the official list: Nemesis (as a proper noun). In "Practice" Jordan imagines MacNolia’s preparation for a Bee, practicing words with her mother. The poem captures her concentration. Students will recognize the colliding worlds as MacNolia is becoming empowered and her extraordinary competence as a speller is beginning to distinguish her, making her strange even to her mother. "I realize nothing I spell sounds true./ Every round will be like the first time./ The light has run from her eyes./ She’s quiet again./ Next word , I say."

Jordan discovered MacNolia’s story in their shared hometown of Akron, Ohio, and he researched the remaining documentation of her life and interviewed people who had known her. The collection is a celebration of MacNolia’s life even as it mourns what she lost in feeling the white world conspire against her.

A Poem by A. Van Jordan

An Excerpt from "From"

from (→) prep . 1. Starting at (a particular place or time): As in, John was from Chicago, but he played guitar straight from the Delta; he wore a blue suit from Robert Hall's; his hair smelled like coconut; his breath, like mint and bourbon; his hands felt like they were from slave times when he touched me—hungry, stealthy, trembling. 2. Out of: He pulled a knot of bills from his pocket, paid the man and we went upstairs.

Read more at poets.org .

Bibliography:

The Cineaste: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013)

Quantum Lyrics (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007)

M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005)

Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001)

Teaching Connections

When teaching Shakespearean plays, I often use the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) to help students better understand the slipperiness of meaning and the construction and uses of words over time and in different contexts (just as I can never hear nemesis in the same way after MacNolia— Jordan’s poem collection about MacNolia Cox, the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Bee).

Several of Jordan’s poems in this collection are poetry in the form of a dictionary entry. Students could create their own word-example statements after reading Jordan’s imagined definitions. An example is the excerpt of "From" (see above), which tells the beginning of MacNolia’s romance by and eventual marriage to John Montiere.

Poets.org webpage for A. Van Jordan

NPR interview on M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A with Susan Stamberg 7/18/2004

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Laura Turchi teaches curriculum theory and English language arts methods at the University of Houston. She coedits the "Teaching Shakespeare" column for English Journal with Ann Christensen and coauthored Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centered Approach with Ayanna Thompson . For years she chaired the Education Department at Warren Wilson College, in Asheville, North Carolina, and was inspired by readings by poets (and fiction writers) in the MFA Program for Writers there. She began her career teaching secondary English language arts in Tucson, Arizona, and Naperville, Illinois, and learning how high school students make sense of institutionalized racism through literature as well as history.