Angel Nafis stood in my classroom today. She was a featured guest writer and she read poems, mostly her own, a couple by other writers she admires. She talked about her love for writing and she answered questions from current students about her motivations and her writing process, about some of the ideas in her poems, and about life in New York City where she just finished her first semester at Hunter College. Yesterday, the students in my seventh hour class exhibited so little energy, I stopped class three minutes early because nothing I was saying was having any impact. Today, the same kids, in their last class of the day, begged Angel to read one last poem, even though they knew it would continue a couple minutes past the bell. She did. They stayed. The poem was unforgettable.

Angel turned 21 a month ago. They have not been 21 easy years.

Not to put Angel’s life, as she would say, “on blast,” but suffice it to say she’s one of those students who carries a story into the classroom that makes me wonder how she can still remain standing. Her biological mother died when she was an infant and, while she was raised by her father, her home-life has often been chaotic. She spent much of her senior year and the ensuing months homeless, and she barely graduated high school. Squeaked by with the support of her counselor at Huron, a handful of close friends, and a few teachers who went out of their way to help her make it through. Life, for Angel, every day, starts with survival. Starts with wondering if she has enough money to eat, if she’ll be able to pay rent, if she can figure out how not to be so overwhelmed by her struggles that she can focus on school.

Angel Nafis is brilliant.

I don’t use that word lightly. Of the thousands of young writers I’ve been privileged to work with over the past decade-and-a-half, only a handful compare to her. Not just in terms of talent with language, or even desire and dedication to her craft, but in terms of insight. Pure ability to examine another person, a place, an event, an idea, and to dig to the heart of what she finds. Even more, to not shy away when the shovel of her imagination encounters something startling or difficult, but to stay in that place - sometimes dark, often complex - and to strive as best she can to articulate what that staying has added to her understanding of herself and the greater world.

I adore having conversations with Angel because talking with her is invigorating and life-affirming - and often hysterical because she’s crazy witty - but I when I do talk to her, I steer the discussion away from me. I don’t want to talk about me with Angel because Angel will nail me and she’ll make me face things I don’t want to face. That’s generally a good thing - my facing what I don’t want to - long-term. But, short-term, most of the time, I just don’t want to deal. That’s a big part of the reason I will never be as good a writer as she is. Don’t get me wrong, I have my strengths, just not the kind of strength she has, or the courage, and if this essay (or whatever the heck it is) sounds like a letter of recommendation, that’s because it is one. A recommendation that we admit Angel and, really, the complexity of every person we encounter, into our own understanding of what we’re about. On the personal and professional level for me, that means admitting the complexity of Angel into what I think I’m trying to do and be as a teacher.

That’s complicated. Like I said, Angel didn’t do high school well. That’s partly because of the chaos that whirled around her daily life, but it’s also because, honestly, she just wasn’t that into it. She didn’t have respect for a number of her teachers, or even for the material that was being presented. Didn’t think it was worth her time or effort. Blew off assignments. Didn’t do homework. Skipped class.

I can make this sound like a feel-good story if I want to. Talk about how she found poetry her junior year and that turned everything around, opened a door for her into intellectual curiosity, made her believe in herself, made her want to learn. On some level, that’s true. But on another level, that’s way too simple. The kind of narrative Angel might say was on “some problematic ish.” She was difficult in my class too. Rebelled against deadlines and critiques and argued against many of my lessons and methods. Didn’t show up frequently. Called me a b-tch in front of the rest of the class. More than once. The truth is Angel was one of the most challenging students I’ve ever had, the kind of kid who - at least a couple times a week - made me want to quit teaching. Made me want to go find work in an environment where I dealt with adults all day, people who knew how to be courteous and consistent and respectful and play by the rules and not put anyone on blast. The truth is I didn’t know what to do with Angel and, sometimes, still don’t. But I did know one thing.

The woman can write her ass off.

Here are some lines from her poem I know I’m pretty cuz the Boys tell me so -

But I know I’m pretty because the boys tell me so, watch my legs move fast past ‘em cuz I hear them yell: my thighs or my hips these curves that I’m about and I don’t like the sound of my shapes in their mouths

And here’s a longer excerpt from a poem about friendship called Directions to finding you, or maybe just an inferior prayer ¬

and I know I don’t know much about wilderness but on days like these when you are harder to find, I want to learn the word ‘seasons’ properly feel its backsides roll against my molars so I can feel free, like when we write to summon, or when you are far away and I collect dead things to keep you alive in me say hair that traps sky and gnats, say plash, say I could talk about the antenna or thorax but I’ve already mentioned prayer and capture and there’s no turning back now the blood will come soon again, say swish and slow movement, say maps are irrelevant say accidents are blessings too, say bellies of fish and coins say the texture of language hatching, and other raw things.

Yeah.

So, what to do?

Talent, obviously, doesn’t excuse bad behavior. On the other hand, bad teaching, or let me say, inflexible teaching, fails kids like Angel every day. Did she get special privileges? Yes. Did she get chance after chance to make up missing work and earn an A in my class even when she didn’t make it up? Believe it. Did she get sent down to the office when she used profanity or insulted me? Or wore a hat in class or wouldn’t take off her headphones or disregarded school policies in a thousand different ways? No chance.

Did I enable her?

Yeah, but to do what?

To perform her poems around the country, get her work published, and gain access to accomplished poets who can mentor her with far more expertise than I can?

To eventually earn a full scholarship to college?

To get paid to teach after-school Creative Writing workshops to high school kids in Harlem?

The truth is Angel is a feel-good story. But she could have been a feel-bad story. Easily. Actually, no, she would have been a don’t-feel-anything story. The kind of story no one hears about. Just another kid who doesn’t get through high school, who disappears and no one particularly cares. And, please, I don’t want to give myself too much credit. Other teachers cared about Angel too. And her counselor. And maybe she has enough resilience that she would have figured out her own way without any of us. But what made her difficult for me, what made her emotionally exhausting, wasn’t even the insults or the rule-breaking. It was that every interaction I had with her, every infuriating confrontation, made me reconsider everything I was doing as a teacher, and a person. Made me make a new decision in every specific moment. Should I come down hard on her? Should I let her slide? What kind of mood is she in? What kind of mood am I in? How will what happens in the next ten seconds affect the rest of the class? Will the whole hour be derailed? Will her life be derailed? Will mine?

The truth is Angel made me a better teacher. A better husband. A better parent. A better friend. There was no playbook. I had to make it up as I went along. I’m still making it up. I’m still going along. So is she.

** NOTE - the next big poetry event coming up where you can hear poets like Angel is when her crew Ann Arbor Wordworks presents their annual poetry concert Homegrown at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theater in the Michigan League on Friday, January 29th. Angel won’t be in this show because she’ll be back in New York, but a whole bunch of poets of tremendous talent - including Maggie Ambrosino, Mike Moriarty, Ben Alfaro, Courtney Whittler, Aimee Le, Fiona Chamness, Gahl Liberzon, Brittany Floyd, Daniel Bigham, Maggie Hanks, Lauren Weston, Mike Kulick, Peggy Burrows, AJ McLittle, Chris Moriarty and Anthony Zick - will be. The show promises to be spectacular. It’ll run from approximately 7-9pm. The Mendelssohn is @ 911 N. University Ave., in downtown Ann Arbor. Tickets will be $5 for students in advance, or $7 at the door. $10 and $12 for members of the general public. To reserve tickets at the advanced price or for more information, email me @ eyelev21@aol.com or call me @ 734-223-7443. **

Jeff Kass teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, and directs the Literary Arts Programs at the Neutral Zone, including the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, which meets every Thursday night at 7pm. He will post new blog entries every Tuesday and Thursday morning throughout the school year.