LIGHTING THE ELECTRIC FIRE

       Runners dressed in skins carried embers
       in moss-lined pouches to the next hearth.
        —Jane Walsh Reilly, 1893—1987

In the dark-paneled hall
of my grandmother's house,
mother-of-pearl light switchesó
the kind you push in & out,
resounded like sprung mouse traps
& light flooded the room.
The moment after one pushed in the switch,
wires inside the light bulb glowed red
like embers from earlier fires
to keep back the wolves and the night.

It was the woman's job
to keep the hearth fires lit.
To let it go out was to let death
come into the house,
my grandmother said.

Inside the heart of the light bulb,
between horn-like filaments,
beside the finely-coiled spring,
a smoldering spark from the first hearth
is locked inside because all atoms
are recycled except the ones we've split.

The white hair of my grandmother
as she bends to read
throws off its own aura of light.

8/1986
1992 Green Fuse
        Apostrofe! (in Ukrainian)
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1987 Marin Poetry Review
1986 More Than Words, CPITS Anthology

Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children

More Than Words CPITS NEWSLETTER
CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS
Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children 
by Maureen Hurley

"We are continually invited to become what we are," wrote Thoreau. What does this mean? Why do we, as poets, need to be in the schools?

Poet Gerald Stern (American Poetry Review, May, 1985), suggests that PITS is simply a device to help build future poetry audiences, to give poets Income and attention, to modernize curricula, or to discover budding Rimbauds among the masses. He expresses a certain doubt about the enterprise of "making" poets. Stern's doubts about the goals and purposes of PITS programs and their validity nationwide may come from the fact that he only worked three days with selected high school students.

As a California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) poet-teacher, I am interested in the development of similar programs across the country. CPITS is the largest artist in residence program of its kind. CPITS is successful because it's community-based. We spend more time in the classroom and we work several years within a given school or community. We start "teaching" poetry to kindergarteners. We don't wait until they're in high school.

Sonoma County poet Lee Perron sees the role of a PITS poet to be that of a disseminator of culture. In Forgotten Languages (CPITS 1985 Statewide Anthology), he writes that artists and poets represent a culture not present in schools and "its purpose is to nurture all people, especially the young." Whether or not we as poet-teachers can bring culture and creativity into the schools is a question we continually have to ask ourselves. Then there's the argument of "artist" versus "teacher." "Those who can paint, paint. Those who can't, teach," said my mother. Gerald Stern argues that one can't really "teach" poetry; only a select
few students are ^chosen" to become poets—with or without help from us. 

The philosophy of CPITS is that every child has a creative potential to become a poet because we speak the beginnings of poetry with the same tool: oral tradition. Its roots reach into the paleolithic past. Why are people with strong literary commitments working in the schools? We live in a specialized society that inhibits and negates creative self expression.