On Poetry

I've been thinking about including something about poetry in a couple of talks I am giving in May. As I consider this idea, I have been reading and rereading poetry.  Really, I use this excuse to spend lots of time exploring all these poetry books and websites and generally not doing the things I should be doing. like matching socks.  Actually, my mother-in-law has let me down lately by not coming over to match socks every Wednesday.  What could be holding her up, I wonder?  What could possibly be more rewarding?  I've become quite used to having piles of perfectly matched socks waiting for me when I get home.....I'll have to get her moving on this again.  I mean come on, now that she has decided to get completely well after a long stay in the hospital and rehab, it is time for her to pick up her duties, I think.

 In the meantime, I'm considering why I have found poetry so helpful in so many parts of my life.  I believe it has enabled me to become so very much more reflective, and to take time to allow meaning to bubble up to the surface and shine forth.  I am often surprised at what I have learned while writing or reading poetry.  I guess this is particularly so when I actually try to write.  At work, we have been reading and discussing what it is that the act of writing can do to help students learn about themselves and their reactions, and to grow and even change.  I see first hand the power of reflection and meaning making for me.  I have begun to collect a bunch of poems about poetry by different authors.  I go back to these to help me put words to the feeling that there is something quite special about poetry; every author sings poetry's praises it in their own unique way.  Ok, I think Katie and her friend have a little poetry going on  in this picture, too. See what you think of some of these poems:

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry (Pablo Neruda)

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived

in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where

it came from, from winter or a river.

I don't know how or when,

no they were not voices, they were not

words, nor silence,

but from a street I was summoned,

from the branches of night,

abruptly from the others,

among violent fires

or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth

had no way

with names,

my eyes were blind,

and something started in my soul,

fever or forgotten wings,

and I made my own way,

deciphering

that fire,

and I wrote the first faint line,

faint, without substance, pure

nonsense,

pure wisdom

of someone who knows nothing,

and suddenly I saw

the heavens

unfastened

and open,

planets,

palpitating plantations,

shadow perforated,

riddled

with arrows, fire and flowers,

the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,

drunk with the great starry

void,

likeness, image of

mystery,

felt myself a pure part

of the abyss,

I wheeled with the stars,

my heart broke loose on the wind.

Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
by Jane Kenyon
I am the blossom pressed in a book, found again after two hundred years. . . . I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper. . . . When the young girl who starves sits down to a table she will sit beside me. . . . I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . . I am water rushing to the wellhead, filling the pitcher until it spills. . . . I am the patient gardener of the dry and weedy garden. . . . I am the stone step, the latch, and the working hinge. . . . I am the heart contracted by joy. . . the longest hair, white before the rest. . . . I am there in the basket of fruit presented to the widow. . . . I am the musk rose opening unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . . I am the one whose love overcomes you, already with you when you think to call my name. . . . This Was Once a Love Poem by Jane Hirshfield This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads. It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement. It remembers choosing these shoes, this scarf or tie. Once, it drank beer for breakfast, drifted its feet in a river side by side with the feet of another. Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy, dropping its head so the hair would fall forward, so the eyes would not be seen. IT spoke with passion of history, of art. It was lovely then, this poem. Under its chin, no fold of skin softened. Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat. What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall. An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks. The longing has not diminished. Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat, the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus. Yes, it decides: Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots. When it finds itself disquieted by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life, it will touch them—one, then another— with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.

Bittersweet

Ok, I'm just a tiny bit anxious about our son graduating from high school in June.  First of all,he goes to the school my father essentially built during his 25 year tenure as headmaster. I am a bit overwhelmed by the idea that my connection with this school is about to end too.  This connection has been part of me since my dad became headmaster in 1963 when I was 3.  Hmmmm, there is so much here, and so much that is going to change...and I feel tremendous loss already.  Not only about this boy, but about dad, this school, the past, oh dear!  And I can barely look at this beautiful boy without feeling so many conflicting things--I'm so proud of the person he is, I'm delighted that he is happy, confident, intelligent, kind,  and full of love, thrilled that he is so ready for the next step, and so sure we'll miss him terribly!. I want to hold onto him hard, but I will let him go.  We aren't exactly ready, but  Will, being the talker and feeler that  he is, also acknowledges  how bittersweet  this is for him as well.

Two packages came today.  Both have pairs of white bucks in them; these are the shoes that my father wore every day to work( white bucks, crew cut, the whole package...see picture above!).  Will wants to wear a pair to graduate in; to pay tribute to his grandfather and to acknowledge that he is the McKinley House prefect this year.  Again, the layers of meaning in this gesture are many.  I know everyone goes through this, and I am excited about Will's next steps, but our lives will feel a little empty for awhile without his big presence.  So, here we are....can we really be here already?  I thought I might just put a couple of pieces of my own up tonight to pay homage to Will, to RPM (my dad), and finally to US (I gave the graduation address in 2005 as the McKinley/Hawley years came to a close, and just talked of my myriad connections to US, especially my connection as a parent)..

I watch them amazed

They are both so beautiful.

He well-muscled, seventeen, tousled hair, that smile.

She tall as he, a slim beauty with long blonde hair,

a knock out at fourteen.

They are mine but even more,

they are each other’s.

He has loved her out loud even unborn,

my stethoscope in his ears, dancing to her heartbeat.

In those black Batman boots, he sang to her and

offered his favorite toy when she arrived.

All these years have slipped like

shuffled cards through my hands,

and here he is needing her advice on colleges,

making sure his girlfriend gets the nod.

Oh she teased him so;

making him jump through hoops to love her,

but she has watched his every move,

making him laugh, helping him write.

Needing him, she has grown

into this graceful beauty he loves to defend.

What finer reward of parenting than this?

Their love as sure a thing as Spring’s arrival,

as divine.

Love Song for my Father

Walking the great gray dog,

loving how her velvet ears stream out behind her

as she lopes away and blends perfectly

with the dun world of Cleveland March,

I feel him moving with us in these woods.

I feel him in this pocket of breeze

lifting, moving just those leaves and branches

near us, like a wave as we move,

touching my face and arms.

And suddenly I am there again and he says,

Why do you love me?

as he lies in the dark, fighting with his pain,

in the big bed with the cinnamon gum

all over the back of the headboard.

What a question to ask your daughter!

It surprises me, and I open my mouth to speak,

but somehow my words are swept from me,

 unspoken.  What a thing not to know.

What do I say now, now that you and your pain are gone?

That I forgive you for all you weren’t?

That I finally recognize more of what you were?

I wish you had shared more of you with us,

your daughters, who tried so hard

to be swept up into your enormous,

 educating-boys, gifted life.

Your question was an offering

to me, an opening.

I know who I am, can you accept me, love me now?

But I stood thickly, didn’t I,

knee deep in anger and impotence,

letting this chance fall like water through my fingers.

With words, we shared illness, though.

For the first time, you wrote me letters –

Dear Cancer, love Vascular Compromise,

Dear Chemotherapy, love Aortic Bifemoral Bypass,

Dear Strength, love Patience,

Dear Metastases, Love Pain,

Dear Grief, love Loss.

As I stand looking at the school

you built, I feel you stirring in me.

I marveled as you clung by your bloody fingertips

to life, your jagged pain cutting you to ribbons.

But as I bear witness to my own disease,

I understand this fierceness,

this wild aliveness you gave me.

I feel your words working in me too,

your love of language, the way you worked

a room when you opened your mouth.

So I open my mouth to these woods,

and I say I love you out loud.

I shout it out over the lake,

I reverberate it through halls of timeless boys.

We have loved each other imperfectly,

unevenly, but time works you around me

a little closer each time I’m here.

The beautiful dog comes when she hears me yell,

her love so simple somehow.

University School Graduation Address given 6/3/05

Good morning Class of 2005! -- and good morning to your parents, faculty and friends.  I’m delighted to be here.  But I have to tell you that I have an eerie feeling that I was also destined to be standing here before you, right here, right now, addressing Dr. Hawley’s last graduating Class.

Now you may find this curious as you have never heard my name or seen my face before, AND I’m a girl, but as you may have heard in Dr. Hawley’s introduction, I have many connections to US.

In fact, I have so many connections that I thank my lucky stars I wasn’t born a boy, because if I had actually gone to school here too….well, as a physician, I can say that this situation might not have been compatible with life—too much US-ness.  The truth is that this place has woven itself firmly into my DNA whether I have wanted it too or not. 

I grew up here—literally.  My father became the 5th headmaster of University School in 1963 when I was 3 years old.  He reigned supreme for the next 25 years—until I was 28—when Dr. Hawley took over.  Now these years are very formative years in a lifetime.  During this time, my mother was the lower school librarian and reading specialist, and I have had the great good fortune to call the Hawleys friends since I was 8.  And there are many more connections that I’ll talk about,

But before I do, seniors, I want to tell you about a little research I did in my office.  I polled the office staff and some of the medical students I work with, and not a single one of them could remember who had given their high school graduation address or what the talk  had been about.  I’m not sure whether this makes me feel good up here, but at least I know what I’m up against.  So, to make things simpler, I’m going to focus on just 1 word, and that word is foundation. 

And I’m going to do this by telling you some stories:

My very first memory of US is walking over the wooded grounds of what would become this upper school campus with my father who was, and still is I might add, larger than life.  I’m 7, and I remember that walking with Dad was a bit like walking next to Paul Bunyon.  There he was striding over the rocks and through the forest as I scrabbled over rocks behind him.  I remember him stopping and turning to me and saying” Lis, what do you see?”  And I looked around and said something like, “a forest?”  He said, “I see a school, do you see it?”  Well, I have to admit that I was focusing more on the salamanders at my feet, but there was no denying his incredible excitement about this place, about education.  This new property would be his foundation for educating boys. 

Now I’m 11 years old, and it’s Saturday and I’m sitting in the conference room outside of the headmaster’s office upstairs.  I’m folding a stack of hundreds of letters to upper school parents and putting them into envelopes.  I’ve been hired with the promise of a ride in that convertible and ice cream if I get everything done, and I’m eager to spend time with Dad, so I agree. 

But this is a dull task and a long one.  What I remember is gradually beginning to pay attention to the conversation I’m overhearing.  Dad has a record playing—It’s a Princeton Nasoons recording that a graduate has sent him.  Over this I hear two very distinct voices, Dad’s and the new, young teacher whom dad really likes, a guy named Hawley.  They are talking, loudly, back and forth, and laughing, for hours.  Now what is so remarkable about this scene is that it is repeated many times until I realized that there are other things to do on a Saturday afternoon or dad hires some very needed help. 

But until then, I went many Saturdays to that conference room.  Each time the scene is the same.  I clearly don’t remember everything about what was said, but I do remember the essence.  I remember the excitement they shared.  They were debating, and pushing each other, pounding fists, and laughing—a lot--, and I remember understanding at some point that these guys were working……they were loving what they were doing, and what they were doing was remarkable.  They were developing innovative curriculum and programming that would challenge and stretch boys so that they took chances and failed sometimes, but felt supported enough to get back up and do something they didn’t think they could.  They were developing an environment in which boys could build a foundation of scholarship that was unsurpassed, and that’s what each of these men committed their lives to doing, and this epoch has spanning the last 42 years.  That’s a long time!

Ok, now I’m 15, and I am in the passenger seat of the old blue US truck fitted with a snow plow, and Dad is driving.  Believe it or not, we are plowing the long upper school driveway at some crazy hour in the morning on a school day, and it’s freezing.  Clearly Dad has not yet hired the help he needs, but the truth is he loves doing this.  I’m sleepy, but I’m company as my older sister has rebelled and refused all things US, and here we are again talking about this school and boys and education. 

I’m not exactly sure if dad ever really recognized that he had two girls, but that’s really a different talk. You do understand at this point that I couldn’t get away from it—from these discussions of education and boys.  I mean being the headmaster’s daughter was just not always all that fabulous.  All right seniors, would you date the headmaster’s daughter?  I don’t think so.  I began to rebel a little myself having grown somewhat tired of talking about educating boys.  I went away to college, and there was Peace.  I still heard about US when I talked to mom and dad, but mostly all was quiet.

Then I decide that I really have to be a doctor, and that Case is the place I must go, so back I come to Cleveland, just a little worried about returning to the whole US thing, as dad is still the headmaster .  And what do I do?  I literally knock over a fine US graduate with a wonderful foundation of his own as I’m getting off the elevator in my third year of medical school, and I end up marrying the guy –something that I had secretly sworn never to do. 

Not only that, I spend many hours with his father who was the University School psychiatrist hired by my father who speaks tirelessly about learning and boys.  And then I meet Ibby Gilkeson, my husband Chip’s grandmother, who happens to be a pioneer of early childhood education and a consultant at US for primary curriculum until she was at least 80.  And she can talk of nothing but the early education of boys.  Once again, I’m completely surrounded.  I’m surrounded by people I love who have spent so much of their lives making US the place to educate boys.

And then what happens?  I have a BOY!  And at first, I think I’m not ready for this much US-ness, and Will goes to our local public school.  But when that stops working for him, we send him across that checkered hall at the US lower school.  Now you understand that his first steps into the lower school take him right under the portraitly nose of his grandfather.  I was a little worried as I walked him into the building that first day, but I knew he would be ok when he turned around and broke into a big grin as he pointed to that portrait and said, “Mom, I know that guy”. 

Fairly soon he realized that his heritage might not always be a blessing.  Especially when he got into trouble with a teacher my Dad had hired who told him, “Will, I expect more from you”.  Will came home fuming, calling it all so unfair, and then he hung his head and told me that he really liked this teacher, and that the teacher was right.  This is what it’s about, isn’t it?  Will stepped up and worked hard for this teacher.  He was learning to build his very own foundation of scholarship. 

And he has thrived here, and it is through him that I have my most important perspective on US-as a parent.  Now I know that the road to seats you occupy today isn’t always an easy one. My son has had his struggles just getting through 7^th grade.  But it is through Will that I finally understand what Dad, Dr. Hawley, my mom, my husband Chip, Dr. Bob, and Ibby Gilkeson and so many others have been talking about: That this US education is so very formative.  In this incredible environment you have worked very hard to lay down a solid foundation on which you now can build whatever you want.

My wonderful husband said to me early on in our relationship, “Lis, he said, I went to Princeton and my classes were nothing like Dr. Hawley’s philosophy class.  I got three Ds in a row and that had never happened to me before!” and he pulled out a paper he still had from that class with more red pen on it than typing and the D- circled at the bottom.  There are some words at the bottom that say something like, “Chip, you are capable of so much more than this”.  And you know what?  He knew it was true, and he worked like he had never worked for this inspiring teacher, headmaster, writer who knew what he was capable of. 

And that’s what each of you takes from here.  The knowledge that you were pushed and pulled and stretched – in whatever direction or directions it may have been, in the classroom on the athletic field, wherever, and that you have succeeded in building a foundation of excellence.  And when college gets hard or you feel overwhelmed, you know you can count on it.  This foundation will always be there, it will never go away, and you have it when you need it.  What a gift.

And what a gift I’ve been given—to know this place and the people who have lead it so spectacularly and loved it for so long.  And how lucky am I to be standing here talking to you today.  It’s been such a pleasure.  As my father would say, “Well done, gentlemen, and good luck!”

A Blessing of Spring (James Wright, Reginald Gibbons, Ted Kooser)

Spring!  How wonderful, isn't it?  I even woke my kids up this morning and we all went off to celebrate Easter at a new church.  Now this is really something for me.  I have been attending the same church, off and on, since I was in the children's choir at about age 10.  I have been a confirmation sponsor for several of my friend's children--one a very articulate, well-reasoned atheist.  For the last many years, I have found that the services talk less and less to me, and recently, i have been searching for something.....else.  I don't know if I have yet found it, but I love the two ministers of this new place.  They work together every service.  They are funny, open, intelligent, thoughtful, and acknowledge that they don't have all the answers.  Ok, I like this.....a lot.  We even picked up my mother this morning.  Looking next to me at my 18 and 15 year olds paying some attention, laughing, feeling some of the message, and even singing....well, this is a new thing for us all.  We all even chimed in for a quick rendition of the Alleluia chorus.  Maybe this was a little over the top, but we were rocking it in the moment.  So Spring is feeling really good, and really needed around here.  The snow is gone, green is in, and there are even trees in full blossom.  There is resurrection all around us today, so let's have a few Spring poems to carry this forward a little. Happy Spring everyone!  I know I've sent "A Blessing" before, but it is so wonderful, I'm sending it again.  Check out the others, too.

A Blessing
by James Wright
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me. We step over the barbed wire into the pasture Where they have been grazing all day, alone. They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness That we have come. They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. There is no loneliness like theirs. At home once more, They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, For she has walked over to me And nuzzled my left hand. She is black and white, Her mane falls wild on her forehead, And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist. Suddenly I realize That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom.

In cold spring air
by Reginald Gibbons
In cold spring air the white wisp- visible breath of a blackbird singing— we don’t know to un- wrap these blind- folds we keep thinking we are seeing through

Late February 

by Ted Kooser

The first warm day,
and by mid-afternoon
the snow is no more
than a washing
strewn over the yards,
the bedding rolled in knots
and leaking water,
the white shirts lying
under the evergreens.
Through the heaviest drifts
rise autumn's fallen
bicycles, small carnivals
of paint and chrome,
the Octopus
and Tilt-A-Whirl
beginning to turn
in the sun. Now children,
stiffened by winter
and dressed, somehow,
like old men, mutter
and bend to the work
of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;
by five o'clock
the chill of sundown,
darkness, the blue TVs
flashing like storms
in the picture windows,
the yards gone gray,
the wet dogs barking
at nothing. Far off
across the cornfields
staked for streets and sewers,
the body of a farmer
missing since fall
will show up
in his garden tomorrow,
as unexpected
as a tulip.