A Small Thing

It seems so strange sometimes to have devoted my creative life to poetry, something that is so very quiet and fills up so little space In our world.  It is strange indeed to puzzle over whether “a mirror” or “the mirror” sounds better, or means better, in a given line, or whether an article is needed at all.  It could almost be seen as a mental illness if looked at from the outside.  Why would someone sit for hours, crossing out then rewriting  then crossing out then rewriting the same phrase over and over – a phrase that few, if any, may ever read?

There is so much noise, so much language, so many vibrant, flickering images vying for our attention in our culture of non-stop electric advertainment. How can poetry survive, an art that will never demand attention, will never flash or explode or press itself into anyone’s senses, except through a willing imagination.  The poem lies on the page, or moves in the mouth, and waits to give its little portion of magic.  But it requires quiet and time, two things of which we have so little these days.

On bad days I feel that writing poetry is like phrenology  or exorcism – an activity that once felt full of meaning and importance but has been shown to be useless by modern science and technology.  But I can’t stop – and even on those bad days I remember what poetry can do, what it’s done for me, and I know it is still serves some vital need.

I named this blog Wing of Earth, Wing of Fire to describe two ways of perceiving that lift language and human experience into the realm of the sacred.  The wing of earth is our perception through the senses – the mysterious channels through which the natural world can enter us and transform us.  The wing of fire is the imagination, the capacity through which we can leave our limited experience and enter a kind of holy communion with other beings: our friends and neighbors, humans long dead or yet to be born, animals, plants, even stones and water, even the holy I AM.   

Poetry at its best opens a reader’s senses and imagination so that the barrier between the lonely little self and the gorgeous, scary, fierce, tender world begins to crumble.  A simpler way to say it:  a good poem reminds us to pay attention, and when we pay attention, the natural result is an awakening of love and compassion.  

It’s so small, a poem on a page, a voice speaking language meticulously weighed and lovingly chosen – yet poems teach so much about being human; they teach me to live awake in the world, and that is no small thing. 

A poem that has meant a lot to me over the years is Mary Oliver's “Messenger” from her wonderful book Thirst.

Messenger

By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world. 

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —    equal seekers of sweetness.  Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.  Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? 
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me 
   keep my mind on what matters, 
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.
which is mostly standing still and learning to be 
   astonished. 
The phoebe, the delphinium. 
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. 
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart 
   and these body-clothes, 
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy 
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, 
telling them all, over and over, how it is 
   that we live forever.

You Don't Get An Acceptance Letter to the School of Rock

Today on my Facebook feed, a friend posted about the acceptance letter her son had received from one of the colleges he applied to.  Lately, there’s a post about an acceptance letter every day, or a photo of an acceptance letter, or news of a scholarship. It’s fun to imagine my son’s friends, the children of my friends, embarking on their college careers, picking majors, making new friends, and discovering the joy of having your worldview challenged and changed by encounters with new ideas and new people.

                My son is a junior, so this is not the year for him to receive those letters.  Instead he’s been receiving glossy pamphlets and enticing come-ons from colleges, each promising wonderful opportunities for intellectual growth and doors flung open to marvelous careers.  There are pictures of beautiful young people walking on shady paths, or peering through microscopes, or reading picturesquely in the grass.  When they come, I just toss them in the recycling.  Sam doesn’t even look at them, and he won’t be one of those beautiful young students, because he’s not planning to go to college.

                This has been hard for me to accept.  I’ve taught at a small liberal arts college for my entire adult life, and I absolutely adored being a student in college and graduate school.   I loved every class I took except two, education and anthropology, one because the material was stupid, or seemed so to me at the time, and one because the teacher read his notes from an overhead projector.

How they made information boring in the olden days before Powerpoint.

For me, college was where I experienced the giddy joy of understanding the inner and outer worlds in new and deeper ways.  In college I began to wake up to the smallness of my life, and to the largeness of my responsibility as a citizen of the world.  It’s hard for me to imagine such a vital transformation happening without going to college.

                But Sam from a very young age resisted the idea that college was essential, and once he entered high school, the idea of purposely prolonging his time in school became deeply unappealing to him. I could write about the way his highly rigorous academic school has failed to meet his needs as a learner – and perhaps I will some day; but that’s really a pretty minor factor in Sam’s lack of interest in college.  It’s not really high school.  It’s him.

                He could go to college.  He tests extremely well.  He writes extremely well.  His grades are not bad, though not as good as they should be judging by his standardized test scores.  For a long time I have thought of him as an underachiever.  But that’s true only if I use his grades as the measure of achievement.  But to do that is to measure him by my experiences, passions and desires. His passion has never been for academic work, despite his capability, and measured according to his own priorities, he’s achieved plenty.

 He’s written so many songs since he was five years old that he can’t keep track of them all. He formed a band when he was in third grade that continues to play together.  He’s recorded an album and is planning a second.  He lines up gigs.  He arranges music and sings in three a capella groups.  He plays guitar in church.   Besides music, Sam’s priority is friendship, and Sam is a loyal and loving friend, a gentle soul who wants to make other people happy.  He’d rather skimp a little on homework and spend more time enjoying the company of other human beings.  He’s often said that the best thing he can imagine is writing a song that brings another person comfort and hope in a hard time. 

                He wants to devote himself to music when he’s done high school.  He wants time to make the band happen. He wants to get a job to earn money for the gear he needs to make the band happen.  He told me when he was twelve that he was going to be a rock star.  I sometimes think my job as a mother is to be the realist, the one who points out that hardly anybody gets to be a rock star and tells him he should have a back-up plan.  For several years I quietly insisted that he would be going to college, in spite of his almost total lack of interest.  You need a degree in case the music career doesn’t work out, I’d say, even though the greatest benefits I got from going to college had little to do with my career, and even though my post college career has not been at all lucrative. 

Early Days

                In fact, our family’s poor finances have given his decision to forgo college a certain practical appeal.  I have to admit to feeling some relief knowing we won’t be scrambling to pay the debilitating cost of tuition at even an “affordable” college.  Yet there is a little sting when I hear his friends discussing their college plans, when I hear other parents talking excitedly about their children’s academic achievements.  I imagine his high school graduation will have a strange anticlimactic feeling to it as he moves on not to the hallowed halls of a prestigious institution of higher learning, but to a low wage job and dreams of making it big.  I might feel embarrassed when I tell people what he’s doing, though I know I will also feel proud.  I still wonder, sometimes, if I should try to change his mind.

                But I’m done with that.  It’s not my job to say his dream isn’t realistic.  People can make a living in music, though often not a steady or regular income.  Some people even become rock stars.  And if rock stardom is not his destiny, he’ll learn that eventually, and discover some other path, a path that he chooses because it lights him up.  And who knows, that path may even, eventually, include college.  

You can check out Sam's music here: https://soundcloud.com/circusfiction/sets/the-maze