Debra Nystrom's poem "Smoke Break Behind the Treatment Center," posted on today's The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, put me smack into the uncomfortable shoes of those jittery smokers at the end of the third week of treatment and the start of family weekend. The poem's power resides in its understated, spare approach to a hot topic, such as noting that in fifteen minutes the patients will "see the ones who've come to find out if / they are changing."
This poem paints a vivid landscape that hints at the painful inner world of those in treatment: "this door behind / the cafeteria, where they can look across / to the stubble field, world of chopped-off stalks / that has ripped them up, that they needed / too much from." Poems have the power to build empathy by letting us experience other worlds far removed from our own. In this poem, I can see and smell the smoke from the cigarettes, and though there is no description of anyone's face, I can imagine the pain in those eyes. "Smoke Break Behind the Treatment Center" by Debra Nystrom, from Bad River Road. © Sarabande Books, 2009.
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On May 11, at "An Evening of Poetry at the White House," President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed renowned poets, such as Rita Dove and Billy Collins, to recite their work for a celebration of poetry.
One of the presenters was 16-year-old Youssef Biaz of Auburn, Alabama who won the title of 2011 Poetry Out Loud National Champion at the National Finals held in Washington, D.C., on April 29. He read "Mrs. Krikorian" by Sharon Olds, a beautiful poem that pays tribute to one of those life-changing teachers who come into our lives. (Biaz appears 32 minutes into the video.) Here are the opening lines: "She saved me. When I arrived in 6th grade, / a known criminal, the new teacher / asked me to stay after school the first day, she said / I've heard about you." I appreciate that President Obama honors the power of poetry, as he notes in his opening remarks: "The power of poetry is that everyone experiences it differently. There are no rules for what makes a great poem; understanding it isn't just about metaphor or meter. Instead, a great poem is one that resonates with us, that challenges us and teaches us something about ourselves and the world we live in. As Rita Dove says, 'If poetry doesn't affect us on some level that cannot be explained in words, then the poem hasn't done its job.' "For thousands of years, people have been drawn to poetry in a very personal way, including me... As a nation built on freedom of expression, poets have always played an important role in telling our American story. It was after the bombing of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 that a young lawyer named Francis Scott Key penned the poem that would become our national anthem. The Statue of Liberty has always welcomed 'the huddled masses yearning to be free.' Soldiers going off to fight in WW II were given books of poetry for comfort and inspiration. "Whenever our nation has faced great tragedy, whether it was the loss of a civil rights leader, the crew of the space shuttle or the thousands of Americans who were lost on a clear September day, we turn to poetry when we can't quite find the right words to express what we're feeling. So tonight we continue that tradition by hearing from some of our greatest as well as some of our newest poets. "Billy Collins calls poetry the oldest form of travel writing because it takes us places we can only imagine. So sit back, or on the edge of your chair, and enjoy the journey." In this video, Collins reads two of my all-time favorite poems of his, "Forgetfulness" and "The Lanyard." Collins makes us laugh and think and sigh as he holds up our lives in all their pain and poignancy. Sheila Packa's poem, "Not Forgotten," recently posted on May 18 on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor took me back to summer days of wobbly bike riding that turned into the thrill of flying on two wheels. I love the way Packa captures the father-daughter dynamic with such vivid imagery.
Jim and I both become kids once again as we ride our bikes on trails around town and explore trails around Minnesota. Last summer we biked the Lake Wobegone Trail up by Collegeville, and we highly recommend it. While bike riding, I get a good workout as ideas for my writing "cook." I often gain fresh perspectives for a particular poem or essay from the passing landscapes. Happy trails to you, and all the best with your summer writing. Poetry Foundation has posted an interview with this year's 2011 Poetry Out Loud winner Youssef Biaz. He read his favorite poem (and one of mine), "Filling Station," by Elizabeth Bishop [click on title to hear Bishop's wonderful reading of it], one of the most highly revered American poets of the last 50 years.
Here's an excerpt from the interview: What would you tell students interested in Poetry Out Loud who may not have participated? I would encourage them even if they don’t have an interest in poetry. Public speaking is a wonderful skill, and it’s a wonderful feeling to be able to communicate a message to an audience. According to the website, "Biaz was introduced to poetry through his English teacher, Davis Thompson, who brought the Poetry Out Loud program to students at Auburn High School in Auburn, Alabama last year—the first year that Biaz served as Alabama State Champion and became a national finalist." I hope the Poetry Out Loud program keeps flourishing in the years ahead. It takes dedicated high school English teachers like Thompson to nurture talented students like Youssef and make it happen. I like this video, "What Teachers Make," by Taylor Mali, that one of my writing students shared with me last year. Mali captures the impact of a good teacher with skill and humor. Today's poem on The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor is "Staff Sgt. Metz" by Dorianne Laux from The Book of Men: Poems. © W.W. Norton, 2011.
This achingly beautiful poem made me recall the many times I've passed a young, sober-faced soldier "in his camo gear and buzz cut" at the airport. Laux captures the tension of this scene with understatement--"Metz is alive for now"--and telling details--"the countless bones of his foot trapped in his boot"--along with the emotional landscape of one attentive bystander: "I don't believe in anything anymore: / god, country, money or love. / All that matters to me now / is his life, the body so perfectly made. . ." Dorianne Laux is one of my favorite poets, and I plan to read her new book of poems after the semester wraps up. David Brooks wrote an interesting article, "Poetry for Everyday Life," in the New York Times this past week. Here's an excerpt:
"To be aware of the central role metaphors play is to be aware of how imprecise our most important thinking is. It’s to be aware of the constant need to question metaphors with data — to separate the living from the dead ones, and the authentic metaphors that seek to illuminate the world from the tinny advertising and political metaphors that seek to manipulate it. "Most important, being aware of metaphors reminds you of the central role that poetic skills play in our thought. If much of our thinking is shaped and driven by metaphor, then the skilled thinker will be able to recognize patterns, blend patterns, apprehend the relationships and pursue unexpected likenesses. "Even the hardest of the sciences depend on a foundation of metaphors. To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called “pedestrian poetry.” Here's a response to the article: To the Editor: David Brooks’s column is a strong piece of advocacy for the arts in education. “Metaphors are not rhetorical frills at the edge of how we think,” he writes, paraphrasing James Geary. “They are at the very heart of it.” And this is what educators know about the importance of the standing, speaking, moving, memorizing, hearing and seeing in an arts curriculum: they are not frills, they are at the heart of learning. They are the nation’s hope for a strong, confident and competitive future. In our panic over how badly we’ve used our resources, how shortsighted we’ve been, how deeply we’ve gone into debt, we could cut out our hearts. BILL IRWIN New York, April 12, 2011 The writer is the actor, performance artist and clown. What do you think of the role and importance of metaphor in language? The importance of supporting a strong arts curriculum? At dinner tonight, a friend who is an art history professor told us that the outstanding music program at the elementary school in her small hometown in Pennsylvania is being cut. A sad story, and one we hear all too often. After dinner, we went to a terrific musical comedy, "Lucky Stiff," at SMSU. All those singers and actors on stage have had lots of opportunities to develop their talent starting in elementary school and continuing in high school. What happens to talent that is not nurtured? Makes me think of a Langston Hughes poem, "A Dream Deferred," rife with vivid metaphors: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Brilliant spring day in Marshall--sunny, 50-ish, bright blue sky with wisps of cirrus high above, the smell of the earth waking up. First, I attended a great anusara yoga class taught by Kristin Knight at Prairie Yoga, then later took a long walk with my husband Jim on the bike trail with our dog Maya. The Redwood River beside us, high, fast-moving. No wind today, no mosquitoes yet. A hawk hovering above, circling lazily. We didn't see any geese overhead today, but just as I was walking into work one morning last week I stared up at a spectacular set of interlocking V-formations, the honking calls described in one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, "Wild Geese." Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place in the family of things. We're dog people, and we've been blessed with a good string of lovable, rascally dogs over the years--Sugar, Halley, Mollie, and now Maya, who is a Black Labrador and Bassett mix . I've written my share of dog poems, and I always love to read a good dog poem. Enjoy.
American Life in Poetry: Column 314 BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Maybe you have to be a poet to get away with sniffing the paws of a dog, and I have sniffed the paws of all of mine, which almost always smell like hayfields in sunlight. Here Jane Varley, who lives in Ohio, offers us a touching last moment with a dear friend. Packing the Car for Our Western Camping Trip What we will remember—we tried to take the dog, packed around him, making a cozy spot at the back of the Subaru, blocking out the sun, resisting the obvious-- he was too old, he would not make it. And when he died in Minnesota, we smelled and smelled his paws, arthritic and untouchable these last many years, took those marvelous paws up into our faces. They smelled of dark clay and sweet flower bloom decay. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2009 by Jane Varley, whose most recent book is a memoir, Flood Stage and Rising, University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Poem reprinted from Poems & Plays, No. 16, 2009, by permission of Jane Varley and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. One of my goals for my writing life: I want to memorize more of my own and other writers' poems so I can carry them on my tongue wherever I go. Speak the words for strength and solace on the journey. Share them around a campfire with family and friends. OK, I'll admit it--it might help to keep the grey matter firing as well. I'm inspired by poets Philip Dacey, Susan McLean and Beth Ann Fennelly who are all masters of memorization.
This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye is on my list of poems I want to "know by heart"--such a wonderful phrase. Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. -Naomi Shihab Nye On The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, today's poem is "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. Click on the poem's title to watch an innovative video with Collins reading this beautiful poem about the slippery ways of memory. This poem will resonate with anyone who has had a loved one suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia.
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AuthorI love to play with words. To capture moments on the page. To explore the physical and spiritual geography of what I call "fly-over country." I write from imagination, observation and my own experience of wandering in fly-over country--the literal, physical spaces of my life on the Minnesota prairie and the inner territory of the soul. Archives
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