Tag Archives: rules

William Walters, ‘Interdisciplinary Indiscipline’

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A lifetime ago, back in seventh-grade band,
“The Bullwhip” had all us kids pledge to expand
Our goals for our music.  He went on to ask us
To double our time spent in personal practice.
The girls—mostly woodwinds—were eager to please;
Ol’ Bullwhip could always control them with ease.
We boys on the trumpets and trombones, however,
Were harder to handle—we thought we were clever.
We readily signed when the sheet came around—
Exploited a loophole that one of us found.
Response to the ask had just turned on a dime,
And some even wrote that they’d triple their time!
Now no one could say that we out and out lied.
A math rule we’d learned was defense on our side:
Go multiply zero as much as you will—
The answer you come to remains zero still.

*****

William Walters “This poem tells a true story about an early class with our respected and beloved school band director, a colorful character who wore cowboy boots and carried a bullwhip around on his hip and actually went by the nickname “Bullwhip.”  A remarkable educator, he managed to be strict and demanding and patient and caring and encouraging all at the same time and, by our high school years, had us rural Southwest Kansas kids whipped into shape—figuratively, not literally—and disciplined to be an excellent marching band that competed very well against the big schools from Wichita, Topeka, Kansas City, and the like when we travelled back east for contests.  We had only about 170 students total in our high school, and we always had over 80 in the band!  Bullwhip certainly knew how to run a music program, and he gave our sleepy little town something to be proud of!     

“As far as the meter of the poem is concerned—it’s technically some kind of hendecasyllabic meter with hypercatalexis in a couple of the distichs.  But I didn’t really think much about rigid adherence to any form; I just went with what seemed to flow and what sounded good to me.”

‘Interdisciplinary Indiscipline’ was first published in Allegro.

William Walters has been a professor of English and linguistics at Rock Valley College, in Rockford, Illinois, for the past thirty-seven years.  He played trombone in many music groups in high school and college, and he’s a bass trombonist in a college/community band even now.

Photo: “Enterprise Middle School band plays for White Bluffs Center Tea Party” by Scott Butner is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Susan McLean, ‘Rules for Love’

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Don’t wear make-up, ever. Don’t act girly.
Don’t collect shoes or shop until you drop.
If your hair is straight, don’t make it curly.
Don’t play dumb or play his games. Don’t stop
reading or saying what you think. Don’t flatter.
Don’t claim that you love football if you don’t.
Don’t sidestep. Don’t pretend it doesn’t matter
if he puts down your friends or if he won’t
do his fair share of housework. Do your best
to give your talents scope and free his own.
Grill steaks; eat chocolate. This is not a test.
If he won’t love you, you’ll do fine alone.
Sex is a bonus. Give as good as you get,
but make it clear you don’t intend to marry.
Love what you have, and what you don’t, forget.

These worked for me. (Your own results may vary.)

*****

Susan McLean writes: “This poem got its start in answer to a contest at the magazine The Spectator in the UK for a poem about “rules for love.” The words rules and love don’t normally go together, because love is something that often seems to break all the rules. Yet most people have their own mental set of requirements for love, which they will not easily set aside, as well as an internalized list of dos and don’ts that they think are the way to achieve love. I found it entertaining to try to pin down some of mine, knowing that each person will have a different list. How often women run into articles in women’s magazines that purport to tell them exactly how to find lasting love! This poem tries to be funny by saying the sorts of things that would never appear in those articles. It was not among the winners at The Spectator, but it was a lot of fun to write. Trying to pin down one’s own rules for love produces an indirect self-portrait. The poem first appeared in my second book, The Whetstone Misses the Knife.”

Susan McLean has two books of poetry, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her poems have appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Able Muse, and elsewhere. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
https://www.pw.org/content/susan_mclean

Photo: “love rules” by hmmlargeart is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.