CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS
An Affiliate of the Poetry Center
Poems for Peace
by Maureen Hurley
"Teach the children about the cycles, the life cycles - ail the other cycles. That's what it's all about..."
—Gary Snyder
I walked into a fifth grade class to teach a poetry workshop and while we were reading poems and discussing poetics, I glanced down at my hand resting on the morning newspaper headlines which shouted in three inch superbold type: "U.S. INVADES LEBANON". Stunned, I stopped what I was saying mid-sentence and asked the students what they thought.
One student wrote, "any step toward war/ is a wrong step." I was dumbstruck by her political and poetic awareness. Soon, the whole class was writing their own poems of protest. This germinal seed sprouted when I read the late poet and visionary, Kenneth Patchen's What Shall We Do Without Us, published by Yollo Bolly Press and reissued by Sierra Club in October of 1984.
Using Patchen's Poem-Paintings as a role model, several poetry recipes developed during my 1984-85 California Arts Council Artists-in-Schools residency at Mark West Union School District (K - Sixth Grade} in Santa Rosa. Students, using both visual and verbal forms of communication, wrote poems of protest, environmental and ecology poems, self portraits, world political portraits and love poems — all with the focus of describing something with multiple perspectives.
I told them about Hyde Park, London, where people stand on real soapboxes to tell the gathered crowd anything they want. I told the students that this was their chance to get up on their soapboxes and tell the world what they were thinking: both inner feelings and how they felt about their environment.
What resulted was a series of posters, Poems for Peace and cards which reached more than the traditional poetry reading audiences. Because they were visually accessable, more people read them and the general comment was of suprise that kids had such deep feelings about these things. Once I had to interview children after the movie "The Day After" was aired. Most kids assumed that they weren't ever going to reach adulthood. One hird grader said, "I'll never reach 21. Why should I think of what I'm going to be
when I grow up?" and walked slowly across the playground.
I remember it was a foggy day and suddenly I was sobbing, not for fear of impending nuclear disaster, but for the children — how they feel inside and no one's asking them to voice their opinion.
Katherine Harer, a former CPITS Executive Director, once quoted a poem that gripped me. Written by a fifth grader, it gowentes something like this: NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE./ Once I was afraid of the dark/ now I'm afraid of the light.
In What Shall We Do Without Us?, Patchen's work in a large 8 x 10" full color format, incorporates both visual and verbal elements, but most importantly, it inspires a direction for poetry in post-nuclear literature. The poet, Carolyn Forché, maintains that anything written after the dropping of the bomb is post-nuclear literature.
Robert Hass said, "You can write a poem about flowers, and have no mention of nuclear war in it, but if you've taken the meaning of nuclear war into yourself, you can write about flowers and you don't have to mention nuclear war. Monet did those water lily paintings as a solution to World War I." The students took the issues into themselves and what blossomed were stunning poem paintings Patchen would have felt an immediate kinship to.
Patchen wrote, "Peace now to all men/ or amen to all things." He wasn't taking the threat lying down. His accusatory poems address the utter foolishness of harboring the idea of nuclear war as a viable means of achieving world peace. He stated, "You can't separate America from the world./ We are all one, and we are all guilty."
Sixth grader Rene King wrote on her self portrait: "Recognize life/ and the way we live it/ freely/ without the everyday fear/ of not being able/ to see the sun/ shining brilliantly.
For me as a visual artist who became a poet, taking poetry to its next logical step was to incorporate visual images, making the writing a part of the visual impact. Picture poems. Both the written word and the image carried the message. Doing this was, in a sense, to heal the modern world by going back to the source, back to picture-grams, the beginnings of language.
Take Matt Kondratieff, a fifth grader's poem:
HOW DID WE GET THIS FAR?
A bluebird at a faucet
waiting for a drop of water.
How did we get this far?
A grebe washed up on the shore.
Oil smothered on its once-beautiful feathers.
How did we get this far?
The super power nations
tearing the world apart.
How did we get this far?
—Matt Kondratieff
Matt offers us no easy solutions. But his poster with its brilliant red background of a mushroom cloud leaves little room for doubt that something went wrong somewhere in the process of becoming civilized.
Albert Einstein who said, "My gift for creativity has meant more to me than my capacity for absorbing knowledge," also said, "To prepare simultaneously for war and peace is a non-sequitur." From the creative impulses also stem the seeds of destruction, that terrible beauty in the far reaching implications of a mathematical equation, E=MC2. How did we get this far?
EAT AT JOE'S
I was tired of living.
Now, I'm afraid to die.
We will be gone in a flash.
—Louis Mattei, fifth grade
Some of the connections also discussed in class were the interrelatedness of everything. Every time a species becomes extinct, we lose something immeasurable. The Quagga, a horse-like zebra and the carrier pigeon were hunted to extinction because they were plentiful. The sheer numbers of animal and plant life that have become extinct in the past 200 years is positively staggering.
Dammed rivers, no more wild fish—only hatchery-bred salmon—what are we doing to the gene pool? The California condor is down to less than ten birds. What one of my students said, "Connections/ of all the smallest things/ may be important/ someday," has yet to bear its awful harvest. Acid rain, lumber industries, pulp mills and the destruction of the forests and soil—the paper we write on, everything is connected to everything.
With Patchen's work, it is hard to separate the painting from the poem—which came first? His poetry is paradoxical, mixes religion and politics, focuses on the social as well as the poetic. Dubbed "Title Poems" by his editor, James Laughlin, his poems are like long titles, intuitive lines. Patchen didn't consider himself to be a painter. He thought of himself as "someone who used the medium of painting in an attempt to give an extra dimension to the medium of words.
Some people are visual learners, others learn verbally. Patchen's work appeals to both the visually and verbally oriented students. Kids love to read his work. That his haiku-like messages are paradoxical in nature gives it an added zing. I asked my students what they thought when he wrote, "Snow is the only one of us that leaves no tracks." This led to a discussion of man and the environment. For every action there is a reaction. Even the wind leaves tracks across the snow.
Everyman is me, I am his brother.
No man is my enemy.
I am everyman
and he is in and of me.
This is my faith, my strength,
For one who says,
"I am tired of children,"
There are no flowers.
These poems for peace written to us by the children are our flowers come full circle. Perhaps they'll seed in the garden.
SONG OF THE BLUEBIRD
The song of the bluebird
to the explosion of the bomb --
darkness is eternal, light is fleeting.
Should we change the treatment of animals?
Thank the cat by the fire
for keeping us warm at night.
Connections
of all the smallest things
may be important someday.
Patchen wrote, "Peace now to all men/ or amen to all things." He wasn't taking the threat lying down. His accusatory poems address the utter foolishness of harboring the idea of nuclear war as a viable means of achieving world peace. He stated, "You can't separate America from the world./ We are all one, and we are all guilty."
Sixth grader Rene King wrote on her self portrait: "Recognize life/ and the way we live it/ freely/ without the everyday fear/ of not being able/ to see the sun/ shining brilliantly.
For me as a visual artist who became a poet, taking poetry to its next logical step was to incorporate visual images, making the writing a part of the visual impact. Picture poems. Both the written word and the image carried the message. Doing this was, in a sense, to heal the modern world by going back to the source, back to picture-grams, the beginnings of language.
Take Matt Kondratieff, a fifth grader's poem:
HOW DID WE GET THIS FAR?
A bluebird at a faucet
waiting for a drop of water.
How did we get this far?
A grebe washed up on the shore.
Oil smothered on its once-beautiful feathers.
How did we get this far?
The super power nations
tearing the world apart.
How did we get this far?
—Matt Kondratieff
Matt offers us no easy solutions. But his poster with its brilliant red background of a mushroom cloud leaves little room for doubt that something went wrong somewhere in the process of becoming civilized.
Albert Einstein who said, "My gift for creativity has meant more to me than my capacity for absorbing knowledge," also said, "To prepare simultaneously for war and peace is a non-sequitur." From the creative impulses also stem the seeds of destruction, that terrible beauty in the far reaching implications of a mathematical equation, E=MC2. How did we get this far?
EAT AT JOE'S
I was tired of living.
Now, I'm afraid to die.
We will be gone in a flash.
—Louis Mattei, fifth grade
Some of the connections also discussed in class were the interrelatedness of everything. Every time a species becomes extinct, we lose something immeasurable. The Quagga, a horse-like zebra and the carrier pigeon were hunted to extinction because they were plentiful. The sheer numbers of animal and plant life that have become extinct in the past 200 years is positively staggering.
Dammed rivers, no more wild fish—only hatchery-bred salmon—what are we doing to the gene pool? The California condor is down to less than ten birds. What one of my students said, "Connections/ of all the smallest things/ may be important/ someday," has yet to bear its awful harvest. Acid rain, lumber industries, pulp mills and the destruction of the forests and soil—the paper we write on, everything is connected to everything.
With Patchen's work, it is hard to separate the painting from the poem—which came first? His poetry is paradoxical, mixes religion and politics, focuses on the social as well as the poetic. Dubbed "Title Poems" by his editor, James Laughlin, his poems are like long titles, intuitive lines. Patchen didn't consider himself to be a painter. He thought of himself as "someone who used the medium of painting in an attempt to give an extra dimension to the medium of words.
Some people are visual learners, others learn verbally. Patchen's work appeals to both the visually and verbally oriented students. Kids love to read his work. That his haiku-like messages are paradoxical in nature gives it an added zing. I asked my students what they thought when he wrote, "Snow is the only one of us that leaves no tracks." This led to a discussion of man and the environment. For every action there is a reaction. Even the wind leaves tracks across the snow.
Everyman is me, I am his brother.
No man is my enemy.
I am everyman
and he is in and of me.
This is my faith, my strength,
my deepest hope,
and my only belief.
—Kenneth Patchen
After the Dark Ages, the first plays written in English, the Everyman allegories, were used to teach the populace correct morals and behavior. Patchen uses the idea of Everyman to carry his message. Take "Concerns of the Heart./ Feeling, I must remind you, is the poet's sign…" I asked my students, what is the poet's sign, the poet's role? What does a poet do? Describe? Why?
Why do we need poets? As the good doctor, William Carlos Williams, said, "It is difficult getting the news from poetry but men die everyday from lack of what is found there." The children affirmed that poets were important because they were the eyes and the feelings of the world. Cycles. Life on this fragile planet. We talked about our feelings, the tracks men leave on this planet, the impact of civilization. I asked, "Is all civilization bad?" What leaves no tracks besides snow? Is it bad to leave tracks? Why? When Patchen said:
"Peace to all men/ or amen to all things," what do you think he meant?
—Kenneth Patchen
After the Dark Ages, the first plays written in English, the Everyman allegories, were used to teach the populace correct morals and behavior. Patchen uses the idea of Everyman to carry his message. Take "Concerns of the Heart./ Feeling, I must remind you, is the poet's sign…" I asked my students, what is the poet's sign, the poet's role? What does a poet do? Describe? Why?
Why do we need poets? As the good doctor, William Carlos Williams, said, "It is difficult getting the news from poetry but men die everyday from lack of what is found there." The children affirmed that poets were important because they were the eyes and the feelings of the world. Cycles. Life on this fragile planet. We talked about our feelings, the tracks men leave on this planet, the impact of civilization. I asked, "Is all civilization bad?" What leaves no tracks besides snow? Is it bad to leave tracks? Why? When Patchen said:
"Peace to all men/ or amen to all things," what do you think he meant?
If you could change the world in some way, what would you change? "Remember this though," I tell my students, "without light there would be no darkness; without darkness there would be no light."
Robert Aitken, poet and Roshi, in his book of translations, Zen Wave—Basho's Haiku and Zen, expands this idea. "In Christianity, darkness denotes sin and error, but for the poet and the student of religion in Asia, darkness is an organic metaphor of the undifferentiated absolute, while light is the experience of the immediate phenomenal world... It is the light within the darkness, darkness within the light; it is just the dark-nist,"iust the light; it is darkness as the If there is a next time, the roles will be reversed; the Dark Ages will result from an excess of light. Aitken's translation of a haiku attributed to Basho takes on a new meaning:
Robert Aitken, poet and Roshi, in his book of translations, Zen Wave—Basho's Haiku and Zen, expands this idea. "In Christianity, darkness denotes sin and error, but for the poet and the student of religion in Asia, darkness is an organic metaphor of the undifferentiated absolute, while light is the experience of the immediate phenomenal world... It is the light within the darkness, darkness within the light; it is just the dark-nist,"iust the light; it is darkness as the If there is a next time, the roles will be reversed; the Dark Ages will result from an excess of light. Aitken's translation of a haiku attributed to Basho takes on a new meaning:
For one who says,
"I am tired of children,"
There are no flowers.
These poems for peace written to us by the children are our flowers come full circle. Perhaps they'll seed in the garden.
SONG OF THE BLUEBIRD
The song of the bluebird
to the explosion of the bomb --
darkness is eternal, light is fleeting.
Should we change the treatment of animals?
Thank the cat by the fire
for keeping us warm at night.
Connections
of all the smallest things
may be important someday.
