In poetry club today we talked about the birth of jazz poetry and the art behind improv. And so I played four clips (5 minutes or so each) of great jazzers through the ages, and I asked each of them to create what they felt on paper. When I first demonstrated using pastels on a small piece of white paper, they giggled nervously. They looked around at eachother and then me and said, "Mrs. Amoscato I thought you were a good artist." I said, "You don't like my painting?" with a smile. "it's just messy" one of my other students said. "That's not art."

We got into this whole 6 minute discussion of what makes art...art. And I explained to them that some of the greatest jazz songs ever invented required the individual to paint outside the lines, to take risks, to make smudges, to laugh at oneself, to giggle, to embrace vulnerability. Art is being vulnerable. It isn't the prettiest painting, or the most perfect looking grass or the flowers we tend to draw at age 6 or 7 so perfectly because that is what we view art to be: perfection. 

Well after we got past the definition of art and realized I am not looking for perfect, poetry was a complete and utter joy. The difference in colors used helped to discuss the mood of the piece and the feelings we felt when listening transmitted on the page. And those scribbles and waves actually became something real-like our very being, a tape of all of our emotions in a single day just untangled and unwound like a tight ball of yarn. Through colors and tangles and smiles and listening- we created a jazz masterpiece-with some pretty beautiful jazz poems (if I do say so myself.)

If we track out emotions and laid them all out on paper, it would look like a ball fo different colored yarn criss-crossing and swirling and twisting on the page. So real art is recognizing the tangled string that is ourselves and creating a masterpiece.