For National Poetry Month 2014, I have invited 17 authors and poets to guest post about source poems. In this series of essays, each writer will describe a single poem's significance in his or her life.
Our guest blogger for today's source poem is educator and poet Linda Baie, who blogs at Teacher Dance.
The Way It Is
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| Linda Baie |
By William Stafford, from The Way It Is, 1998
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Read the rest of the poem here.
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I believe that life is chaotic, a jumble of accidents, ambitions,
misconceptions, bold intentions, lazy happenstances, and unintended
consequences, yet I also believe that there are connections that illuminate our
world, revealing its endless mystery and wonder. David Moranis
When
I consider my source poem, the back-story holds the meaning that connects
later. My life with poetry began early, in a grandparents’ home where I lived
until I was five. My father was killed in WWII in the Pacific theater, and my mother
and I lived with her parents until I was five. Both my father’s and my mother’s
parents were avid readers, and time with them in early childhood set my path
toward loving poetry.
Before
I could read, they all read to me. I was the only grandchild in both families
until I went to school. Everyone wanted to read to me! My mother was an artist,
wrote and illustrated stories for me. One grandfather loved Shakespeare. No
matter that I was young, he still shared the poems, the plays, about the life
of Shakespeare with me. A grandmother was a pianist and taught me the poetry of
song. I learned the music of the classics, but also hymns, the words of Stephen
Foster, the carols of Christmas. When I visited my father’s parents for weeks
in the summers, the first thing we did was visit their library, to gather piles
of books, including poetry.
“There’s a thread you follow. It
goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.”
My
early life held the beginning connections to poetry, in different voices sure,
but all with certain favorites that they shared. Later in school I remember
teachers reading poems to us, memorizing for performances and finally, in
college, I had the pleasure of working with John Neihardt, Missouri’s poet
laureate, in a summer poetry class.
When
I became a teacher, of first graders, I wanted to teach them to read, to love
reading, and poetry too. My ‘go to’ book then was AA Milne’s When I Was Very
Young and When We Were Six. My love of poetry started as a young
child, and has continued both personally and in my passion to bring this love
to students.
There
is this poem taped to my desk lamp. I taught middle-school gifted students, a
mixed group, for over 20 years at the school where I am now the literacy coach.
There was a long list of priorities in teaching, but one of them was the
importance of creating and keeping a community. Sharing “like” things in a
mixture of unique preferences helped us become family, a group, a knit
community.
“While you hold it you can’t get
lost.”
For
community building, I have used certain poems for the class, and one of those
poems that I held dear was William Stafford’s “The Way It Is.” It would be shared,
we would discuss it, what we thought about it and why it might help us as a
group. In other conversations, it became a mentor text for voice. When we
wrote, students and I referred to it, wishing we could meet this man who wrote so
clearly. Of course, we met him in other poems too, and followed along with
Naomi Shihab Nye, a student of his, whose poems also touched us. We discussed
connections, how paths cross and re-cross, fade away, return again. And we
illustrated those paths in artistic responses. The poem became important to
each class, is important to me still.
Loving
a poem is not new to me and there are others I love, too. And serendipity
sometimes makes me shiver. Certain of my colleagues and I exchange Christmas
gifts, and one year friends gifted me with the book Teaching With Fire, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan
Scribner, an anthology of poems that are important “source” poems for teachers.
On page fifteen, there is the Stafford poem again. Finally, when I left the classroom
three years ago, the school gave a party in celebration of my years in the
classroom, and several of my colleagues spoke about me, to me. It was a
pleasure hearing those words, every one. But the surprise, the serendipity that
happened is that my head of school, speaking of my time at the school, my work
with students and colleagues, ended with a poem he thought defined me. And that
poem was “The Way It Is.” I was shocked and a little teary. The thread
continues, and with this poem especially, my strong
connection to
poetry remains.
“You don’t ever let go of the
thread.”
The poem in its
entirety can be found at Goodreads, here. And I have written a poem in
response.
Holding On
People wonder
how to proceed,
when a boulder
lies on the road.
I tell them I hold
fast onto the thread;
those who are
tangled there with me help.
They heave me
over and in turn I pull them along.
The filament
unwinds sometimes and loosens.
Sometimes wind
blows it askew.
It wants
re-winding.
A gentle tug and
I’ve re-wound,
for me, for
family, for friends.
Keeping the
strand strong while everyone winds together
makes it easier
to climb over that next boulder.
Linda Baie © All Rights Reserved
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| William Stafford Visit the William Stafford Archives online. |
Linda Baie is a
long time teacher of middle school students at a K-8 independent school for the
gifted in Denver, Colorado. She is now the school’s literacy coach. She has a
wonderful family, including three terrific grandchildren. Passions are reading,
writing and being outdoors. She blogs at TeacherDance.org and tweets @LBaie. She is working hard
on writing, sending a few poems to see if they might be published, participates
in a writing group, and has been to one poetry workshop, with plans for
another. She is holding onto the thread.
Previous posts in this series:
Laura Shovan on "This Is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams
Dylan Bargteil on "On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma" by June Jordan
J. C. Elkin on "Hannibal Clim" (author unknown)
Diane Mayr on a haiku by Basho
Jone MacCulloch on "We Are Waiting (a pantoum)" by Joyce Sidman
Mary Bargteil on Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Jacqueline Jules on "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes
Pamela Murray Winters on "The Land of Counterpane" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dennis Kirschbaum on "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson
Janet Fagal on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats
Janet Fagal on "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats
