In our little town in Northern California, we have our own poet laureate. and monthly readings by locals and regional guests. I’m sit on the board of the committee that brings poetry to the local schools and hosts the ukiahaiku festival, now in its 7th year. In addition to the adult categories we have several for various ages of students from 1st – 12th grades (~1600 submissions this year). Typically, the best poems come from the 4-6th graders. It seems they are old enough to comprehend the form and the concept of a haiku and patient enough to think and write. The high school submissions are more often a direct experience of their teen life activity, and seem to be dashed off the night before without including the quiet moments of personal intimacy Nicole describes above.

I confess that were I not involved, I would hear less poetry and write less. The experience of hearing a good poem by a good reader puts me in that kind of quiet space that lingers when I come home, and sometimes I write to sustain the feeling.

In spite of all the other things in the world, poetry still lives.

David

I am compelled by the juxtaposition of the Hubble images with the surfaces of you made. The way you describe the process, it seems to have a mystical dimension, but you do not draw that out. Perhaps it would be overbearing to do so. Perhaps it would “ruin it with words.”

There are two thoughts I have regarding your posting on poetry today. As an instructor at a Historically Black College, I struggle with trying to communicate across a chasm created by generation and by race. My students come from a variety of backgrounds and there is never the luxury of getting to know students as thoroughly as I’d like. I do my best. I sit us in circles. I ask questions. I get personal.

Students don’t want to read literature. There is much more adrenaline in the other forms of input for them. In reading, one has to be with oneself. Last Friday, I asked my students if anyone ever purposely sat in silence. No. I asked what it would be like if I collected their cell phones for the weekend just to give them a chance to spend more time with themselves. For the first time all semester, they became animated. I heard “no way”, and “I’d die” and “Naw, uhuh. No way.”

If we are a world in a feedback loop of our destructive making, then what matters is surviving. For many people, this means staying revved up in whatever way possible. Literature invites us into some kind of contemplatioin. It is not about getting high, but, in a sense, it is about getting low. Particularly if one spends time with the words. If we pause and savor every beautiful phrasing like the sublte flavors of an artisan stew.

There are many poems that arise out of connections with nature. It seems to me that when our culture nurtures a connection to nature, it is superficial–a purely aesthetic connection to the way nature looks. An experience for the eye. A flower on a bottle of shampoo. A happy pig on an advertisement for ham. Or, more subtley, a orchid rich vista as a backdrop to an “escape.”

Even our farmers are different. Most of the people who we have regarded as being connected to the land are in fact “agribusiness” people. They are not in sacred relationship, but in touch with the methods to force from the planet the hugest yield regardless of the toll it takes. And, we all want them to do this. We like things cheap.

But, back to a fruit born of my challeges in accompanying students as they encounter literature.

In an effort to help my students connect with the character Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s play, “Death of a Salesman,” I emphasized the way Willy, when he was upset, would gripe about the inability to grow a carrot in the back yard, or how the apartment buildings were taking up the experience of the sky. In my search for articles on the spiritual dimension of the human/nature connection to give to the students, I encountered the Spanish term “susto.” This word means having a heart-sickness from being disconnected from nature.

Throughout the semester, I ask my students questions like, have you ever been on a ship in the middle of the ocean and felt what it feels like to see no land?

Blank stares.

Anybody ever grow your own garden, or grow up with a family member who did?

One hand.

Anybody ever accompanied a person as they journeyed toward dying?

Two tentative hands creep up.

These people in my classrooms are young. But there is, in addition to inexperience, something sorely wrong. There is one young man in my class who is from Africa. He has a different relationship with these things, having grown up in a small village. He has slaughtered his own animals for food. He knows some significant dimensions of his relationship to living and nature.

I think that part of the decline in the reading of poetry has to do with a decline in the capacity of humans to have a heart connection with creation.
I believe there is a powerful connection between this loss and the loss of our connection with elders in society. We must have this capacity nurtured within us. In our obsession with youth and youngness, we forget to emphasize the wisdom of age, and of the ages. In old age, there can be a kind of acceptance that so many are starving for. There is a perspective in maturity that sees the broader context where competition is the bratty cousin of insight, compassion and patience.

Most of us seek to dominate life.
Poetry presumes a desire to be intimate with life.
Poetry assumes the capacity for wonder, the willingness to be thwarted by awe.

Nicole

I saw slow muse i like this very much . how to sign this blog?

Thanks
Pradeep.V.Nerurkar

I saw your works on slow muse, its very beautifull, The idia of slow muse is great, its great to read.

THANKS
PRADEEP