I can hardly believe that I’m coming down to my last couple of weeks of teaching Writing the Short Poem online for The Loft. Teaching at The Loft has been a wistful wish of mine for many, many years, but geography precluded it. It hardly seems real that I have the opportunity now, and that my students seem satisfied, and want to work with me again. I am developing a structure for taking on private students, and will propose additional online classes to The Loft, in hopes that I can keep these connections, and make new ones.
The ten weeks have flown by. The students’ talent, intellect, and generosity in responding to each other is really astonishing. There have been a couple of bumps in the road, but we’ve weathered them, and I certainly learned a lot (yay–another flipping growth experience). But the ups have far outweighed the downs, and I will go into the next session with more experience and the memory of this great class. I feel that I’ve gotten to know these people, and I will miss them. There’s really nothing better than teaching people who want to learn.
Zooming out to a broader time period, it’s amazing for me to see how my path in poetry has developed. If you had told me ten years ago that I would have the publications that I have, modest as they are, I’d never have believed you. I wouldn’t have believed that I had done readings in Grand Marais and Minneapolis, let alone New York and Great Britain, or attended workshops with poets I so admire–Jane Hirshfield, Joan Houlihan, Martha Rhodes, Dara Weir–it’s too much to fathom. I know it’s a predictable time of the year to be enumerating blessings, and I hate being predictable, but enumerate I must. I’ll keep it relatively professional here, and spare you the list of even-more-amazing personal blessings. They are many.
I hope you have your own long list of blessings this year and every year.
LouAnn Shepard Muhm 