... and Remembering

Today is about remembering. Many people far more eloquent than I will speak at length about the tragedy of the attacks on our country. We all have our memories from that day: those who lost friends and family, those who witnessed the events up close, those far away who watched with the helplessness of a mute on the wrong side of the glass. My own memories are that of the almost 2,000 people at my office campus leaving our desks, gathering in conference rooms to watch the news feeds that started showing up on all our video equipment, about hundreds of people heading to our loading platforms - we're a medical device company - and loading trucks to send across the river into Manhattan. It's interesting that no matter how great the event, all remembering is a local, personal act.

Do you recall how quickly Auden's "September 1, 1939" started being quoted in columns and appearing on websites? How quickly old and new poems began to appear everywhere, as people attempted to find ways to say what they couldn't otherwise say. Many poets have spoken about poetry as a vehicle for "saying the unsayable", whether it be on tragedies of a personal sort that would never be known without a brave poet's voice or those of the kind of 9/11/01 or 9/1/39, or any of a number or other horrific days that require the distance and craft of the artist to present them in a comprehensible way.

Poetry is of course, not uniquely able to convey the layers of an event; even a short look at Picasso's Guernica tells us that. But poetry may be able to do a few things differently than other art forms:

Primarily, it permits a juxtaposition of images with an immediacy and pacing that other art forms don't. Visual arts (like Guernica) hit us all at once, movies (and plays, and novels) bring us along at the rate the director has chosen. But a poem (often) strikes us with a complete visual on the page, and provides aural or linguistic beauty that begins to unfold immediately and as long and as fast as we care to take it in.

Second, it allows a deeply personal interaction without sacrificing a view of the entirety. In Auden's poem (and Yeats' "Easter 1916" which it reflects in structure and tone), we leap into a helicopter trip down through history (Thucydides even makes a brief appearance) from the most local of observations ("I sit in one of the dives/On Fifty-second Street..."). After the trip through the eons, Auden brings us home to the the individual ("All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie..."). In this way poetry is most unique among the art forms, as it permits the reader to (choose to) assume completely the perspective of the narrator by speaking the poem. An actor in role takes on a part of the memory, but not the whole

Third, the poem uniquely packages hope with recollection. The choice to connect hope to a tragic memory is the poet's choice, of course, but the call to action, the voluble pronouncement of what can be done in response, or of what has already happened, is most real and most direct in the narrative poem. We can speak the poet's words and find ourselves carried along just by the act of saying them. We can be moved by an act of remembering, by a capture memory that was not even our own.

The risk of being cloying and cliched is more present in the poem of recollection than in other forms, I suppose, but that's a discussion of craft for another day. Other media can provoke insight, or outrage, or meaning, but when done well, there is an affirmation, a commitment possible in the remembrance poem that is unavailable in other arts. Auden closes with

May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

We remember today with the commitment that poetry can provide.

Poetry and.... Teaching.

As school starts again I think back upon the great teachers I have had and what has made them great. Sure, there's compassion and a desire for service. Without casting any disrespect upon these essential attributes, I'm learning toward something else today; I don't know about you, but I've known a number of people who are compassionate, great with kids, intent upon serving others, and/or devoted to making the world a better place. Many of them have been good teachers. But that's not what's separated the best.

When you think about it, what really distinguishes great teachers? I think it's the ability to make connections between the material and other things - maybe its application, maybe some analogous concept that helps the student establish a connection with that material. Like the grammar school teacher who can make fractions visible objects for a child who doesn't like math. Or the Bible teacher who hooks an adventure-seeking boy with the wars of the Old Testament and leads him out through the Gospels. How about a science teacher who discusses Stranger in Strange Land and the qualities of a good sausage-and-peppers sandwich in (almost) equal increments to keep a room filled with high school boys interested in corrosion* chemistry? I'm fortunate to have known all these people - they taught me or people close to me - and I think they have something in common. They're all poets.

At least one of them would raise an eyebrow for that comparison, but I think it holds. What do we do as poets? In successful, well-crafted poems, we establish connections - metaphors - that make visible something that might not otherwise be visible. It needn't be truth, it needn't definitive, but needs to be memorable and it needs stay with the reader, to create a desire to take in more. I'm sitting here remembering the tools my AP chemistry teacher used 30 years ago, not for their great scientific insight - 20 years of practice has taught me a great deal more than I learned there - but for how they kicked open a door for me that I leaped through joyfully, and how I've spent my life recalling his lessons. Even when I don't know that there's anything more for me to mine. But still I go back. And find something worth remembering again.

This is another place I go when people tell me they don't "get" poetry. For those who don't like or appreciate the surprise of making new connections, I rely on craft, or allusion, or something "intellectual." But for those who teach, as their career or as their vocation, as a part-time effort or as a part of their larger job, I say the poetic and the learning moment are the same. I invite you to join me there.






- hint it's pronounced KAT-eye-on, not KAY-shun.