Last year, I carpooled with a few colleagues to a
literacy conference in Salt Lake. On
the first morning of the conference, a couple of us went to a breakout session
and heard from Georgia Heard, who offered these tidbits (among others) for teaching and
writing poetry:
-
Find poetry in the ordinary
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Observe the small moments around us
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Be filled with curiosity and wonder
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See beauty in the ugly (beyond stereotypes)
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Look at the world in a new way (simile and
metaphor)
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Love the meaning and sound of words
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Pay attention to and write from all feelings
-
Always be on the lookout for poetry seeds
-
See that you can look at anything and find a
poem
Sound advice; and points I wholeheartedly agree with,
especially as I name Billy Collins as my favorite modern poet. He subscribes to
all of the above. (I try to as well when I pretend to poet.)
The next morning, as we began our journey north, we
started a conversation about poetry, and I shared an anecdote about using Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Valentine for Ernest Mann” as a writing prompt for my 9th
graders. And as we discussed the place that poems hide, especially in the lives
of teenagers who refuse to look for them, I spotted a middle-aged woman in a
bright pink bathrobe, mismatched house slippers, and curlers, cigarette smoke
shrouding most of her face, sitting slouched on a short, crumbling cement and
brick wall at a bus stop. Flippantly, I mentioned that there was even a poem in
that.
We had a good laugh—not at the woman, but at the truth
that there was poetry everywhere, waiting to be discovered. Susan took that and
ran with it. For the rest of the day (actually for the rest of the school year),
she was always pointing out people and objects—ordinary or extraordinary—and asking
me, “Is there a poem in that?” I think it started as a jest, but it stuck with
me, and the rest of us, I believe, and we started seeing things for more than
what they were. Our eyes were opened, if you will.
Susan used this and the presentations from Georgia Heard
and Brod Bagert as a foundation for sharing with her students, advising them to
always be on the lookout for poetry seeds. She also used this as a presentation
during a week-long institute for the Central Utah Writing Project that I helped
facilitate. The participants loved it and the other ideas she shared about
poetry.
My favorite part was a haiku that Susan crafted and
shared (and illustrated with an accompanying photo she found):
One of those
mornings:
Slept through alarm; can’t find keys.
How I HATE Mondays.
A simple, shared sentiment—one that most of us dread—captured
poetically. An image; a thought; a feeling. All of these can spark poetry.
Another of my most favorite recent experiences with this is the “Three-Mile Radius” exhibit at the Springville Art Museum featuring art by Jacqui Larsen
and poetry by her husband, Utah Poet Laureate Lance Larsen. I visited the
museum with my nine year old daughter Brooklyn, queen of finding the art and
poetry in the simple motions of daily life. I strongly recommend that you visit
the exhibit before it’s over (22 Oct 16).
I guess the whole point of this post is to remind myself
and whoever happens to read this far to look for the beauty and the profound in
the simple day-to-day living. Who knows, you might find a poem in the recesses
of your closet, the soccer-stained socks hanging on the edge of the tub next to
a pile of Band-Aids and tissues, or the stack of undisturbed memos in your in
box. I know I have found a few over the past few months. I’ve even gone so far as
to scribble a few lines in sundry scattered notebooks. Maybe I’ll go back to
them and remember the beauty I wanted to save for another day.