Tag: Poetry

As I Return to School…

Amy Clark6 Comments

Tomorrow morning, I go back to school. Back to my classroom, to my students, to the profession that is my passion after a weeklong Mardi Gras holiday. However, I will also return to an unusually timed school assembly, to an emergency lockdown drill, to anxious and also angry students, to an unsettled faculty and to locked classroom doors. My own children who are ages 9 and 11 attend the same school where I teach 10th and 12th grade. They are merely across campus from me, which is always a comfort, but tomorrow will feel entirely too far away. Tomorrow, my heart will beat just a bit faster behind the mask of a calm exterior (“We Wear the Mask” Paul Laurence Dunbar). Tomorrow, my heart will break all over again for those lives lost and for the fact that this is the current reality of education—one that I refuse to accept as normal or futile.

And can I also just say that tomorrow, as I climb the steps to my classroom, the memes and the snark that are flying around on social media don’t make any of that any better. No matter how smart that meme you are sharing or tweet you are retweeting feels or how victorious your comment to that person you don’t know but felt the need to take down made you appear, it doesn’t change one damn thing about the days every teacher and student face as they go back to class. Not one damn thing.

Voices need to be heard—I’m in no way denying that. We as a nation, should be in discussion. As I scrolled through social media this weekend, I saw so many people tirelessly attempting to house meaningful conversation and to share fair minded articles of importance. I also know, however, that what I saw more frequently wasn’t a national conversation on an important issue, it was a downward spiral, in many cases, through the wars of “I’m right and you’re stupid.” Real change isn’t enacted in that way.

As a teacher, every decision I make in the classroom is made with my kids in mind—which poem to share, how to respond to a writer so that they learn to elevate their craft and still maintain confidence, when to reach out to a kid in need, what kind of professional development will best benefit my classroom and those who populate it, and so much more. Even with that, I can understand how those removed from schools might not see this issue as anything more than a political scenario to be argued in any petty way possible. So let me say it like this, I’m glad you had that moment of vitriolic facebook or twitter fame, but none of that extends comfort or safer circumstances to the students I will walk through the day with tomorrow and everyday for the foreseeable future. If anything, it makes them less hopeful that any kind of change is possible.

Issues of school safety are far bigger than political and personal opinions. The lives of our children are at stake. They get it—our kids see this so clearly. They get that they didn’t have a say so in who has been elected and in what policies have passed because they aren’t old enough to vote. They have had to rely on us—the responsible adult population—to make decisions that would keep them safe. They get that we have failed them and they are witness the arguments we are stoking in response instead of making any kind of real change.

So what are our kids doing? They are organizing marches and protests to make their voices heard—to be taken seriously—to be considered as important if not moreso to the voting citizens and leaders of this country than the preservation of longstanding political allegiances and opinions. And I would say that it is about time the rest of us wake up and pay some attention.

A former student of mine who graduated last May, Marshall Ponder, sent me an email today with a piece of writing attached that he had composed out of sheer frustration with the current state of affairs in this country. With his permission, I’m going to share a bit of what he wrote:

“…In terms of recent events, I’m at a loss for words. I’ve found myself struggling to formulate my ideas into words in the past, however, those matters were for describing beauty, wonder, and amazement; for the most part the light, not the dark. The one thing I do know is that children are dying, innocent children, our children, and we as a nation point fingers, send thoughts and prayers, yet continue to do jack shit about it.

Today much of my time has been spent reflecting and researching the school shootings our nation has endured. From Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Parkland I find nothing from my research besides deep sadness and skewed political opinions pointing fingers.

If you know me then you know I come from a background of gun wielding outdoorsmen. I was raised around guns my entire life, taught the importance of safety, the effects of what could go wrong and so on. My father and grandfather did an excellent job of educating me in this field that many in this nation are not accustomed to.

In this ongoing yet immobile debate of what ought to be done to protect ourselves from this internal terror, there are two major factors at play, access to guns capable of destruction and depraved mental health; both of which need to be dealt with in full force if we want to eradicate this terror. Even if stricter gun laws don’t solve the problem completely is it not worth a try? At this point any sort of progression towards peace is worth the effort. From a gun owner’s point of view, put restrictions on buying guns and ammo, because we as a nation have proven that we aren’t capable of handling a responsibility as large as that, time and time again.

…I wish I could write more about the mental health issue side of this debate but I’m exhausted. Thinking on this subject matter breaks me down in a way I’ve never experienced. To the people in Washington sending thoughts and prayers, get your head out of your ass and take a stance. If only the people who run our country could go visit each and every one of those families who were shattered, then maybe, just maybe, they’d be inspired to do everything in their power to prevent this from happening again.

The divided nature of this country has driven me to a point of insanity. Learn how to love your neighbor despite how different their views may be, hug your child, inspire love not hate, and reach out to those you see are in need. If we all came together and got close to the problem at foot, then maybe one day we can send our children to school without the panic they may be gunned down, maybe one day we’ll live in a world where different views are rejoiced rather than spat on, maybe one day we’ll see more laughs and smiles, and less crippled frowns, maybe one day…”

Marshall is 19 and he is broken down and exhausted and still he sees this issue so much more clearly than so many of the rest of us. His words also exemplify why I am so passionate about teaching high school students. He sees the brokenness of school safety honestly and is able to put aside what is comfortable for the reality at hand—to sacrifice long standing beliefs in order to stand up for what he sees is right—to see the world through the eyes of another and to push for change. I place my students regularly in situations that ask them to think in this way because as an English teacher, I’m not just teaching reading and writing, it is also my job to help mold empathic human beings who will leave high school ready to make the world a better place. Honestly, we are all capable of this vision and called to it. That is the hope that is left in this world-the hope that impels me forward to my day with my students tomorrow. The hope that we will “inspire love not hate, and reach out to those… in need.” The hope that we can rise above our selfish desire and create a world our children deserve.

I’ve shared this poem before, but it feels appropriate:

“The World Has Need Of You”
by Ellen Bass

everything here
seems to need us
—Rainer Maria Rilke

I can hardly imagine it
as I walk to the lighthouse, feeling the ancient
prayer of my arms swinging
in counterpoint to my feet.
Here I am, suspended
between the sidewalk and twilight,
the sky dimming so fast it seems alive.
What if you felt the invisible
tug between you and everything?
A boy on a bicycle rides by,
his white shirt open, flaring
behind him like wings.
It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple.

 

 

 

Step out of the Shade

Amy Clark4 Comments

Last night, I went to church. And I sat there alone (yet with my family) in the dark solitude—in a sort of helpless silence.

It was Ash Wednesday and I had been planning to be there for weeks. I honestly cherish this moment of sitting in contemplation, in consideration of who I have been and who I am supposed to be…who I will choose to become and why. But this year, this moment of post Mardi Gras peace and calm held a different weight, a much heavier one and I found myself a bit lost.

I entered the sanctuary heavy hearted. The afternoon had unfolded unexpectedly into what were unfortunately familiar moments of school violence, brokenness revealed, and grief beyond measure. As a teacher—honestly, as a person in the world—my concerns were past counting. I worried about how my students, on holiday this week for Mardi Gras break, were processing all of this. I worried for my own kids who I hadn’t yet figured out how to explain this news to-as if there is an explanation. And I worried for their teachers who so carefully watch over them every day of the school week. I worried for my own helplessness in protecting the lives entrusted to me in the event of a situation of this magnitude on my own campus (because courage, swift thinking, and calming words can only go so far when weapons have fallen into violent, angry, hurt, or helpless hands).

I didn’t have the energy to be angry yet amid this flurry of concern, though I knew it would come and I knew I would need to direct it effectively or it would be a wasted emotion, serving no meaningful purpose.

So, I sat and I tried to pray, to turn over the worry, to ease the ache, to begin a contemplative process of seeking a way to change minds and make a difference…to find the words needed to convey that the lives of our children are not to become the fuel and substance of a political argument mired in and dominated by selfish desires. The lives of our children should be valued in a way that clears our vision and allows us to rise above ourselves in order to work together to keep them safe, even if only at school—for the love of all that is good in this world, learning in a free country should not be a dangerous endeavor. The lives of our children, of all of our children, shouldn’t be tied to agenda, they should be tethered to our hearts.

Yet, prayers wouldn’t come. I didn’t even know where to begin. My mind was so cluttered. So I just sat there in quiet reflection, which I suppose is a form of prayer anyway, and found myself circling around the same three words—a sort of desperate cry from within for comfort, clarity, and courage.

In the midst of all of this, Gwendolyn Brooks’ “truth” came to mind. The imagery she uses in this poem seemed particularly appropriate to the moment and a means of explaining why comfort wouldn’t come. She begins her poem with these lines, “And if the sun comes/How shall we greet him?/Shall we not dread him,/Shall we not fear him/After so lengthy a/Session with shade?”

Here’s the thing, the sun is here, and it is hot and it is revealing, allowing nothing to be hidden and demanding to be noticed. It is uncomfortable for those who have been lounging in the shade to “Hear the fierce hammering/Of his firm knuckles/Hard on the door,” but we can no longer “…sleep in the coolness/of snug unawareness.” It is time to wake up to the reality of what is happening in this world that we have created and to the reality of what we are doing to each other and to our kids.

Gun violence in schools (and not just in other people’s schools—this can happen in any school) is screaming at us like a child throwing a tantrum and it is not going to be resolved through single-minded pettiness. We are all accountable in this conversation and it begins with opening serious dialogue intended to find a means to successfully combat gun violence and continuing into de-stigmatizing mental health, providing appropriate resources and education, exploring the social media impact, and so much more. The world is a complicated place and the last thing it needs is us fighting over saving the lives of our kids while keeping ourselves comfortable. I feel like this issue is pretty clear—are the lives of kids important are they worth protecting and if so, what are we doing about it?

But at some point, we cannot continue to just talk about this. Action needs to be taken and the onus of making that happen falls to each and every one of us. Not just to teachers and parents and students—to all of us—this is a national crisis and we need to step out of the “propitious haze,” see the truth, and start doing something about it. Not because we are afraid (acting out of fear is dangerous), but because we shouldn’t have to be.

(other poems that I’ve been looking to as I wander seeking clarity include—Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song For the Day” and Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones” as well as for some reason Jennifer Grotz’s “Poppies”.)

Poetry is a human thing

Amy Clark2 Comments

So, it’s been a while since I’ve written. There’s no real explaining it other than to say that this poem reveals a bit of where my frame of mind and heart have been…“mydreams, my works, must wait till after hell” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

I’ve been sick. Not in any terribly dire way—just in a terribly disruptive way. My inner ear has been unusually and relentlessly unfriendly for the last few months bringing about frequent periods of hearing loss, imbalance, and vertigo. These symptoms have haunted my days and stalked my spirit, even when not present, for the last five years. They weaponize themselves further with feelings of anxiety, fear, helplessness, and most recently, because of their refusal to retreat, hopelessness. It was difficult to see the rather hopeless path I was walking as my mind was foggy and focused on simply making it through each day. It wasn’t until I was granted a few days of feeling well recently that I looked around to realize I had arrived some place unfamiliar to my bright, optimistic, unconquerable spirit. I couldn’t see my way out and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to try.

But I knew what was missing—I wasn’t reading poetry…I wasn’t writing…I wasn’t myself. And that had to change. The trouble was that without realizing it, as Brooks writes, I had stored “…my honey and…my bread/In little jars and cabinets of my will.” And apparently, I had placed them on the top shelf, out of reach. They were too important, too critical, too central to my being and I refused to tarnish them with the ashes from which I hadn’t found the strength to take flight.

I would wait.

And then I realized the veracity of Brooks’ 5th line. Two short sentences, one line of poetry; a line divided into simplicity, while burdened by the weight of truth—my truth. “I am very hungry. I am incomplete.”

Poetry and writing are part of my being. Without them, I’m hardly whole and without them I find it hard to breathe and impossible to move. Sure, I was still physically getting through my days and I was smiling through as many of them as possible, but my spirit—the intangibility that ignites the fire within my heart, eyes, thoughts—was starving, weak and waning.

Returning wasn’t easy—I had to make myself do it (and as you can see by this not so uplifting piece, I had to work through some stuff as I did). But, the more I read, the more I write, the more alive I begin to feel and suddenly health and hope seem possible again. I’d be lying if I said I felt fully invigorated because I read some poems and sat down to write, but I’m on my way—I’m on a better path and my jars of bread and honey are getting easier to reach and open.

I shared Brooks’ poem with students last week as we were opening a study on the impact of justice (or the lack thereof) in our world and on the individual. It’s always tricky sharing poems I’m so personally attached to with kids. Inevitably, those are the poems that evoke initial student responses of “this is ridiculous” or “this is why I don’t like poetry” or my personal favorite, “the poet is wrong” (though this does bring up conversations of empathy and questions of when do we have the right to deny the feelings of others—and it also brings up the opportunity to discover what can happen when a poem is read multiple times so that its words are no longer being decoded and its ideas and truth become present and palpable). But this piece felt important to our work because it reveals that justice isn’t something that exists solely in the courthouse and with lawmakers. So, I brought it to my kids. I wanted them to connect with the poem, to dig in and understand it, to feel its worth and weight. In order for that to occur, they had to be free to respond honestly, in their own way, and in a safe space, one that was theirs and theirs alone—their writer’s notebooks.

After I read it aloud and they reread, reflected, and wrote (or drew), we talked—well, they talked and I listened. They got it. They knew this moment of storing honey and bread. They had been or are currently incomplete and hungry. My kids, while they seem to have plenty, know significant loss; they know depression and anxiety; they know isolation. They felt as one with the poet—a solidarity of sorts. Many were amazed to know they weren’t the only ones who had felt this way and not only that but that a famous poet had felt it deeply enough to write it down.

They recognized that injustice doesn’t have to be as far sweeping and giant as racial inequity or police brutality or child poverty. They recognized that sometimes even their lives could feel unjust. They recognized that they weren’t alone—that this was a human thing. But mostly, they connected to what personal injustice had felt like and in doing so, doors were opened to be able to begin a discussion of systemic injustice with fewer barriers—because we are all human and injustice is a weight, a burden—one that maybe cannot be overcome alone. In connecting to an issue before putting up the barriers of having to be right, it is often more possible to understand it more fully. We were ready to begin.

This is why poetry is essential. It reminds us ever so gently that we are all humans—no matter what, we are all humans—and with that comes a common bond and a responsibility to sometimes reach the jars and loosen the tops and stand side by side until the “devil days of…hurt” are no more.

(just as an aside—we also read and discussed this poem as we moved through these early parts of our study on justice– “Kindness” [Naomi Shihab Nye])

Revelation

Amy Clark5 Comments

I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid who or what I really am. Trying not to see, feel, or be the turmoil inside of myself. I’ve spent my whole life covering for the anxiety simmering and seething within. Trying to keep it contained, to maintain “normalcy”, to be like everyone else–to smile. I’ve spent my whole life with people who think it is as simple as “there’s no reason to be nervous” or “that is so irrational, you’re too smart for that” or “just have some fun.” Wondering if anyone really understands what it is like to live one life, confined by the walls of anxiety, knowing that a better alternative is out there, just unavailable to me. I’ve spent my whole life keenly aware of the toll my selfish anxious world takes on my friends and family. Wondering why they continue to tolerate my nonsense. I’ve spent my whole life in an effort not to be my own worst enemy. Striving to become louder than the anxiety enriched voice of doubt within.

Lonely and isolating, anxiety stalked my brain at all hours, preying on my weakness and jealously seeking my companionship. It sabotaged my thought process with constant reminders of what I absolutely could not do and all of the germy places and things I should avoid. It made ridiculous rituals and paths seem intelligent and even clever…after all, I didn’t want to get sick.

When it sensed my strength rising and my thoughts clearing, anxiety charged panic with the takedown. Panic was a tougher opponent—subtle at first, as it crept surreptitiously from some dark corner of my mind. Unnoticed. I had no way of protecting myself, of establishing a means of defense. The struggle to survive panic’s attack felt intense and like a losing battle. Shaking from head to toe, sick and breathless, I would try to fight back, to overcome the internal siege with reason and rational thought, but panic was louder than I could hope to be and for a while I just had to wait it out—retreating to some internal nook or cranny until it was safe to exit.

My parents called me “the clam” because, well, I just didn’t really talk about how I was feeling most of the time. They and others, my husband included, have tried to understand and have tried to help. They’ve listened to what I was willing to share when I was willing to share it, but I withheld so much. I’m 41 years old and I still don’t really talk about it with any specificity. This piece of writing is the most I have said about this part of my life and the details of it still remain carefully veiled. I’ve spent the past 32 years working this out—fighting back with skills and strategies that even now sometimes feel vague and unequipped to handle the weight of the work, but I put them to use anyway. Panic doesn’t visit as frequently as he used to—my understanding of his elusive and insidious ways have stripped some of his power and brought me into greater control. But it is hard work. Everyday. Hard work.

And then there are the moments when I look into the eyes of my own child or into the eyes of a student and witness a mirror image of my own struggle—and my heart sinks to my toes. I cannot make it better for them. I cannot remove their burden. Only they can do the work. But, I can let them know they are not alone. That in some way I understand. Community, in the midst of the isolation and doubt, can be a sort of salvation. I can offer that.

John Green’s new book Turtles All the Way Down offered me that community, imbuing me with the confidence to write this today. In his character Aza, I saw myself. My struggles never truly paralleled the magnitude of Aza’s. I was lucky in that way, I suppose. But the emotion tied to her anxious, compulsive moments, the honesty and truth of her character, the way her fight within herself impacted her family and friends—all of it—overwhelmed me as a reader. I had never seen this side of myself, my high school self especially, so clearly expressed on the page. I found myself having to put the book to the side from time to time because, well, I had to take a break…from myself. It was as though someone had extracted the deepest secrets I owned and shared them with the world. I have spent so much time in the last few decades denying myself, that to see a portrait so clearly painted terrified me. And at the same time made me realize, once again, that community can be salvation—and that words can offer a way out.

My interaction with Turtles All the Way Down proved to me again, in the most personal way, why we offer our students diverse books and choice when it comes to their reading. They need these moments. They need to see themselves on the page and to know that whoever they are, whatever they are going through the world of print doesn’t deny their existence…that the world doesn’t deny their worth. Jane Eyre was a great book and I loved every second of reading it, but access to a character dealing with anxiety the way Green portrays Aza would’ve helped my sophomore self far more.  I might have understood myself and what was happening on the inside a bit better and I might not have been so afraid of it all, knowing that I was not alone.

But our kids also need to see the lives, joys and struggles of those people whose worlds and experiences do not reflect their own. Growing to understand and care for a character can lead our students, and all readers, to a retraction of judgment and to an extension of empathy. It can take time, practice, nudging and conscientious reflection for our students to acknowledge their own bias and to build these bridges. However, in a world so darkened by judgment and the need to be right, in a world so taken with the simplicity of the single story, it would seem offering the chance for kids to find themselves in a book as well as empathy for others is the least we can do.

This week, I’ve opted to share Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sonnet” (you’ll have to scroll through the article to find the poem-but it is worth it). I realize, of course that neither of these poems are about anxiety directly, yet somehow the imagery takes me there as well as to the places intended by the poet. And on top of that, they are both simply beautiful pieces of poetry and emotion on the page.

Reparations

Amy Clark6 Comments

Today, October 15, is pregnancy and infant loss Remembrance Day, so instead of my usual classroom focused post, today’s blog is far more personal and one I haven’t really shared so publicly. But, today, it felt right. Read at your own risk. It’s pretty emotional.

“ —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”[1]

**********

Losing things would seem to be a fault, yet it has always been one of my greatest talents. Quite honestly, it is an art I’ve perfected.

I can still see my six-year-old self pouting and tearful over a lost doll. I knew that once my indiscretion became public I would suffer the disappointment of my mom, the frustration of my dad (that doll had cost money, you know), and the derision of my brother. There was only one thing to do, only one place to turn. I turned my downtrodden gaze upward and sent a desperate prayerful plea to St. Christopher (and probably to my guardian angel too…) to help me find her.

I’m not entirely certain if I ever did find this particular doll; however, this moment sticks out in my mind because it was the first of many prayers for the loss in my life.

The trauma of lost dolls soon evolved into the struggle to find car keys (in the refrigerator? Really?) and credit cards. I became quite good at coping with these losses: stay calm, retrace your steps, pray for guidance, retrace your steps again, ask for help, and eventually find (or replace) what has been lost.

And so my life went for the first 28 years or so. Loss couldn’t touch me, couldn’t shake me—I was good at it. In my 28th year, however, it would seem being good at it wouldn’t be enough. Loss took on new meaning and with that so did my life.

**********

Nathan died before he was born. He died before there was a nursery, before baby showers, swaddling blankets, and pacifiers; however, he also died before suffering the pain his earthly life promised with absolute certainty. This is a pain that, as his mother, I bear for him every moment of my every day, and I do so with gratitude.

The brief flicker of this sweet little life has forever altered mine; for while I delivered Nathan into a world he’d never meet, he and I shared 17 weeks together. Those weeks were filled with intensities of joy, nausea, first movements and hopes of the life we were to have as a family. Those hopes, a fulfillment of a year of frustratingly futile efforts, were real the moment the test finally flashed “PREGNANT” and I never once questioned that he might leave too soon.

**********

“Ma’am, I promise, these symptoms are normal in early pregnancy. Just calm down and take comfort in the fact that things are going so well!”

**********

Mother’s intuition comes more naturally than expected, well, at least it did for me. The refrain of reassurances issued from my well-meaning nurses never proved satisfactory. Somewhere, and maybe only in my heart, I knew that something was terribly wrong. Still, I proceeded naively with confidence.

**********

“Oh dear, that is fluid around the brain! Where’s your doctor? Out of town? We need a doctor immediately.” And with that, the sonographer darted out of the room.

**********

It was the day before Thanksgiving and in a fleeting moment, there we were being worked into a perinatologist’s already full schedule. Suddenly my intuition seemed to be correct after all, only it didn’t feel so good to be right. I felt sick.

This particular doctor, though brilliant, was ambivalent and unwilling to offer diagnosis until Nathan showed further development, which meant four weeks of waiting and wondering. We knew something was wrong but treaded around admitting it out loud.

I spent that Thanksgiving keenly aware that our poor baby would probably never have a “normal” life. I ached with jealousy for those around me with healthy pregnancies and babies. New feelings of loss, of being cheated as well as the anger over that loss replaced those early emotions of euphoric joy and hope: Fulfillment replaced with vacancy.

I struggled in this way for several days, when suddenly in all of my blind self pity, a moment of clarity shed the scales from my eyes to reveal the truth about the love a parent feels for a child.

**********

stay calm, retrace your steps, pray for guidance, retrace your steps again, ask for help, and eventually find (or replace)what has been lost

**********

I was standing in the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door when I understood for the first time that God grants gifts of many kinds and that it wasn’t up to me in what kind of package that gift might arrive. I knew in this flash of honesty that no matter what ailment our child might suffer, no matter what affliction might complicate his circumstances, I loved him completely, unconditionally and that love would translate into meeting his each and every need with devotion and unspeakable emotion. I found my child again and in doing so I found out something pretty important about strength and about parenting as well.

I gathered and rebuilt myself around this new found gratitude and love.

**********

“So, Mrs. Clark, do you have any questions for me today?”

It had happened two days before and I knew it in the moment it occurred.

There is an uncomfortable pause after his question as the unspeakable must be spoken and neither the doctor nor my husband and I care to go first.

I was driving home from a Christmas party and was suddenly breathless as if all of the life had been sucked from me.

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but we have been unable to detect a heartbeat. You will have to deliver your son tonight. I want you to know that this is in no way your fault”

He didn’t move again after that, and I knew what that meant, only I couldn’t face that terrible truth. Not until I absolutely had to.

**********

No one prepared me for this loss. They prepped me for “problems”, for “difficulties”, even for “abnormalities”, but no one discussed this possibility.

How was it to be believed?

How could it not be my fault?

Everything I’d lost up until this point had been my fault: Barbies casually kicked under the bed, barrettes accidentally thrown away, credit cards carelessly left in my back pocket.

I should’ve done more, been better.

I should’ve kept him alive, and now I had to deliver him lifeless and forever sever our time together as one. It was as though I was suffering one loss mentally, emotionally only to realize that there would also be a vast physical loss as soon as delivery was complete.

Twenty-four hours later and with my stoic husband by my side singing me through the pain, we delivered Nathan into our presence only to have him wrapped up and whisked away –leaving us empty-armed with “keepsakes” of lifeless pictures, a tiny tape measure, and, at my request, attempts at hand and foot prints. These tokens were all things that I was desperate to possess, yet in truth they were only a small compensation for the vast emptiness left behind by that baby boy.

Yet somehow, I found a strength I’d never known after enduring this most excruciating day of my life. I was proud of that strength and clung to it with fury all the while never suspecting that it was my love for Nathan that endowed me with it.

When the adrenaline waned, I had this moment of feeling barren and painfully alone. This moment turned into days and stretched into months. I felt cheated and abandoned, and this irreparable loss seemed to be “disaster”.

**********

“Who knows how long I’ve loved you/ You know I love you still/ Will I wait a lonely lifetime/ If you want me to, I will…../ Love you forever and forever/ Love you with all my heart/ Love you whenever we’re together/ Love you when we’re apart”[2]

**********

As it turns out, it was my overwhelming love for that beautiful boy which was in effect the root of all my pain and the source for what would be all my healing as well.

This love reached farther than any I had ever known possible and this love did not die with the body. This love was not lost and in finding that, I discovered the one thing that was mine forever.

Nathan would be 13 this December, and he is part of my every day. Sometimes it’s simple things like when a child of a friend who was due within a week of him loses her first tooth and I realize that we should be celebrating the same thing. Other times it’s the moments when my two healthy thriving boys, now 8 and 10, give me fits, patience is lost, and yet I’m able to retrace my steps and find the presence of mind to be grateful for every moment I am allowed to share with them.

Then it’s the precious moments of solitude when I just whisper “I love you” in my heart and I know that he hears my quiet prayer.

I live my life painfully aware of the consequences of loving deeply and eternally grateful for that love because, in the end, that is what enabled me to finally master the art of losing. With that love, there is no disaster. With that love, Nathan is forever with me. With that love, I live a fuller life. With that love, I am complete.

[1] From Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”

[2] From The Beatles’ “I Will”

Weights and Balances

Amy ClarkLeave a comment

Can I hear today? Am I dizzy or is the room cooperating and staying in one place?

These are the first two questions I ask every single solitary day that I have woken up for the last 5 years—since the moment my inner ear decided to stop communicating effectively with my brain…since the moment vertigo and hearing loss infiltrated my life stealing a bit of balance, a bit more of my hearing and freedom, and all of my confidence in my body. It’s a bit of an invisible illness– frustrating to both me and my family, as all of us struggle to understand and to find inroads to health and regular life…only to find that “regular life” doesn’t look the way it used to.

It’s the hearing loss that bothers me most. At it’s worst, the sound of my children’s voices is muffled and my husband finds himself speaking louder and more repetitively than he might care to (bless him for his patience!) and I find myself having to read lips. I fear total hearing loss in my left ear every moment of every day. The thought of the sounds of this world and the words my family speak to me being muffled or stifled completely, the thought of my own clarity becoming more muffled terrifies me.

So, it’s no wonder that when the Radiolab podcast on Words aired on my local NPR station today, I found myself sobbing in my car in a Starbuck’s parking lot. As the storyteller, a sign language interpreter, herself hearing impaired, revealed the story of her interaction with a 27 year old man born without hearing who not only was without words of any kind—no way to name himself or the things of the world, let alone his feelings—but who also had no idea they existed, I found myself deeply in awe of words and their meaning in our lives. When she spoke of the emotional moment he finally discovered words, I was overcome.

No matter what happens to me, to my hearing, at least I will have words.

Words fascinate me. Just ask any tenth grader who has passed through my classroom in recent years. The class is crafted to be a study in the importance of story in our lives and we begin our workshop with an investigation into words—their weight and power, how to balance them, how they play together to create rhythm and resonance. My students look at me like I’ve lost my mind when we begin this as if to say, “Uh, Mrs. Clark, we know words…we learned them a long time ago.”

I always have to explain that this is no simple exercise in vocabulary. If my students are truly seeking to express themselves meaningfully, with clarity and voice and style, they can’t just “know words.” They have to be able to place them on the page in a way that means something, that creates movement and moments, and the only way to really understand that is to be immersed in language.

So, how do we do that? Lots of way, really. My students are always reading independently—books of their choosing that excite them, that make them want to keep reading, that feel like a guilty pleasure and not homework. This isn’t always easy. But the struggle of pairing every kid with a book they want to read is worth it every single time.

I also begin the year with a central novel that we will consider as a class (this is one of maybe two or three whole class texts for the year). Sure, we study short pieces all year, but the crux of their reading is independently driven work. However, I start this way with a purpose. I select a text that will allow me to, as Ellin Keene would note, teach the reader/writer and not the book. Sure the story has to be compelling, but there must be a larger purpose. This year we are working with All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. While I absolutely adore the story contained between the covers of this book and while it works to support our theme of “story”, I am teaching it because Doerr writes in a way that allows for intentional study of word choice and its power. We are 16 pages in and already students have noted the beauty of his craft and specifically how his choice of verbs acts to create suspense. And they have taken these observations to their writer’s notebooks for practice in their own writing.

Finally, though, it is important to note that the early days of our notebook work often center around poetry as well. This work is integral as poetry is more than just a great example of word economy, of a time when a writer (poet) had to choose only the best most precise words. It is more than the simple fact that poetry can include intense emotion or illustrative imagery.

Poets have the unique sensibility to play with rhythm, repetition and sound as well as placement on the page. Exposing students to and immersing them in the artistry of this craft uncovers newfound appreciation for the working of words and invites them to play a bit on their own—to venture out onto uncertain limbs to see what they can create and their writer’s notebook is the perfect place for this practice.

So, for example, we can look at a classic like Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” which always comes off as kind of simple and “beneath them” at first. Trust me, there are always a lot of 15 year olds with opinions about the quality of this particular poem and none of them are terribly forgiving…until we begin to discuss his word craft. After allowing them to respond to the poem in their notebooks in any way they wish (reflection, connection, illustration, etc), I ask them to go back and look for words that stand out to them and to explain why. When they have finished hunting and reflecting, we come together for some discussion. Inevitably, the conversation grows from merely a look at what it must mean to “wander” and to do so “lonely as a cloud”—my kids are always struck by the magnitude of the disconnect he must have felt—to a deeper reflection on the difference between loneliness and solitude (for in the end, he feels “…the bliss of solitude; /And then my heart with pleasure fills”). But there’s also the recognition of choosing a word like “golden” instead of yellow or the myriad words he uses to reveal the happiness of the daffodils who were “Tossing their heads in sprightly dance”.

It’s a good beginning and they start to see why we are studying words. So, we move on to other more complex examples… A.E. Stallings’ poem “Sestina: Like” is a beautiful and current poem, perfect for word study as well as for a look at the way we can use punctuation to deepen the meaning of our words and to either create or disrupt their rhythm. I also really love to have my tenth grade students study the first stanza of Eliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” as the imagery is stark and the whole “like a patient etherized upon a table” image always brings us to an immense discussion of how crafting comparisons can change everything in a poem…can you imagine this poem without this image? It’s the beginning of Modernism. Had he phrased it even slightly differently, maybe “like a patient asleep on the table,” its weight, its impact would have been diminished and that is an important realization for kids—all it takes is a single word and everything can change. So we take this to our own writing and begin questioning the precision of our words and playing with how we place them on the page—in any writing form (poetry or otherwise).

As the weeks go on, I am also always sure to ask students to bring in poems they find that work in this way and I further this study by bringing in the work of poets like Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joy Harjo, Terrance Hayes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mark Strand, and Rita Dove. These conversations, this work takes 10-12 minutes of class time a day before me move into our work for the day, but I would not give up that time for anything. It is some of the most important work we do and it inspires my students as readers, writers and thinkers not just in a classroom but also in the world.

All of this focus on words in my classroom has really sort of coincided with my inner ear (balance and hearing) adversity, and it brings me to wonder…is the recognition of the beauty of words working together, of the sounds they make in the silence of our minds, and how they are used to create something powerful, something important, something meaningful, really just a result my struggle to take them all in quickly, to appreciate the way they work together and to pass that along just in case one day it’s not so easy to do anymore? Or is it just where I would’ve landed professionally anyway, knowing that my young writers need this kind of study?

Hard to say really.

But in this time of volatile language, hostile tweets, inane memes and truly uncivil discourse, I can think of no more important study for my students than to dig in and truly learn to use words meaningfully, carefully and precisely… and to hopefully gain style and voice. Maybe in this way, they can begin to set the example for the rest of us!