Does Poetry Matter?

By Teri Blair

The Poets, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2011, all photos © 2010-2011 by Teri Blair. All rights reserved.

On June 11, 2011, four people will stand on a stage in rural America to debate one question: Does poetry matter?

19 years ago, a man named John Davis started an amateur philosophy contest called the Great American Think-Off. He wanted to give ordinary people a chance to voice their opinions on serious issues. Each year a question is announced in January. People have three months to submit a 750-word essay speaking in favor or opposition to the topic. Four finalists are selected to debate their views before a live audience, an audience who determines the winner. Each of the four receive a $500 cash prize, travel expenses, a medal, and the winner is declared “America’s Greatest Thinker.” John’s two-decade-old idea has flourished. In 2010 (Do the rich have an obligation to the poor?) there were hundreds of entries representing nearly every state.

I was barely awake on January 1st when MPR’s Cathy Wurzer announced this year’s question. I was listening to my bedside clock radio when I heard her say Does poetry matter? My eyes opened in a shot.

I’ve spent a lot of time since that day thinking about the question. Before I started a poetry group, poems didn’t matter that much to me. I admired poets, was in awe of poetry, but it wasn’t until I started reading poetry in earnest that it began to penetrate my life in any meaningful way.

Emily Dickinson, April 2011, photo © 2011 by Teri Blair. All rights reserved.

Now I see poetry everywhere: imprinted on the sidewalks of St. Paul, recited in films like Invictus, and incorporated into presidential inaugurations. Poetry distills events of our common human experience into a few words. I’m informed, assured I’m not alone, and given direction. I’ve read Bill Holm’s “Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back” dozens of times since my dad died. It gives me permission to set down the pressure to do something about death. I’ve committed May Sarton’s “Now I Become Myself” to memory, saying it over and over as I swim laps at the YWCA, continually calling myself to authenticity.

I knew the day I heard the question that I’d enter the contest. Not to win, but to document what happened in our poetry group. The words fell onto the page, and I felt closure for the group that had been so hard to disband the previous year.

On May 1st I’ll find out if I’m one of the four finalists. I hope I’m chosen, and I really hope I’m not. I want to share what my poetry group discovered, and can’t stand the thought of standing on a stage trying to think on my feet. I wasn’t on the high school debate team for good reason.

I want to hear from you: Does poetry matter? If it doesn’t, were you subjected to obscure passages in high school English class that left you with a bad taste in your mouth? Does poetry seem a lofty and inaccessible pursuit for snobs?

If poetry does matter to you, how come? Do you have a favorite poet?

Whether I’m nervous on the stage (or at ease in the audience), I plan to be at the Think-Off on June 11th. Maybe I’ll see you there.

To read more about the Great American Think-Off: www.think-off.org.

Ted Kooser’s Studio, Dwight, Nebraska (pop. 259), January 2010,
all photos © 2010-2011 by Teri Blair. All rights reserved.

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About Teri: Teri Blair is a freelance writer living in Minneapolis and founder of the Poetry & Meditation Group of which QuoinMonkey has fondly and frequently written. (See Letter From Poet Elizabeth Alexander for the last post on the group and Teri’s piece titled Desire And A Library Card — The Only Tools Necessary To Start A Poetry Group for a step-by-step on how to start your own.)

Teri’s first red Ravine guest post, Continue Under All Circumstances, was written on the road during a 2007 trip to Holcomb, Kansas. She journeyed back to Holcomb in 2010 and published a sequel, Back To Holcomb, One Last Time . In March 2010, she wrote Discovering The Big Read , a piece about the largest reading program in American history. Its mission is simple: to restore reading to the center of American culture.

Teri spent February 2011 with visiting writers and artists at the Vermont Studio Center, walking, writing, and finding inspiration by the Gihon River in the heart of the Green Mountains. Her last piece for red Ravine, Emily’s Freedom, is a photo essay about what she learned on a writing pilgrimage to Amherst, Massachusetts to visit the home of poet Emily Dickinson.

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An Open Letter To My Father

An Open Letter To My Father, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2009, photo © 2009-2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I haven’t seen my father since I was six years old. He reached out to me that day for the first time since I was a toddler. But I was scared and didn’t want to come out of my room. I was only a child; he had become a stranger. I never saw him again.

I keep a pack of letters tied with red string in a shoebox on the top shelf of my closet. What is important comes in small packages. Snippets of correspondence become family heirlooms; letters are reminders of people whose memories and handwriting I want to remember.

One letter is from my mother, dated August of 2000. I had a hard time that year and (in an extroverted moment) reached out to 7 people in my inner circle. I asked if they would write a letter and tell me what my good qualities were; at the time, I just couldn’t remember. My mother wrote a beautiful letter to me from Pennsylvania, a story about the day I was born.

In the same shoebox is a letter from my father’s two sisters. Several years ago, by an act of grace, I reconnected with my aunts after 50 years, and stood with my mother and Aunt Annette under the Georgia pine over my Grandmother Estelle’s grave (the back story and photographs in Georgia Pine Over My Grandmother’s Grave.) It was a few months later, New Year’s Day 2009, when my aunts sent the letter from South Carolina, and something more:

I feel so badly our family never got to see or know you before now. I know Mother would be so pleased about our reunion. Mother left this ring to me and I would very much like you to have it. She had it a long time and wore it as a pinky ring. This is not much, but I never want you to be left out of our lives. I hope you feel the same about us. Maybe you could try to come for Christmas one year while Annette and I are still here. We are all very much family oriented and want our kids to know you. I’m proud to pass your grandmother’s ring to you, her granddaughter.

It’s as if all that time between us never happened. My trips to the South with Mom to research and explore family history have paid off in unexpected and miraculous ways. During our brief visit, my aunts showed me old family photographs and filled me in on the paternal side of my family. They told me my father had been estranged for 10 years; a dispute had erupted after my grandmother died. I don’t take serendipitous events lightly. I believe we are reunited with the past for reasons beyond our understanding.

A Letter From My Mother, BlackBerry Shots,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, December 2009, photo
© 2009-2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

That’s why when I called my aunts on Christmas Day 2010, they told me my father had called them out of the blue; he has cancer. He found out in September 2009, a few months before they mailed the letter with my grandmother’s ring. He didn’t contact them until a year later. During their visit, they told him they had seen me and my mother on a recent trip to Georgia. He did not jump at the chance to reconnect. Maybe for him, the past is the past.

My father was 17 years old when I was born, my mother 16. They divorced two years later—still teenagers. My mother went to work and provided for us. She eventually remarried a wonderful man who became my step-father.  After the age of 6, I never saw my blood father again. And now I find I may never get another chance. Should I write him a letter? What would I say?

Dear ______,

A few years ago on a visit to Georgia, I reconnected with your sisters, my aunts, after 50 years apart. They briefly filled me in on the family history; it made me think of you. I live in Minnesota now, have lived in the West and Midwest for most of my adult life. I try to get home once a year to visit family — for me, home is both Pennsylvania and Georgia. I may be visiting the South again this year and thought it might be a chance to touch base. Maybe we could meet for coffee or dinner.

Your daughter,

__________

I start the letter, I stop the letter. The drafts seem to fall short. What would you say? Should the salutation use his proper name? Or Father. Would you ask him to meet for dinner? Or talk on the phone. What if he doesn’t want to have contact with me? Maybe you’ve been in a similar situation where you haven’t talked to a close family member in many years. In reconnecting with my father’s sisters, it’s as if we were never apart. With parents, no matter how old you are, they are still your parents. Should I send a letter to my father?

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, February 6th, 2010

-related to posts: The Dying Art Of Letter Writing (Postcards From The Edge), You Can’t Go Back, WRITING TOPIC — MEMORIES OF CARS, WRITING TOPIC — 3 QUESTIONS

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MN Black Bear Den Cam: Will Lily Have Cubs?

Black Bear Lily On The BearCam, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2010, DenCam provided by the NABC/WRI, photo snapshot 2010 by QuoinMonkey.

If you’ve never seen a wild black bear gently lick her paws, roll over in her den, or blow puffs of winter breath in sub-zero temperatures, Lily will change your life. I used to think hibernating bears went into their dens and peacefully slept all Winter. Nothing could be further from the truth.

On Friday January 8th, documentary veteran Doug Hajicek installed an Infra Red camera system into a black bear’s den near Ely, Minnesota. And not just any black bear. Her name is Lily. Three-year-old Lily is part of the long-term study of black bear ecology and behavior being conducted by Lynn Rogers at Ely’s Wildlife Research Institute, less than 30 miles from the Canadian border. Lily is the daughter of 9-year-old June, and it is believed that Lily is pregnant. There is an above average chance she will give birth in mid January.

The Full Moon in January, which I’ve often celebrated as the Wolf Moon, is sometimes known as the Bear Moon. Last week under the New Bear Moon, I listened to Cathy Wurzer interview Doug Hajicek on MPR. Then Liz and I started following Lily on Facebook. We also watched her on the Today Show. And have been reading bear facts at the North American Bear Center and checking in to Lily’s Bear Cam ever since.

No one has ever seen a wild bear give birth to cubs. Some mornings, I can’t take my eyes off the screen. If the miracle happens, it will be the first time in history it has ever been filmed. Bearing witness. It is a powerful thing.

To view the magic for yourself, check out these links:

• Lily’s LIVE Den Cam at Ely, Minnesota, from the North American Bear Center

• Rare active Bear Cam footage of Lily on YouTube

• Follow Lily on Facebook, or Lily on Twitter

• Lily on the Today Show

• Lily on MPR, Morning Edition with Cathy Wurzer

• North American Bear Center: Video footage of Lily’s mom June and Lily as a cub

-posted on red Ravine under the New Bear Moon, Sunday, January 17th,

Other Local Color posts from Minnesota & New Mexico:

• Mysteries & Myths: In Search Of The Lake Creature
• Sidewalk Poetry — Public Art At Its Best
• Spirits In The Bosque – Patrick Dougherty Leaves His Mark On Albuquerque
• Wet Cement (It Only Takes A Second)
• virgin cottonwood haiku
• A Little Less War
• Birthday Of Mabel Dodge Luhan
• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Birthday Celebration
• A Journey For Bill
• A Taste Of Ghost Ranch
• Bats, Beautiful Bats!
• the lawrence tree haiku
• Natural Wonders: A Pentagram
• Frieda Lawrence – ‘Til Death Do We Part
• Gearing Up For The MN State Fair — Artist Leo Stans
• “K” Is For Kramarczuk’s
• The Art Of Ice (Art Shanty Projects)

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The Unanswered Question

By Beth Bro Howard

         
          Be Still And Know, altar offering at the retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh,
          August, 2007, Estes Park, Colorado, photo © 2007 by Beth Bro
          Howard. All rights reserved.


On August 25, 2007, while on retreat with Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh in Estes Park, Colorado, I was prepared to ask a question during the talk devoted to questions and answers. Reflecting on the question beforehand, part of the answer was revealed, which reminded me of the banner over the flowered altar offering:

                              be still and know

I accepted the invitation to ask Thay (his familiar name, meaning “teacher”) a question and joined the huddle of men, women, and children sitting on the stage.

I knew that there would not be time to ask all of our questions. I held mine in my heart and listened mindfully to others’ questions and Thay’s answers, because I knew that the answer to my question might be there also.

And it was.

My question might have been asked like this:

Dear Thay, my twenty-two year old son Peter is a soldier with the U.S. Army in Iraq. I hope that he will return home in two months. I am aware that many veterans return from Iraq with a lot of suffering. The United States of America was not skillful with relieving the suffering of Vietnam War veterans. How might our spiritual communities and practices help to relieve our veteran’s suffering?

I heard my answer, first, in the response to a question asked by a child about whether monks or nuns had served in the military. Thay answered, “Not many,” but went on to say that there was a monk who had served in the war. The monk had seen a lot of suffering caused by war and wanted to heal it. He wanted to practice peace and to teach the practice to others. Thay said that he is a very good monk.

In another answer to a question regarding the power of the healing services held in Viet Nam, Thay explained that there had never been services held for all the people killed in the Vietnam War. He said that there have not been services in our country to heal from the deaths in Viet Nam and Iraq.

How I heard these responses as answers to my question was in this way:

• As a Christian/Buddhist practitioner, I should offer compassionate and deep listening to our veterans;
• I should include them in our practice, however I can, because, like the monk, they have learned a lot about war and suffering and they may be very good at this practice;
• Veterans may be wonderful teachers of peace.

I also heard that, in our spiritual communities, we should pray for the killed and in the depth of Thay’s stories I learned that we must not only pray for the killed, but also for the killers. They are not separate.

It seems that often veterans return with the dead residing in their hearts and minds. We can pray to end the suffering of both.

The answer that came to me, before Thay’s talk, was from my own Christian tradition. It relates to the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), paraphrased here:

There was a man who had two sons. The younger son asks for his share of the property and the father divides the estate evenly between his sons. The older son stays on the land, close to his father, and works hard. The younger son gathers all that he has and takes a journey to a far country, where he squanders all his wealth in wild living. Much later, he returns home destitute, hungry and regretful. The father is overjoyed to see his youngest son, filled with compassion and welcomes him warmly, hugging and kissing him. The father orders that his youngest son be dressed in the finest robe and that a feast should be prepared for him. When the older son complains bitterly, the father replies, “But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”

Might we as spiritual communities welcome war veterans home in our hearts?

Might we welcome an end to their personal experience of war as we would welcome an end to all war?

Might we refrain from judgments that may increase their suffering and might we assist and encourage others to refrain from judgments, also?

Might we be able to stand in compassion and be ready to listen when veterans are ready to speak?

Veterans have learned a lot about war and suffering and if we work together to transform those seeds, there may be a little more peace for us all.


About Beth:  Beth Bro Howard is a writer and yoga teacher in Wyoming. Her son Peter returned from Iraq on Friday, October 19, 2007, after a year-long deployment.


-Related to post Wishing You A Peaceful Heart – An Open Letter To Cindy Sheehan.

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