Getting creative: bricks, not straw

I've just spent the greater part of two days trying to come up with some ideas for middle schoolers writing poetry. I've been trying to be non-teacherly, interesting, clever and captivating, all the while managing to deliver what they probably perceive as a teacherly, boring, lame and mind-numbing message that they have all heard before, namely, write, write, WRITE!!!

I keep trying to sneak up on that message from the bushes, so they don't see it coming. I don't think I'm fooling anyone. At best, I hope to make them look at poetry from a new perspective--not as stilted, enforced rhyme and structure imposed upon them by the curriculum, but as communication. Poetry can present their lives as readily as their mobile phone cameras or their continual texting. (It might even be more interesting: does anyone even THINK anymore before snapping off a photo or texting the obvious to their group of friends?) In fact, poetry has more in common with these methods than I'd like to admit. What a poet is doing is condensing his message to the most concise terms, the words most apt; he (or she) is attempting to provide an image, a picture, a snapshot of a moment in time, his time, his life. The differences lie in care and composition. Rather than the haphazard results of spontaneous  text and photo, poetry provides a more thoughtful, more polished nugget of information: one that will withstand some use.

Which brings me to my illustrative example. The Three Little Pigs. We all have the story down. Pigs 1,2 & 3. Building houses. Big bad wolf, doing his huff and puff best. Straw doesn't work. Twigs are not much better. Bricks are the answer. Happy pigs, wolf stew for dinner. 

If you switch the field of play from real estate to communication, you get the same results. Random, impulsive pictures don't hold up without text; abbreviated, unconsidered text doesn't stand up to our requirements either. What people need is communication that is shaped and formed and put together neatly and in workman-like fashion: bricks and mortar, with perhaps a touch of imagination. Writing poetry is like masonry school. You learn by trial and error how to shape your words to the task, how to put them together in meaningful ways, and how to use them economically and to best effect. You may never write poetry on a regular basis, but you can learn from it how to make your communications stand out from the crowd. Just think for a moment about Barack Obama, speaking. Solid brick construction. Then switch the channel to George Bush. So much straw that he could audition for The Wizard of Oz (but can he sing "If I Only Had a Brain"?) There's poetry in our new president's past. I'd bet money on it.

All this would seem to indicate that as poet laureate, I should be a great speaker on Monday. I'm not sure that's true, but I am working on it....

Warming up for Poetry Month

Going into my final year as poet laureate, I am finally understanding that the year (and my poetry activities) seems to travel in a 5 month sine wave, with crests in March/April and October/November. All of a sudden, I find myself with a number of requests for readings, poems, workshops, appearances...and always, talks. And reading. I do enjoy doing it all, but the periodic nature of the requests makes it hard to plan.

Coming up on the horizon is Literacy Day at Hammond Middle School, quickly followed by the Hollin Hall Senior Center, and then the Alexandria Office on Women Awards Banquet. I just finished the Charles Houston Rec Center dedication, and recently received a request from another senior citizen poetry group. I've also been looking at the possibility of introducing Alexandria to New York's Poem-in-your-Pocket Day, to be celebrated in April. Or trying to get local poets to record podcasts for the city's website...Or celebrating Jean Elliot's poetry at the Old Presbyterian Meeting House sometime during Poetry Month. So many possibilities, so little time...

Charles Houston

One of the best things about my quasi-job as poet laureate is the places it takes me. I was recently asked to write a poem for the opening of Alexandria's newly- rebuilt Charles Houston Recreation Center. I was particularly happy to be asked, as I have watched the old center torn down and the new one constructed. It's on one of my customary routes around town, and I have repeatedly remarked on how rapidly it's been going and what a nice building it appeared to be. 

The truth is that, without that invitation, I probably would never have set foot in the building. Recreation? Moi? BUT, writing for the opening not only got me inside, but also made me do a little research on the building's namesake--and I am richer for the experience. Charles Houston was an amazing guy, and I learned a lot. Brilliant pupil of Felix Frankfurter. Teacher of Thurgood Marshall (and author of the brief used in Brown vs. Board of Education). Dean of Howard University Law School. He has a building at Harvard named after him. And a professorship there. He gathered a team of lawyers that brought down the Jim Crow laws. He was the go-to guy in civil rights law from World War 1 until the 1950s. And he worked here in Alexandria as well, helping to bring about the first African-American high school in the city. Wow. (And BTW, where was all this in my kids' history books?)

The building itself is wonderful, and well-worth a tour. An added highlight was that I also got to hear Mayor Euille's State of the City address. I normally would not have dragged myself over to city hall at 8:30 AM on a Saturday to hear it, but I'm glad it was incorporated into the ceremonies at the rec center this year. It's good to know what we've accomplished and where we stand, and I suspect I will try to catch this important address from now on.

I guess the moral of all this is that there are more opportunities to learn out there than we could ever conceive of...if we only made the effort, um...let's be specific here... if I only made the effort.

(BTW, here's the poem...)

Building

New buildings start with tearing down,

With structures being brought to earth,

With land swept clean of all that hinders progress:

Digging deep and building strong

Brick by brick and stone by stone,

We make foundations that endure.

Charles Houston was a builder

Who wrestled with injustice,

Who tore down restrictive laws,

Who swept clean the field of opportunity;

Digging deep and building strong--

Brick by legal brick, stone by hard-won stone,

He built foundations for the future.

This building, his namesake,

Borne of hope and strength,

Honors him...and this community.

His values, rooted deep, maintained so strong,

Brick on remembering brick, stone on history's stone,

Are the foundation that endures.

(February, 2009)

Blog as Wordle...

(Click on picture to increase size and readability.)Okay. I am sure there are people out there who are saying, "Enough already with the Wordles!" However, I just find them interesting. As you may or may not know already, one of my biggest personal issues is lack of focus, and here is this program that takes whatever I write and automatically sifts through my writing and picks out the words I use most often--which are a pretty good indicator of my focal point. What a discovery! To just press a button and see what I was thinking pop out in boldface type from the screen. And if those are the wrong words, the wrong emphases, then maybe I can go back and change things so that my intention is clearer to the poor unfortunate who might be reading all this. Plus, it is just supremely cool that I can turn my text into a form of art.

In any event, I will try to restrain myself and indulge my fascination with this phenomenal program privately. Maybe.

Books! Art! Words!

The Torpedo Factory's Target Gallery is currently hosting an exhibit that I knew I would have to go see: BookEnds. The show is a celebration of books and their use as inspiration for (and as actual components of) artworks. Pretty cool for those of us who like to play with words, and who have an affinity for books.

Books and art have a symbiotic relationship anyway: one accentuates the other. I have a tendency to add pictures or clip art to poems, to play with fonts and layouts when I'm printing them out. I am no artist, but I know that the way I arrange my words should be as pleasing to the eye as it is to the ear. It's all part of the same overall sensory experience that is what poetry is all about. So, when I see a container created on a lathe from a block of laminated pages, when I can see words in the walls of that container, appearing  like the grain in a piece of wood, I get excited. I know that words--and books, and poetry--have texture. They have taste and sound and smell and shape, and here is an artist who understands all that, and manages to put it all together. 

What's more, it's not just ONE artist, but a whole group of artists that is expressing different ideas about language and books and how they intersect with our lives. How amazing that there are people out there putting ideas about words into tangible, physical, meaningful forms that bring books off  dusty shelves and into the gallery.  It's a show that provokes thought, that raises questions, and that demonstrates the amazing creativity that can be unleashed by the perusal of a book.