Museum’s Poet-Teacher Tricks Students Into Learning How to Write

Richard Garcia never walks into an elementary school class and says, “Today, we’re going to write a poem as an extended metaphor.”

But by the time he leaves, nearly everyone in the room has written one.

Garcia, the Long Beach Museum of Art’s poet in residence, frequently conducts workshops for students in local elementary schools. He also does the same at the museum for children and adults.

“I come into a class with 30 kids and when I walk out, 28 kids have written a nice poem,” he said. “And some of them are quite, quite good.”

Like the poem written last year in the seventh grade by Matthew Segotta, a student at College Intermediate School in Long Beach:

I am a cat

That preys on mice

I am the waves

That hit hard against the reef

I am a demon that gives bad luck

I am the earth

That can quake the countries

I am the rhino

That charges with all its might

I am a lazy boy

By a tree, by a lake

Dreaming of a poem.

Garcia tricks his students into writing poems.

“I tell them to describe a natural phenomenon, like a storm, and then I tell them to pretend they are the storm,” he said. “After they’ve written that much, I ask them, ‘What does this resemble?’ And they say, ‘Anger.’ And suddenly they’ve written an extended metaphor.”

The Long Beach museum invited Garcia to become its first poet in residence three years ago, said Sue Ann Robinson, the museum’s education coordinator. Robinson, a former artist in residence at the museum, wanted to start a poet’s program to show the relationship between written and visual art.

The museum had invited several poets, including Garcia, to give a reading. Robinson was impressed with what she heard and asked Garcia to apply for a grant.

“He’s been great,” Robinson said of Garcia. “He’s a very good teacher with both children and adults. And he’s interested in people and their stories.”

Garcia, 51, began his career in poetry in the ninth grade in San Francisco. “That was during the ‘50s,” he said, “and I was more of a Fonzie type than a poet, a tough guy in the back of the class with a leather jacket who got bad grades.”

Then he fell in love, wrote a poem for a girlfriend and became “a teen-age beatnik.” He published his first poem in high school. “I sent it off to a magazine and never heard anything,” he recalled. One day he was in City Lights bookstore, a beat poet hangout, and saw his poem while thumbing through a poetry anthology. He was subsequently paid $7.

Garcia has been published consistently, although he said he barely got through high school and never went to college. His works include a bilingual children’s book, “My Aunt Ottilia’s Spirits,” now in its fourth edition, and an upcoming book of poetry, “The Flying Garcias,” to be published this spring by the University of Pittsburgh Press. He also has published in such national literary magazines as Ploughshares and Crickets.

When Garcia’s stint as the museum’s poet is over this year, he plans to continue working as a poet in residence at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles. Working in the community helps Garcia overcome a sense of isolation that he might otherwise feel “because, as a poet, you’re working alone, unpaid and unprotected.”

Most of his students, he knows, will never go on to become great writers, “but they learn something about how a poet thinks and how the creative process works. The process is the same, whether you’re a scientist, poet or chef. If they learn something about being creative, it’s something they can use later on in life.”

John Clark has been named to implement the Americans with Disabilities Act for the city of Compton. The act protects the disabled from discrimination. Clark, a consultant with the Compton Unified School District, is also a consultant for New Horizons Unlimited Enterprises, a local nonprofit organization for the disabled.

Two Hacienda Heights teachers are among 58 arts educators nominated by the Los Angeles Music Center for a BRAVO award, honoring Southern California teachers for outstanding achievement in primary and secondary arts education. Anna Marie Mezin of Payne School in El Monte and John Vorwald of Nogales High School in La Puente will compete to be among the top 10 arts educators in Southern California. Winners will be announced March 15.

Chris Kovacic , a student at Long Beach City College, won the Crystal Award for leadership, service and commitment to the college. Kovacic, 29, is working on an associate of science degree and is a campus representative with the Associated Student Body. He serves on the bookstore, food service and recycling committees.

Long Beach City College announced the retirement of Richard Jones, dean of external relations. In his 32 years at the college, Jones served as music instructor, band director and head of the forums and lectures program.

Jenette Rentino, a sixth-grade student at Elliott Elementary School in Artesia, won first place in the Sheraton Cerritos Hotel’s second annual art contest. Her drawing of a snowman was used as the hotel’s 1992 Christmas card.