It is Tuesday and time to write a 'Slice of Life."
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Someone is singing an opera in my backyard as I write; they’ve been at it all morning. My Merlin app tells me they are a Northern Flicker, a visually beautiful dear soul with dotted plumage, yet I cannot catch even one tiny glance. They prefer to sing from deep within the leafing branches of the maple tree, and perhaps their song is one of lament because I am not able to see them. Yes, I put myself at the center of their song.
I don’t know what to tell you.
Hmm.
Does anyone else have trouble starting a ‘Slice of Life,’ now that the March challenge is over and the writing is not daily?
Which personal thread to grab onto and run-write with it?
I simply don’t know.
I could tell you about my relaxing weekend in the woods, on retreat with my book group. I could write about our conversation about Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake. Oh, and how a few of us watched the 1940 film classic of Our Town, as a little ‘background’ for the book.
(Should I tell you how surprising it was that this movie deigned to create a new ‘happy’ ending for Thornton Wilder’s play?)
I could focus on just one hike, share with you the sweet spring growth I observed. Here are a couple photos of this emergence:
Oh, but I’ve shared about countless hikes in this space.
How about I tell you about the book I’m reading – Terrance Hayes’ Watch Your Language? I am absolutely awed by his witty and playful writing, how he draws clever doodles throughout the book, and simultaneously offers so much scholarly wisdom on Black poets and the history of modern poetry in general. He is piercing many myths I have swallowed whole. With every page, my understanding and curiosity about poetry expands.
I don’t know where to begin.
Consider this excerpt about Gwendolyn Brooks, as he considers the historical timeline of ‘modern great poets’ –
Brooks makes any conversation about American poetry of the last half century more interesting. Brooks was born in 1917, the same year as Robert Lowell, who won the Pulitzer in 1947, three years before Brooks. When he passed in 1977 Lowell was considered one of the chief poets of the twentieth century. He taught both Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. His family history could be traced back to the Mayflower.
As Robert Lowell is to Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, Brooks is to several generations of poets. Brooks met with James Baldwin and many Black poets of the era in her living room. I wish there was a better record of her relationship with Sonia Sanchez, their chats about motherhood, poetry, Blackness, community. Sonia Sanchez published her debut, Homecoming, in 1969, the same year Lucille Clifton published her debut, Good Times. Audre Lorde published The First Cities, her debut, in 1968. Brooks was a central figure in the work of all three poets.
Terrance Hayes, Watch Your Language, pp 24-25
He notes,
“She often goes unacknowledged the way caretakers and angels go unacknowledged.”
Terrance Hayes’ writing sends me tumbling, makes me pause, reflect, and re-read. He makes me wonder about all the details that were left out of my schooling. I chase down my Gwendolyn Brooks poetry book and lose myself within.
There is so much I was never taught.
There is so much that was so dull about the way I was taught.
There is so much more to learn.
Why was I never challenged to question?
I don’t know what to tell you.
Let me close with a poem I wrote yesterday for Ethical ELA, where Angie Braaten prompted us to write an elegy, with inspiration from Clint Smith's poem “Playground Elegy.” Honestly, I think all of my above rambles fed into this poem:
Textbook Elegy The first time I penned my name and date in that rectangle stamp of the history textbook reading the names of students from years before I turned quickly to chapter one, devouring. Each line of text so pure and real and insightful. I studied every page and absorbed great knowledge. I looked forward to the next year’s textbook revealing so much more of the world. It would be years before I noticed its white space. I knew sanitized only from the bathroom. I knew sifted from cakes, left out from friendships, omitted from don’t say that around mom and dad. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I read with joy, absorbing believing trusting. Now I wonder who powers every single line of text and do students wonder about this and does anyone know what is not written.
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