This Essay May not Save your Life, but a Poem Can

There are days when words fail me. Usually they occur when I hear someone say something that feels so amazingly wrong to me, I can’t believe anyone could ever think that. Some part of me knows there are all sorts of logical, thoughtful, calm things that could be said.  But, I’m so busy fighting the desire to use violent force, I can’t think. I can’t find a cohesive argument, because the only thing going through my head is “Don’t hit them, don’t hit them!”

I had one of these conversations with Bruce the other day. I was talking about a poet I know who does a “Poet in the Schools” program. She spends a week at schools throughout Central NY doing poetry workshops.

“What if the kids don’t want to do poetry?” Bruce said to me.

I resisted hitting him, despite the fact that he would never dream of saying “what if they don’t want to learn biology?” He still clings to the vestiges of early Quakerism that held fiction and poetry were “unreal” and therefore to be avoided.

That evening I was reading Jeanette Winterson’s memoir Why be Happy when You can be Normal?, and found that some people can manage articulate, intelligent, and most important, peaceful answers to such comments. Why be Happy is Winterson’s memoir of her rather grim childhood. Adopted by a Pentecostal family, she grew up in poverty dealing with abuse from her adoptive mother. She left home at sixteen, kicked out by her mother because Winterson was gay.

Poetry and literature helped Winterson survive. Discovering T.S. Eliot set her on her own journey as a writer. She writes:

               

"I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me.

                So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.

                It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place."

 

“A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is.” Reading that, I realized that when people say that poetry is unnecessary or unreal, they are thinking of poetry as flowery and sweet; missing the toughness of it. Poetry comes with sharp edges, cutting truths that crack us open. If you think it’s soft and flowery, maybe you aren’t reading the tough stuff. Or maybe like Winterson says, you haven’t had a tough life.

But what about all the kids that do? Have tough lives that is. If we reduce education to facts and figures, to whether a kid knows how to look up how thunderstorms occur and present a powerpoint presentation on it, or write a five paragraph essay on the life cycle of a snail, have we failed to acknowledge that living requires more than information? Have we failed children with tough lives, who need the raw language of poetry, a cutting metaphor for life, in order to crack things open and find themselves? Have we failed to provide a “language powerful enough to say how it is?”

“A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is.” It needs to be emblazoned on our schools and in our minds. If it weren’t so long and I wasn’t such a wimp, I’d have it tattooed on my arm. Like a good poem, it pulls me up sharp.

I haven’t always thought of poetry as a tough language. I think of swearing and yelling as tough. But the truth is – that truth is found in the subtle, sharp metaphor that arrows into my heart and soul and resonates with something deep in my core. Facts and figures don’t do that. Poetry, literature, a pointed metaphor, a character like me and yet not – those things help me find myself. And isn’t that, at least, part of what education is?

Yeah, we need facts and information – but we need to know who we are, what motivates us, and how to live in the world we are in, with the facts and figures we’ve learned.

I promise to keep working at not hitting the people who say poetry, fiction, and fantasy aren’t necessary or important. But I expect all those people to start listening to the “tough language” of poetry. Their lives depend on it.

 

 

 

My Untidy Mind

My office has been described as “cheerfully untidy.” I’m not sure what qualifies a mess as “cheerful.” Untidy is rather obvious.

It’s an odd state for someone who goes crazy over messy shelves and misplaced books. The fact of the matter is I’m afraid to put anything away. If I file something it will be lost forever.  I will be madly searching for the craft idea under ‘c’ for craft, or ‘p’ for program, only to discover two months later I’d put it under ‘k’ for kid’s or ‘s’ for summer reading. I need a cross-indexed catalog for my filing system that lists all the things I might have filed something under.

It’s easier to just leave it all on my desk. Somewhere in one of those piles is the piece of paper I saved just for this occasion. I just need to look through all the piles.

I’d like to say the problem is stress. Too much to do, too much to remember. But, I’m beginning to be afraid that the old mind is just not what it used to be. There’s just too much stuff in there. Adding something means, deleting something else. 

I used to refuse to have a day planner, saying if I had so much to do I couldn’t remember it all, than I was doing way too much. But now, I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do today, no less next week. People tell me I need an iphone or smartphone. I could do everything with it, call people, take pictures, keep my schedule. But really, I’m already forgetting things. Do I want my life organized on a device I might set down somewhere and not be able to find? And then there’s learning how to use it. I might need another degree just to access my calendar!

Despite that fact, I keep trying to cram more information into my head. I check out ten books a week, sure I need to read every one of them. And then I bring back nine (or sometimes, sadly more) unread, not having found the time to do more than read the inside flap or the back cover. My shelves are full of books I’ve been meaning to read for years and alas only half of them have actually been read.

A lot of people get rid of books after they read them. But not me. I hold on to them, sure I’ll need to refer to them again. But I don’t underline in books, or turn down the page corner. (Don’t even think about doing that to a library book!) So instead I write out quotes I want to remember in my journal. But years later, when I want that quote, I can’t find which of the journals filling my book case actually contain it. I started putting post-it notes in books, with my comments on the text. But unfortunately, when I go back I have no idea what the cryptic note means, or why I cared about that paragraph anyway!

Now, I’ve started using those little sticky arrow things that usually say “sign here.” Only they’re meant to point me to the best parts of a book, the things I want to remember. Last night Bruce, noticing one of those arrowy things on every single page of a book I was reading said, “Really, Priscilla, why bother?”

He’s right, of course and not just because I want to remember everything! A couple of years ago I read Marion Woodman’s “Dancing in the Flames.” I talked about if for months, reciting her ideas over and over. Last month, I thought I really needed to find those quotes again. I checked my journal sure I’d copied them down and couldn’t find them. So, I decided to re-read the book. Except there was nothing in it that vaguely sounded like what I remembered reading before.

“Are you sure it’s the right book,” Bruce asked.

“Of course, I am. It’s the only Marion Woodman book I’ve ever read.” He gave me the look, the one that says I may be losing it. But I’ve decided Marion just isn’t as smart this year as she was two years ago. I’m sure that has to be the problem.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste – but losing it’s pretty darn hard, too. But I’m sure mine’s not lost. It’s just cheerfully untidy!

 

Your Fictional Family

I was flipping through an old copy of Martha Stewart’s Real Simple magazine at the doctor’s the other day and saw a neat column. It was for the magazine’s book club and invited readers to write in an answer to the question, “what fictional family would you like to be part of?”

One of the responders said she wanted to be in Wendy’s family from Peter Pan that way she’d get to live in London, have a real cool dog and go to Neverland whenever she was bored. I’ve been thinking about what fictional family I’d want to be part of and just can’t decide.

First, I thought the Bennett family in Pride and Prejudice. I’d love to be Jane and Elizabeth’s sister, or friend. But I’m pretty sure the rest of that family would drive me crazy. And in fact I hate going to parties and talking to people I don’t know. So, how would I ever manage to spend my days going to balls and dancing and talking to people I don’t know?  I’d also be jealous of both of Elizabeth when she and Darcy finally get it together. But, I’d want the happy ending without all the heart ache in the middle.

Then there’s Theosdosia Throckmorton’s family in Robin LaFever’s Theodosia series.  Hanging out at an Egyptian museum all the time with absentminded archeologists for parents sounds like fun. After all the purpose of parents in a children’s book is to be gone as much as possible! Otherwise the fun can’t happen. And of course living in a museum is like living in the library. We can imagine all kinds of magical things happening at night when no one is around.

There’s the Weasleys in Harry Potter, too. That’s a fun and loving family who all get into enough trouble to make life entertaining. And catching garden gnomes always sounds like a great new pastime. But really, I want to be Harry, or Hermione, or Ron.

And then there’s Pippi Longstocking, whose father is lost at sea. Pippi basically doesn’t have a family, which means she can do what every she wants! So, again, it’s not so much Pippi’s family I want to be in, as I want to be Pippi.

Maybe the question should be what character do you want to be? Or even better, for us fantasy freaks, what magical talent do you want? I just read the Libriomancer by Jim Hines. The libriomancer is a librarian that can pull objects out of books and use them. He, of course, is a fantasy and science fiction fan so the objects he pulls out don’t really exist in the real world. So forget what fictional family I want to belong to or fictional character I want to be. What I really want is to be, a Libriomancer!

 

I love authors

Laura Ruby comes next week as part of our Fantasy Fall. She’s the author of a middle grade fantasy series including The Wall and The Wing and The Chaos King.  She also writes young adult contemporary novels like Bad Apple and Good Girls.

I first met Laura over a year ago when I attended the Highlights Foundation Whole Fantasy Novel Workshop. Highlight’s whole novel workshops are a week long program, where you get to submit a novel you’ve written for critique and then spend a week in Pennsylvania, with instructors and other students, making your novel better. Laura was my instructor, and in one week I learned more about writing from Laura than I’d learned in my whole life.  I’m not quite as old as dirt, but still – my whole life has been a pretty long time!

On first meeting, Laura’s intimidating. She has long wavy red hair. She’s smart, articulate, and funny.  When she talks every part of her body gets into the story. Her hair moves, her face twists into new shapes, her hands fly about. I was scared of her – and I wanted to be her.  I’ve been an irritated, frustrated, occasionally angry, and annoyed person most of my life – but Laura makes irritation and annoyance look entertaining. She can do angry and make it funny, which is a real art form.

Whenever Laura tells a story – which is often – about something that annoyed her, she does this thing. She holds her right hand like she’s gripping a knife and then she pounds it into her left palm, likes she’s stabbing something; the whole time saying “stabby, stabby, stabby.” This is actually one of the best things I learned from Laura. Now whenever I feel “stabby, stabby, stabby,” I think of Laura and I can usually laugh, rather than actually stabbing things!

Laura will be giving a talk here on Oct. 17^th at 7:00 pm, entitled Magic, Myth, and Monsters: Why not to be Scared when Kids want to Read Scary Stuff. Whether or not you like fantasy or horror, odds are you know someone who does. So come find out what the fascination is and why what scares us might not be so bad.  I don’t think Laura will actually scare you – but maybe you’ll get to hear “stabby, stabby, stabby.”

 

Writers are my Heroes (and Heroines!)

                Writing sucks! People who think it’s easy haven’t written a 300 page novel, only to have to tear three quarters of it out and start again. And the problem isn’t throwing out all those beautiful pages. The problem is, knowing which ones to keep and which ones to throw out. A novel is like an ever evolving life form. Except in this case, the author is trying to decide who’s the fittest and who isn’t. If they are wrong, then that’s a year and 200 pages into the trash. And it’s start all over again!

                That’s why I love authors. Because no one in their right mind would torture themselves this way unless they had a story they just had to tell.  Authors give me hope that it’s possible to go back to a manuscript every day, beat myself over the head a little more, and still have a story that won’t go away, that has to be told.

                Grant writing – although not nearly as glamorous, fun, or high profile, is a lot the same. First, it is an incredible amount of work. Second, you need to really believe it what every project you are trying to get money for is worth the effort. Third, you send the grant out into the world unsure if it will be accepted. And then when it is, you realize that’s only the beginning of all the work coming your way.

                When ever I get a grant accepted, my first thought is yippee, and my second thought is “oh crap, now I’ve got to do the work!” So, here’s my number one rule for getting a grant – make sure it’s something you love and want to do. Hence, the reason the library received a grant from The Bernard Carl and Shirley Rosen Library Fund of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County to hold a series of fantasy author visits.

                I’ve now spent hours/days/weeks making all the arrangements with authors, the school, travel arrangements etc. etc – but the fun is almost ready to begin. We have four fantasy authors coming this fall. They’ll spend a day at either the Homer Intermediate, the Jr. High or the High School. Then they’ll do a writing workshop for youth here at the library, followed by an evening program open to the whole community.

                So here’s the lineup:

                Frederic Durbin, author of The Star Shard will be here Thursday, Sept. 27^th

                Laura Ruby, author of The Wall and The Wing and Bad Apple will be her Wednesday, Oct. 17^th

                Julie Berry, author of The Amaranth Enchantment and The Rat Brain Fiasco will be here Friday, Nov. 2^nd and 3^rd

                Tamora Pierce, author of Trickster’s Choice and Terrier will be here Wednesday, Nov. 7^th.

                Check the library calendar and the Fantastical Worlds page for an exact schedule. All writing workshops will be held at 4:00 pm and are free, but space is limited so pre-registration is required. All students who participate in a writing workshop will receive a free copy of one of the author’s books and be able to post their own stories to the Fantastical Worlds Wiki. So come to the library for a fantastic fall and help support those people who do the hard task of telling stories for us!

Sticking to stories

             I attended a workshop on Early Literacy yesterday. Eventually the conversation came around to Common Core Standards. Basically the speaker said, what children need to succeed is not just reading and writing skills, but information. So curriculums now are emphasizing content, not narrative; non-fiction, not fiction.  Now, I’m a librarian, a dealer of information in an information age – and I really have to take issue with the idea that narrative, fiction, and story are no longer important. That it’s only content that matters. That all we need are the facts.

                Here’s the issue for me. In a previous life, I worked in animal breeding and genetics. You know, the people who select cows for more milk, sheep for more wool, and pigs who grow faster.  So, what does breeding cows to give more milk have to do with reading fiction? Over the years, cows nowadays give a lot more milk than they did even twenty years ago. And our understanding of genetics and the technology to manipulate genetics has exploded. But here’s the problem, sometimes the questions isn’t can we change something, can we make it better? The real question is, do we know what better is?  Because knowing how to do something, is different from knowing what to do.

                In the fifties, short legged Herefords were all the rage. The “better” cow, if you will. Until breeders discovered every time they selected animals with short legs they were increasing the frequency of a lethal dwarf gene in the population. In the sixties and seventies collies with narrow heads were considered the standard, until breeders realized there was a relationship with narrow heads and encephalopathies. In the eighties, long legged Suffolk sheep were consider the “best,” until breeders realized that trait was linked to “spider leg syndrome,” a lethal metabolic bone disorder in lambs.

                Making something better, whether it’s family life, a computer program, or the amount of milk a cow gives, isn’t just a question that requires information. It requires defining “better,” and defining better requires philosophy. It requires the ability to think and reason for one self. It demands wisdom from us.

We don’t gain wisdom through acquiring information. It doesn’t come through knowing how  things work, or how we can change them. Non-narrative non-fiction may give us the information, but wisdom, philosophy, the ability to critically analyze issues, comes from understanding stories.  

True understanding comes from paying attention, from understanding relationships and connections, whether between people, or between people and the world they live in. Real knowledge requires having a philosophy of life, having values to live by. We need to be able to make critical inquiries, discern potential outcomes, and then make hard decisions that we can all live with.

Those are skills that come from stories because if there is one thing fiction or narratives teach, it’s that we live in relationship, and those relationships matter. Stories teach us that actions have consequences, that choices make a difference. Fiction teaches us that people grow and change and that they should, that the choices we make today are different from the choices we may make tomorrow, and that’s okay. As long as we are growing, as long as we are learning, as long as we are striving to figure out what “better” really means, we are on the road to wisdom.

We risk losing a great deal when we believe facts and content are more important than story. There are so many important and necessary things to be learned about living a good life that come through stories. Things like how to make friends, how to be a better friend, how to make hard decisions, how to live up to our values, how to develop values. What will we lose I wonder, when we emphasize content over thought, caring, relationships, values; when we forget that understanding how something works, isn’t the same thing as knowing the right thing to do? That just because we can do something, doesn’t always mean we should.

So, I’m sticking to story, my story, your story, all the stories that line the shelves of every library in the world. Because that, I believe, is where true knowledge and wisdom lie.

The Year of the Author

It stands to reason that to a librarian, writers are like rock stars. One of the best parts of being a librarian is getting to meet authors. I think it was Alice Walker who said you can’t be a good writer and a bad person. I’m not sure that’s totally true, but the authors I’ve met or heard speak have all been articulate, funny, and generous with their time.

At the Public Library Association conference, I heard romance writer, Elizabeth Boyle, tell about getting her first novel published. She’d entered a contest, sent her first three chapters in, was selected as a finalist, and only then found out she was supposed to have the whole novel already written. She had a month to write the novel and checked to see when the last possible Fedex pickup was in order to make the deadline for the contest. Writing down to the wire, her printer died an hour before the Fedex pickup. While she sat at her computer crying, her husband walked by and continued on to the kitchen. Ready to tear her hair out and write her husband off as totally unsupportive, she heard him on the phone.

“I want to cash in my miles,” he said, “what time does the last plane to New York City leave on Sunday night?” Her husband hand delivered her manuscript and Elizabeth Boyle won the contest. With a husband like that, it’s no wonder she’s a romance writer.

For Phillips Free Library, 2012 is going to be The Year of the Author. Thanks to a grant from The Bernard Carl and Shirley Rosen Library Fund of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, we’ve got three fantasy authors coming in the fall. But before Anne Ursu, Laura Ruby, and Tamora Pierce come, we’ll be celebrating poets in May and June.

On May 31st, we’ll have a book launch party for former Phillips Free Library employee, Austin MacRae. Austin worked here while finishing his Masters Degree in English at SUNY Cortland. Now his first book of poetry, The Organ Builder, is being published by Dos Madres Press. Join us at 7:00 pm on Thursday, May 31st for a reading, book signing, and reception. Celebrate poetry and Austin’s accomplishments here @ the library.

Then on Wednesday, June 6th, we are kicking off the summer reading program with a poetry workshop and open mic. The workshop runs from 5:30 until 6:45 pm. Using the teen and adult summer reading themes of--“Own the Night” and “Between the Covers ,” poet Rachel Guido deVries will offer ways to use our dreams, hopes, and life experiences as a starting point for poems. Whether you dream “between the covers” while sleeping, or dream “between the covers” of a book, come write of love, life, and star-spangled skies. Writing prompts will offer ways “in” to ideas, emotions, experiences that are waiting to emerge. Come and open your imagination’s door to creativity in this workshop.

At 7:00 pm, following the workshop there will be a short reading by Rachel Guido deVries, followed by an open reading for all workshop participants and other local poets and writers. Bring your poems to share. Refreshments will be served.

So, come celebrate the Year of the Author, and the Months of the Poets @ Phillips Free Library.