SANTA ANA : He Shares His Love of the Language

Prof. Lee Mallory of Rancho Santiago College is on a day-and-night mission to inspire a love of the English language.

By day, the 44-year-old professor teaches English-as-a-second-language courses to students in classes that he describes as a mini-United Nations because of the cultural, social and economic diversity.

By night, he traverses to the other end of the spectrum bringing poetry to the masses through his poetry class at Rancho Santiago and through the readings he attends and hosts.

When Mallory proposed a poetry course four years ago, the college administrators were skeptical. “They basically said you can’t make it work in Santa Ana because people in this community don’t have time to sit around writing poetry,” he said.

But on the first night of his new poetry class, there were more than 40 students--more than double the minimum enrollment necessary to keep a class open.

Since then, the class, which combines beginning and advanced poetry students, has always filled, proving there are resident bards in Santa Ana.

After teaching the established forms in the first weeks, he moves into a free-format class encouraging his students to go their own way in their writing. And he will do almost anything to illustrate a point. Last semester he began throwing furniture around just to elicit surprise, and then he had students write their response either in their journal or in a poem.

“This is definitely not a business-as-usual class,” he said.

Mallory doesn’t stop teaching when class ends. Many students get together after the semester in unofficial monthly reunions known as “Mallory’s Gallery” to exchange verse and give support.

He and a former student, Jana Kiedrowski, organize and host the Factory readings held the first Monday of every month at a rather unorthodox place for poetry--the Casa Palmas Mexican Restaurant in Santa Ana. The Factory, started in 1988, has become an unofficial laboratory for Mallory’s poetry students who are interested in reading before what he calls the “wider jury.” It is one of the county’s largest continuing readings, attracting poets from all over the Southland and an audience of 60 to 110.

Mallory’s work has appeared in more than a hundred publications, and he has published four books--his latest, “I Call Your Name,” has practically sold out since it came out last June.

The day and night contrasts of his teaching assignments are just one of the many paradoxes characterizing Mallory’s life. He began writing poetry in 1968 when he was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and pursuing a degree in French at UC Santa Barbara. His circle of literati friends included Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan and Kenneth Rexroth.

“At night we partied, wrote and shared poems, and the next morning I would be out drilling in a uniform,” he recalled.