Blending genres: novels in verse for adolescents

Kliatt, Sept, 2002 by Michele Winship

MW: Tower High School has been the setting of your poetry novels. If l were to spend a few days observing at Tower, what would I experience? What does Tower High look like, feel like, sound like to an outsider?

MG: It's funny, the setting is the one true constant in my books. If is absolutely no secret that Tower High School is Lincoln High School, the school I taught at for 31 years, and the school I went to as a kid. When I see a scene in my book that takes place in school, it is Lincoln I see, the halls, walls, classrooms and gym. What would it sound like? A strange combination of noise and quiet, the noise of high school as a social place, a place to chill, the rush to get to the next class; a place of quiet, where a kid can come up to me and ask, "Mr. Glenn, can I talk to you?" It is both public and private, the school, as the lives of students are public and private. Their stories are sad and happy, tragic and funny. But Lincoln is representative of schools across the country, I hope. The same dynamics of hopes and dreams, successes and failures happen every-where. High school is a rite of passage, with some stories being more dramatic than others, hot that the quieter stories aren't equally important. I would hope my best quality as a teacher and writer is the ability to listen and empathize. Give the tumult of high school life, most students are good and sweet, but as my books show, evil lies just below the surface.

MW: As a career English teacher, in what ways could you see your poetry novels being used in an English class?

MG: My books have been used in the classroom as a springboard for discussion, analysis for character, and even for theater productions (like reader's theater). I have seen productions of parts of my book and the individual monologues remind me very much of the audition scenes in "A Chorus Line." The poems have been used also for speech contests. I have used my early work in creative writing classes, when I want the kids to study character, i.e., what makes a character "tick."

MW: How have your students reacted to having an author as a teacher?

MG: Frankly, it's no big deal. We have a saying hem in New York: "That and a Metro Card gets you on the subway." It is a big deal when I go to various places across the country and speak and sign books, and one time I signed an arm even. I love doing that. I have been to places where the students have made signs, even whole "communities," of my books. They are curious to find out that I teach and work in New York, and have their own stereotypes of what that must be like. ("Mr. Glenn, do you need a hand gun to teach in New York?")

MW: How have your students reacted to your poetry novels?

MG: Sometimes I get, "Oh, Mr. Glenn, please put me in your next book." My answer is "You already are," because most of my books are amalgams of all the students I have taught. I could not be a writer if I weren't a teacher. All my books center around school life, for the most part. For example, the year Lincoln won the state championship in basketball I followed the team around, and out of that experience came Jump Ball.