POETRY MAN

Back in the long-ago of 1967, I was a 6th-Grader at Lassalette Elementary in La Puente, California.  A few times during that year, our class had opportunities to order youth-oriented paperback books from a service called the Scholastic Book Club. 

There were lots of titles to choose from, but I bought only one book that year. It was a book of poetry, first published in 1966, titled 'Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle... and Other Modern Verse' (Dunning/Lueders/Smith). I think I paid thirty-five cents for it. 

I didn't know this book was an award-winning anthology, or that it presented modern poetry in a way that would appeal to young people, or that it would become a classic and widely used in high-school curriculums. It just looked interesting.

I literally inhaled the book. It changed me, and fundamentally changed the way I looked at the world. I even memorized a couple of the poems and can still recite them at the drop of a hat.

This part Christmas, The Artist gifted me with a beautiful hard-bound edition of 'Reflections', and I've now read it several times. I'm finding great pleasure in leafing though the pages and reading a random poem out loud.

Here are several of my favorites. They still move me in ways that I would not have expected, just like they did when I was in 6th Grade.

A note from the book's Forward:

"Read each poem slowly. Give every poem a chance to speak to you. Reread. Read aloud. Make your ears and your eyes work on each poem. Expect to find surprises - then read slowly enough to enjoy them."

How to Eat a Poem  (Eve Merriam)

Don’t be polite.

Bite In.

Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that

may run down your chin.

It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon

or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core

or stem

or rind

or pit

or seed

or skin

to throw away.

Why Nobody Pets the Lion at the Zoo  (John Ciardi)

The morning that the world began

The Lion growled a growl at Man.

And I suspect the Lion might

(if he’d been closer) have tried a bite.

I think that’s as it ought to be

And not as it was taught to me.

I think the Lion has a right

To growl a growl and bite a bite.

And if the Lion bothered Adam,

He should have growled back at ‘im.

The way to treat a Lion right

Is growl for growl and bite for bite.

True, the Lion is better fit

For biting than for being bit.

But if you look him in the eye

You’ll find the Lion’s rather shy.

He really wants someone to pet him.

The trouble is: his teeth won’t let him.

He has a heart of gold beneath

But the Lion just can’t trust his teeth.

Resume’  (Dorothy Parker)

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

August from My Desk  (Roland Flint)

It is hot today, dry enough for cutting grain,

and I am drifting back to North Dakota

where butterflies are all gone brown with wheat dust.

And where some boy,

red-faced, sweating, chafed,

too young to be dying this way,

steers a laborious, self-propelled combine,

and dreams of cities, and blizzards –

and airplanes.

With the white silk scarf of his sleeve

he shines and shines his goggles,

he checks his meters, checks his flaps,

screams contact at his dreamless father,

and, engines roaring,

he pulls back the stick

and hurtles into the sun.

Ancient History  (Arthur Guiterman)

I hope the old Romans

Had painful abdomens.

I hope that the Greeks

Had toothache for weeks.

I hope the Egyptians

Had chronic conniptions.

I hope that the Arabs

Were bitten by scarabs.

I hope that the Vandals

Had thorns in their sandals.

I hope that the Persians

Had gout in all versions.

I hope that the Medes

Were kicked by their steeds.

They started the fuss

And left it to us!

War  (Dan Roth)

Dawn came slowly,

almost not at all.

The sun crept over the hill

cautiously

fearful of being hit

by mortar fire.

Too Blue  (Langston Hughes)

I got those sad old weary blues.

I don’t know where to turn.

I don’t know where to go.

Nobody cares about you

When you sink so low.

What shall I do?

What shall I say?

Shall I take a gun and

Put myself away?

I wonder if

One bullet would do?

Hard as my head is,

It would probably take two.

But I ain’t got

Neither bullet nor gun –

And I’m too blue

To look for one.

The Garden Hose  (Beatrice Janosco)

In the gray evening

I see a long serpent

With its tail in the dahlias.

It lies in loops across the grass

And drinks softly at the faucet.

I can hear it swallow.

For a Dead Kitten  (Sara Henderson Hay)

Put the rubber mouse away,

Pick the spools up from the floor,

What was velvet-shod, and gay,

Will not want them any more.

What was warm, is strangely cold.

Whence dissolved the little breath?

How could this small body hold

So immense a thing as death?

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from 

a Friend Called Felicity  (John Tobias)

During that summer

When unicorns were still possible;

When the purpose of knees

Was to be skinned;

When shiny horse chestnuts

    (Hollowed out

     Fitted with straws

     Crammed with tobacco

     Stolen from butts

     In family ashtrays)

Were puffed in green lizard silence

While straddling thick branches

Far above and away

From the softening effects

Of civilization

During that summer –

Which may never have been at all;

But which has become more real

Than the one that was –

Watermelons ruled.

Thick pink imperial slices

Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues

Dribbling from chins;

Leaving the best part,

The black bullet seeds,

To be spit out in rapid fire

Against the wall

Against the wind

Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,

There was always another bite;

It was a summer of limitless bites,

Of hungers quickly felt

And quickly forgotten

With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.

Each one is savored lingeringly,

Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,

That summer that maybe never was

Has been captured and preserved.

And when we unscrew the lid

And slice off a piece

And let it linger on our tongue:

Unicorns become possible again.

Lead image courtesy of Oblio; 'Reflections cover, gracias de Google Images; Phoebe Snow 'Poetry Man' video, muchisimas gracias de YouTube; THANK YOU, KIM!!!!

MAGIC BUS

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C. Clarke, science-fiction writer,  futurist

I’ve enjoyed almost 70 years of conscious existence on this small blue marble. A really good one was 1970, when I was a high school Freshman taking a Senior-level class in Cultural Anthropology at La Puente High School. 

I’ve mentioned this class in a previous story. Please humor me.

On the first day of school, I entered the classroom and saw a pile of desks in the middle of the room, with other students sitting or standing along the walls. The bell rang with no teacher in sight.

After a few minutes, I began pulling desks off the pile and setting them upright. Some of the other guys began to do the same, and soon all the desks were facing the chalkboard, with everyone seated. 

As if on cue, teacher Alan Eggleston walked in with a giant toothy grin and mocked us for being programmed by society to set up the desks in a culturally- acceptable schoolroom format. That first day set the tone for the next two semesters of serious, mind-expanding education.

This story is about a very special day in Alan Eggleston’s Cultural Anthropology class in September of 1970.

We’d been discussing the concept of human culture, how mankind developed it, and why certain benchmarks of that development were so vital. In preparation for an upcoming class project, Mr. E announced a field trip we’d soon be taking. Very early one Saturday morning, we piled into a school bus and rode East on the San Bernardino Freeway and into the desert, somewhere between Cabazon and Palm Springs.

The driver slowed down, crossed the freeway’s dirt median and parked the bus on the Westbound side of the road. We got off the bus and trekked up the gentle slope of the alluvial plain that stretched in front of us. We hiked about a half mile, far enough away that we couldn’t hear the cars cruising on the freeway below us. The bus looked small and distant.

We stopped walking and were surrounded by rocks and scrub. After a few quiet moments, Mr. E addressed us as a group, his words muted by the wide-open desert:

“OK, you know we’ve been learning about how early man struggled every day to survive and thrive, which required him to fashion the tools to meet those needs. We’ve also studied how he learned to make them out of the natural environment he lived in.”

He raised and stretched his arms out to the desert.

“This… is the kind of place where ancient stone tools have been found. Today I want you to make your own stone tool using anything you can find that's a part of this environment. Take your time, consider the tool, how you’ll use it, and let’s get started!”

The search began for each of us to find an appropriate type of rock that would flake off when struck by a harder hammerstone. We formed search groups, and within 30 minutes everyone had the materials needed to start fabricating their tool. I chose to make a large cutting tool for skinning prey, which needed a sharpened side to slice and a rounded side to grip.

We started working away, sitting on the ground or on top of large rocks. There were a few banged fingers and rocks that shattered on first strike. We talked and laughed and made comments about each other’s poor chipping method. Soon the talk and laughter stopped, and the only sound was that of humans chipping on rocks.

Mr. E walked among the group, watching us chip away, quietly suggesting better ways to use the hammerstone, assisting those who were struggling.

 I was making progress and my cutting tool was taking shape. Suddenly, I had a strange feeling... almost an epiphany. I looked up from my work and listened to the sound of humans sitting in the desert, chipping on rocks. It was an ancient, visceral, primeval sound. I became unstuck in time. This is what it sounded like twenty-thousand years ago, when the Chemehuevi or Serrano or Mohave or Cahuilla or Tongva people were inhabiting these desert places.

                          

I felt a connection to those ancient people... people I would never know, but whom had suddenly come as alive as the people around me here in the desert. I got emotional thinking those deep thoughts, and it took me a few moments to re-focus.

I will never forget that feeling.

Alan Eggleston knew exactly what I was experiencing: a psychic pull across two hundred centuries. That’s why we were here. That’s why this trip to the desert, and his class, mattered.

Eventually, the morning waned and the heat rose, so Mr. E called time on our work. We gathered around, discussing and comparing our tools and their uses, with surprisingly good results for a bunch of teenagers. We headed back down to the freeway, ate box lunches in the shade of the bus, then boarded and began the long drive back through time. 

There were other class projects during those two semesters that dragged us back and forth across centuries, connecting to a shared humanity and opening our minds to new ways of thinking. I've always felt lucky that Alan Eggleston was a guide in my Freshman journey, and grateful that he remained a valued mentor throughout my high school years. 

Several Junior and High School teachers were critical to my formation into a thinking, questioning and understanding human. Without them, I could easily have veered off in another direction. I owe so much to Ruth Pechota and Scott Mitchell (Willow Junior High School), Alan Eggleston, Jim Ellis, and Carlos Magallanes (La Puente High School). It’s impossible to imagine my education without them.

Education is the Magic Bus that takes us to places we can’t get to on our own. Teachers are the Magicians that guide us along the way. They're far more important than any politician, corporate oligarch or religious leader. 

Look to the teachers for the way forward, into the future with open eyes and an open mind.

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch, Greek philosopher, biographer

“I can make you the hamburger, but I can’t eat it for you. You’ve got to eat the hamburger for yourself!” – Ruth Pechota, Social Studies educator

Bus, alluvial plain and ancient peoples images, Gracias de Google images; Educator images, Gracias de Willow Junior High School (1970) and La Puente High School (1974) Yearbooks, from the writer's library: The Who 'Magic Bus' video, Muchisimas Gracias de YouTube.