Write Now. Write Here.

The poetry in our life can be coy.  It hides and waits to be found.  It demands that we have world enough and time enough to look.  It can be found in the leafy green of the trees now that April’s here.  It can be found trembling leaves when the wind is passing through.  It can be seen in the face of the moon as it stares in the air in a nighttime game of hide and seek. Poetry gives us words for those moments that take us by surprise.

Poetry can be found in moments of celebration.  I saw it on Saturday at the Bat Mitzvah of a former student.  I heard poetry in her luminous reading of the Torah, and I heard it as she sang words that rang though the sanctuary.  I saw it in the awed faces of her classmates, many of whom were second graders with her in Room 204.  I saw poetry in the joy of her parents.  “Remember?”  her mother asked me.  I smiled. Yes, I remember.

Later on Saturday, I saw poetry in purple frosted cupcakes on a picnic bench in the park.  I heard poetry as we sang Happy Birthday to my one year old granddaughter.  I felt poetry as we joined hands in a circle. I heard poetry in my son’s prayer of Thanksgiving even as his first birthday replayed in my head.  I saw it in the two ducks who came to join us and I heard it in my daughter in law’s greeting: “Oh, look… Mr. and Mrs. Mallard are here…”  Some days are so special that poetry does not even bother to hide.

The third graders in Room 204 are experts at finding poetry.  And we love to find it in one of its favorite hiding places;  we hunt for poetry in prose.  We note metaphor, personification, simile, alliteration, and internal rhyme.  These terms are not important for third graders to know (and they are not on the SOL’s), but they have evolved naturally through conversation. We don’t learn them by definition– we just name these poetic elements as we uncover them in prose.

We now know to look.

Ode To Poetry in Prose
By Annie Campbell

Poetry I’ve seen you hide
In slow moving herds of words
Ever cleverly disguised.
Camouflaged in rows of prose
You roam on the loose-
Popping up where you choose–
Until I chance upon you.

Poetry I’ve seen you hide.
Stitched in the friction
Of old and new
Pictures and feelings,
You blaze into the song of talk.
You get me again and again
Yet now I know to look.

Where have you found poetry?

Then. I found poetry spilling out of my first box of 64 Crayons.  Suddenly buildings weren’t red, they were brick red; dirt wasn’t brown, it was burnt sienna; a sunset sky wasn’t orange, it was a sky streaked with coral, peach, periwinkle, and lilac.  The woods behind my house weren’t green, they were forest green,  and I learned to do cartwheels over spring green grass. My favorite crayon?  Gold.

I found poetry in naming the colors of my world.

Now. I hear the clatter of spilling verse in the chatter of children around me.  I try to catch and juggle syllables. Words.  Phrases. But they melt like snowflakes in midair if I don’t write them down.

My mother-in-law taught poetry.  One Sunday afternoon, we sat in her living room in that comfortable After-Sunday-Dinner silence measured by the ticking of an old family clock. She was one hundred years old.  Into that silence she recited a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay; then some Tennyson; and then some Longfellow. She was losing her hearing and her sight and her memory, but not her poetry. Memorizing poetry, she said, “has lined my heart with gold.” She knew just where to find poetry.

On Friday children stood and recited poems from memory.    The poems were beautiful or funny or heartfelt.  We laughed. We nodded.  We snapped our fingers (coffee house style) in appreciation.  As copies were passed out, poetry folders got thicker and thicker.  We took turns reading each other’s poetry.  Yes, they said, let’s do this next week, too.

And we will. We will look for poetry and find it.  We will memorize it and recite it.  We will write it.  In a room of lilac and forest green, we are lining our hearts with gold.

Life is poetry.

There are moments that stand alone: each one a perfect phrase with notable, quotable timelessness.  “This,” we say to ourselves,  “This I will remember.”

There are the shyer, less showy moments that come and go without fanfare.  They re-emerge as syllables of wonder.   They shimmer in retrospect with a numinous, luminous glow.   Each one is a haiku of grace.

Poetry is the gentle flute that beckons us off the tired and worn way toward a new way of seeing.

Poetry invites us to go to “the pasture spring” with Robert Frost: “You come too.” Poetry tells us (through Mary Oliver) to “be astonished.”  Poetry urges us (through T.S. Eliot) to “measure out our life in coffee spoons.”  Poetry opens our ears (through Walt Whitman) to “hear America singing.” Poetry invites us (through Edna St. Vincent Millay) to be “the gladdest thing under the sun,” and to see the world as made “too beautiful this year.”  Poetry opens our eyes wide even as we wander (with Wordsworth) “lonely as a cloud… upon a host of daffodils.”  Poetry makes us notice (like Robert Browning) “the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf.“  Poetry urges us (through William Carlos Williams) to see “the red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater” and to take the purple plum out of the ice box:  “They were delicious. So cold and so sweet.”

Poetry reveals and deepens our experience of life.  Look!  The world is too beautiful.  Listen!  America is singing.  Taste the last purple plum.  Pay attention to the red wheelbarrow next to the white chickens.  Step into the moment that glitters — it is your poem to write. It is your poem to live.  Life is poetry.

Bumper Stickers tell a simple personal truth. A truth-telling bumper sticker might be “We Brake for Barbecue.” I’m not sure there really is such a bumper sticker, but I know that over the years we have Braked for Barbecue many times on our way up I-95 to Washington: at the Smokey Pig in Ashland; or at Allman’s in Fredericksburg; or at Dixie Bones in Woodbridge. Sometimes we don’t even make it out of Richmond—we stop at Buzz and Ned’s on the Boulevard before we get on the road.

“We Brake for Sentences.”  That would be a good truth telling bumper sticker on the classroom door of Room 204.  When I am reading aloud, I often brake and marvel aloud at the way an author crafts a sentence.  Children bring books to me to show me a sentence that makes them brake.  We love to talk about what the author is doing.  We sometimes give the technique a name.  It is fun and it makes us playful writing insiders together.

The day came when I had admired the work of other Barbecue cooks long enough.  I could associate region with technique and taste with place.  It was time to find my own recipe; it was time to create an homage  to the Barbecue we’ve braked for along the way.

It’s like that for my students.  Their own style and voice continue to emerge.  I hear the voices of parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends mingled with the voices of authors we have loved.  It’s all in the sauce — their sauce — each child’s unique blend.

And now it is Spring Break. The story unfolds before our eyes: cherry blossoms and daffodils and dogwood and tulips and irises are blooming all over Richmond. If you leave town, it will only be more glorious when you come back. You’ll see a  story unfold wherever you are.  It will be in the tuning up of instruments or in the crack of a bat. It will be in the eyes of zoo animals or in the stroke of a paint brush.  What will inspire you to brake?

They came into Room 204 one by one on Friday.  They came on poster board, on canvas, on construction paper, and on parchment.  They came  in collage, in acrylic, in marker, in crayon.  They spoke through letters, through quotes, and through bits of speeches.  One even spoke from the horse’s mouth.  Their personalities took shape through poetry, storied sketch, comic strip, time line, and through props:  a tall black hat, a bible, a walking stick. They came into Room 204 one by one on Friday: George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln. Thurgood Marshall.  Rosa Parks.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

As we talked, read, and shared projects, we dipped our narrative brush into vats of fact and imagination; through sweeping strokes, a story emerged.  The story is one of trustworthiness, honesty, and self reliance. It is a story of the beginning of this country, and it is the story of now.  It is the story of the relationship between risk and result.  It is the story of the American Citizen.  It is an evolving story and it is incomplete without us.

We didn’t start our story of citizenship with this biography unit. We started it on the first Tuesday in September.   One by one they came into Room 204.  They came in new shoes: sandals, tennis shoes, crocs and clogs. We sat on the green rug and we talked about how to be a great third grader:  Be  kind.  Be fair.  Be responsible.

On that rug, on that first day of school, there was a boy who did not yet speak English.  Remember?  I remembered Friday as I listened to him read his project on Abraham Lincoln in lilting English made musical by his voice.

A parade of American citizens, past and present, came into Room 204 one by one on Friday.  A story emerged that was beautiful and stirring.  And an Egyptian citizen reminded me how universal the tenets of good citizenship are.  It always starts with kindness. With fairness.  And with responsibility.

I was skeptical. This year I decided to teach memoir for the first time. I wondered if it would work.

I begin every new project the same way: I take a fresh file folder (a promise of good to come) and label it with a Sharpie pen.  I soon discovered that if you label an empty folder with the word memoir, it is no longer empty.  Suddenly, memory is engaged:  sea air, spring grass, wet autumn leaves, mossy trees, and the smell of ocean sand are wafting from the card stock.

Before we ever pick up a pen, a scent or taste has picked up a story waiting to be relived and told.  In that way, memoir starts without us.  Maybe that is why recipes are so often laced with memoir: “A favorite at family birthday dinners…”

Writing and cooking work the same way.   Molly O’Neil and Amanda Hessar and Laurie Colwin and Claudia Roden and Elizabeth David and M.F.K Fisher and Julia Child are stellar members of the Culinary Writer’s Clubhouse.  One by one they have stepped forth from the pages of books, whisk and word choice in hand, to befriend me in the kitchen.   In the alchemy of verb and adverb they’ve taught me to match caper and tomato; orange and chocolate; vanilla and sweet potato; mint and lemon; cheese and olive; peach and blackberry; coconut and curry.

I knew these writers were my mentors at the stove, but now I  see that they also mentor my understanding of memoir.  Much of what I pass on about writing and language  I’ve learned from these, my kitchen friends.

There are moments, like spices, that are too bitter to stand alone, but whose tartness adds zest when gently folded into the redeeming mix of unfolding story.   We sort through details, like lentils, sorting out inedible pebble from nourishing bean.

We stir.  We fold.  We whisk.  Sweet and sour moments mix with those which are flavorful and finespun.  We write and taste as we go.   Our story takes shape moment by moment, — and moment by moment I learn something new:  memoir writing is perfect for eight and nine year olds.

I was skeptical about teaching memoir, but I now see the power of it.  As children write their lives, they love their lives.

I watch it and savor it.

Just over a week ago the snow melted into daffodils.   My husband and I took advantage of the springlike day and walked to Millie’s for brunch. A young couple sat next to us and read The New Yorker.  Each had a copy of the current issue, a clue that they were dating and not married.  (Otherwise they would have just one copy.)   A conversation was inevitable; I can’t resist finding out why people read what they read.  And I’d been thinking about The New Yorker as I taught memoir to my third graders.  My own understanding of memoir has been shaped by that magazine.

It turns out their parents (both sets) are readers of The New Yorker and give them subscriptions every  Christmas.  They grew up on the same magazine in different states.  (Great marriages have been made on less, but I managed to keep that to myself.)

My subscription, too,  is a gift from my mother.   And her subscription was a gift from her mother, a charter New Yorker subscriber in February of 1925.  For over fifty years, my grandmother read every issue from cover to cover.  They piled up on her bedside table, waiting their turn, while she read them in order.  My approach is different.  I read what I can, something wonderful each week, and move on to the new issue as soon as it comes.   My choices are often based on a phone call with my mom or my friend Cindy or my sister in law, Debbi.  “You’ll love this,” we say to each other.  And we do.

We won’t be talking about The New Yorker this week in Room 204, but we’ll meet some of its greatest contributors through the stellar books they wrote for children.  In writing, William Steig, James Thurber, and E.B. White would be considered crossover artists: chart toppers in more than one category.  At The New Yorker, their elegant contributions were for adults — but their writing for children tops charts, too.

We will do an author study of William Steig.  No other artist has created as many New Yorker covers (July 26, 1958 is shown above) . He won the Caldecott medal for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and also wrote Shrek. And we’ll start Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White this week.  It was chosen as a Newberry Honor Book.  I can’t think of a children’s book I love more.  

After E.B. White’s death in 1985, The New Yorker described his “boundless and gallant capacity for wonder.”   As a teacher, I want that boundless and gallant capacity for wonder for my students.  Academic success is arid without it.  So is life.  Writing life is loving life.  For adults, and for children.

I recognized the red dress with its prim white collar right away.  I’d seen her on the Bisquick box a hundred times.  I was five when I spotted Betty Crocker in the snack bar on an Army base in  Germany.

The memory of that day is vivid.  I left my mother absentmindedly turning a blue graham cracker box in her hands, and sidled  toward the table where Betty Crocker sat, reading a magazine.

“I know who you are,”  I said.  “You’re Betty Crocker.”

She looked up. Her face melted into a dazzling smile that I knew was just for me.  She nodded and went back to reading her magazine.  I could not believe my luck. I could hardly stand it!  I ran back to my mother’s side and tried not to point, “It’s Betty Crocker!” I whispered.

My mother smiled.   “Oh, yes.  It IS Betty Crocker. Isn’t that nice?”

How could a day be any better?

Years later, when my siblings and I were grown and married,  we were sitting around  my parents’ dining room table for a family dinner.  We were talking about the interesting people we’d met through the years.

“I’ll never forget meeting Betty Crocker,” I said.

Silence.

“I did.”

Laughter.

“Annie’s idyllic childhood…”  said my brother.  “Where were we?”

More laughter.

“Who introduced you?” asked my sister.  “Mrs. Butterworth?”

“Maybe Uncle Ben,” answered my other brother.

My dad laughed, “Annie, you can sure think ’em up.”

“Mom was there, she knows.  Weren’t you, Mom?”  I implored.

“Annie, Betty Crocker isn’t real.”

“What?”

Guffaws.

“Mom, we met her in the snack bar in Germany.  You know we did.”

“Oh yes, I remember that woman… she was chosen to dress up and promote Betty Crocker products for General Mills.  You know, if you look at the  portraits of Betty Crocker over time, you’ll see they change with time, but they never age.”

My mother went on to tell us how she would never forget meeting Elsie, the Borden Cow, at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.  It turns out the Borden Cow was real.

Betty Crocker may have had her picture on the Bisquick Box, but she wasn’t  the one that mixed Bisquick into Sunday  morning magic as my father’s sound track of The Music Man played in the background.  She wasn’t the one who let me stand on the stool next to her and stir as we sang 76 Trombones.  She wasn’t the one who let me lick the spoon.

It turns out I didn’t meet Betty Crocker in a snack bar on an Army base in Germany, after all.  I met her in my mother’s kitchen.

We are learning that memoir is the story of a moment– a moment that begins with a scrap of memory.  My memoir begins with a scrap of green fabric with a tiny white design.

We arrived in Cairo in June, just days before I turned ten.  Through that first summer, we would often walk after dinner to what my father called “The Biggest Sandbox in the World:”  The Sahara Desert. We walked past a large  yellow building that stood among palm trees behind black and gold iron gates.  It had been a palace.  It was now a school.  It would be my school.  I was told the bathroom faucets were made of gold.

Summer made its slow sultry way toward September.  My mother told me that Alice, an Egyptian seamstress, was making my dress for the first day of school.  It would be a surprise.

On that final night of summer I went to bed knowing I would wake to a new school in an old palace; to new friends;  to faucets made of  gold; and to a new dress.

I awoke to the familiar smell of my parents’ coffee.  There is was. Draped over the chair in the corner of my room,  I saw my new dress. It was made of emerald green fabric with a tiny white design.  I leapt up, and then my heart sank.  The tiny white design?  Tiny white hieroglyphics.  My dress looked like a souvenir.  My mother came in, her eyes bright with excitement over this surprise, “You are going to look just darling in this dress!”

I knew there was only one thing to do.“Thanks, Mom.  I love it,” I said quietly.  I put on the dress and hoped for the best.

“Wait, Sweetheart!  There’s more.”

She handed me a brown bag with my school supplies.  I reached in and pulled out text books that were covered in fabric. Green fabric.  Green fabric with a tiny white design.  Hieroglyphics.  I was mortified.

If anyone noticed that my books matched my dress on that first day, they were kind enough not to say anything about it.  And if my mom noticed that I only wore that dress once, she never said anything.  I made lots of friends.  And there really were faucets made of gold in pink alabaster bathrooms.

George Eliot said, “The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand…”  What she doesn’t say is that some golden moments call us back and give us a second chance.  When we write a memoir, the story of a moment, sand spins itself back into gold.

I  prayed every night that I wouldn’t get Mrs. Shepherd for third grade.  She was old.   I wanted the young pretty teacher who taught next door.  We all did. I learned about unanswered prayer as I was directed to Room 119 on the first day of school.  I had good manners, but I was stunned to find Mrs. Shepherd was my teacher.  I fought back the tears, but not the words: “But I prayed I wouldn’t get you!”

A hint of a smile came to her crone-like face: “And I prayed I wouldn’t get you…  We’ll make the best of it.”

I was directed to a front row seat reserved for children who read well.  By the end of the day I was redirected to a back row seat for children who talked a lot. Our first homework assignment: “Write a story about an adventure you might have had, but didn’t.  And use a pen…you are third graders now.”  And so it was that I began my writing life with a blue BIC pen from the Five and Dime.

We lived in the woods on the York River.  I wrote about  my sister and the raft we might have  built and the river journey we might have taken. I wrote  about the Indians who might have come to the shore when they heard the  timbre of our pirate cries: “We are Snow White and Rose Red and we’ll love each other until we’re dead!”  I wrote how those Indians might have adopted us as their own.

The next day Mrs. Shepherd read my story to the class and said, “Ann Hopkins, you are a writer.”

It turned out Mrs. Shepherd and I had something in common.  She lived in the same place I did when she was my age.  My woods had been her woods. She had been eight years old once!  I was moved up a few rows.

Mrs. Shepherd was born in the 1800’s.  I decided that was why she talked the way she did. She never said, “Get your things.”  She said, “Collect your belongings.”  She referred to coats as wraps, to boots as galoshes, and to the coat closet as the cloak room. Her haggish features seemed to fade with time.  I could see a girl in her eyes.

I think of her often.  I understand so much more now than I did then; those woods aren’t the only terrain we’ve shared.  I know that in naming children by name as writers, I pass on her teacher blessing. And what I know now is that she was an answer to prayer after all.