One Stone, her first trade book, came out this year -- but poetically speaking she is no neophyte. At 50- something, she has been a full-time secondary school teacher for more than two decades, teaching and writing poetry all that time, patiently developing her craft in various writer's groups, submitting here and there, publishing occasionally in some of Canada's more established journals. At the new members' reading, she read this poem, which took my breath away -- and impressed me enough to buy her book. The book is about coming through a divorce after 20 years of marriage. In this poem, the final one in the collection, that painful process becomes analagous to the Isrealites wandering through the desert into the promised land. This association -- she said as much at the reading -- was a private one, but that level of meaning becomes clear in the context of the collection itself.
COMING THROUGH
400 years in a narrow land,
our veins thick and stagnant;
blood runs thin in a place of dust.
When we crossed the Red Sea,
the waves rising like walls
and the land dry before us,
we thought we were free.
But there was the desert --
our minds could not fathom
the space, saw only sand
and no water. Sand.
No water. Our garments,
of Egyptian cotton, fell from our shoulders,
in strips and rags. The sun beat
our backs, burned our hair
white. Soon even our tears
dried in the desert air. There was rock
and no water. We sat on stone,
looking back at the green fields,
the small huts of Mitzrayim.
Why look forward
upon nothing?
Miriam led us from well
to well, cool water at the end
of a long day. But there was no place
to build, only a moment
of shade, sun reflected
on the palm frond, wind
scratching its spiky fingers:
wind on the hot face, a cup
of water.
Now is the time
for turning. Between us and Jericho
is only a stretch of grass,
tender green in the spring breeze,
and a wall. In my hand,
the ram's horn, a smooth bone
of sound -- with my breath
I can shake the walls, stir the stones
into flight.
In front of me, the shadow of a wall,
In my hand, a trumpet.
The writer of The Journey of the Magi could do no better.
Thematically, this poem is immense; technically it works so well on so many levels. I love, for instance, that "smooth bone of sound" amid all that aridity, and water/heat contrast is so natural one is somehow not immediately reminded of Eliot; it's been a while since I read a poem where the linebreaks were so effective. For instance, in the second stanza
our minds could not fathom (SPACE)
the space, saw only sand (NOTHINGNESS)
and no water. Sand. (AGAIN NOTHINGNESS)
No water. Our garments, (SOMETHING ELSE?)
of Egyptian cotton, fell from our shoulders,
in strips and rags. The sun beat (WHAT? WHO?)
our backs, burned our hair
(SURPRISE) white. Soon even our tears (WHAT?)
dried in the desert air. There was rock (PAUSE -- WHAT ELSE?)
and no water. We sat on stone,
looking back at the green fields,
the small huts of Mitzrayim.
Why look forward (NOTHING)
upon nothing?
In many poems this kind of "pregnant pause" or "leave the reader hanging" linebreaking seems a kind of cheap trick, as in say (I'm making up something here, but I'm sure many of you have seen similar)
I turned the light
off. Was thinking about
calling you up as I went to
bed.
but here, because of what the poem is about -- coming through such an inhospitable environment towards such an uncertain goal -- it serves its purpose well in slowing the reader down, in suggesting a number of uncertain possibilities before one, much as the narrator faces uncertain possibilities with each and every step as she/he makes her/his way through.
Her collection, at a 104 pages, is longer than most first books, but having only read part of it, I can see she takes us on quite a journey, along which she delivers a number of poems as strong as this one.
__________
I first saw Pelman on a panel about teaching poetry in the schools. It soon became clear that she was the most experienced teacher on the panel, and had come up with a number of inspiring formulas for teaching high schoolers to enjoy poetry ... a pretty daunting task at any time. People that age need anything to be strongly related to them personally to be at all relevant. One of her more striking assignments (maybe this idea is from the literature, but I have never heard it before) was for the student to choose from an exhaustive list a poet who was born on his or her birthday, write an interview with that poet, and then write a poem in the style of that poet. To get students away from the trite but universal impulse to write confessional rhyming poems, Pelman emphasized (this seemed to be her own formula, and teachers, as she said, always need them), the "Three P's of Poetry", ingrediants found in any good poem:
Passion
Persona
Play
Passion here is pretty self-explanatory. By Persona, she means a certain indirectness (persona of course meaning mask), i.e. an idea expressed by Billy Collins, that if you write about your father write about anything but your father... rather images & impressions either associated with him or somehow imbued by him. By Play, of course, she means play with language, and she suggested a number of interesting ways to impel the students toward that.
Anyway, Pelman struck me as a great teacher, giving the lie to that old GB Shaw walnut, "Those who can't do, teach..."
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