Robin Lithgow titles this wonderful post Flores y Canciones: The Poet as Witness. She writes about a culture that values its poets.
She writes:
I’ve just finished a riveting memoir titled “What You Have Heard is True,” by Carolyn Forché. It is about the lead-up to the civil war in El Salvador in the 80s. I recommend it highly because of the perspective Forché gives on our troubling history with Central America and our current concern for immigrants and separated families at the border.
But that’s not the purpose of this post. I’m writing about it here because the author is a poet. I’m intrigued by the fact that a charismatic and mysterious coffee plantation owner named Leonel Gomez Vides, the protagonist of the book, would drive all the way from El Salvador to San Diego in 1978 just to ask a young poet to visit his country and bear witness to its struggles.
Why a poet?
If you read the book, you may understand why poetry might be needed to weave such a vivid and painful narrative. It reminded me of something I learned working with the Office of Multi-cultural Studies during my time in the Arts Education Branch at LAUSD. We were developing a professional development for our elementary dance, theatre, and visual arts teachers, incorporating the arts to focus on the La Llorona (the weeping woman). La Llorona is an oral legend known by virtually every hispanic child in our schools but only vaguely familiar to many of their teachers. In fact, some of our arts teachers were weirded out by the workshop. This is understandable. It’s a terrifying story about a woman who drowns her own children and then spends the rest of her life mourning them and snatching other innocent children away from their homes. Hardly an uplifting tale! But we thought it appropriate that we were drawing on a legend from deep in the cultural consciousness of the children we teach, and, like Euripides’ Medea, as a piece of literature it has the powerfully emotional resonance of a poem.
Here is Carolyn Forché in her own words in an interview with Robin Lindley at George Washington University. explaining why Leonel Gomez Vides chose her to write about his country:
“He came to visit me as an American poet. And of course, I tried to dissuade him from imagining that a poet could accomplish the task he imagined, explaining to him that poets didn’t have a great deal of exposure or credibility in the United States, and that we weren’t consulted on matters of foreign policy. We were considered a subculture or a fringe element. He was surprised by that because, of course, in Latin America poetry is very important and taken very seriously, so he decided that one of my tasks was to change the role of poets in the United States, which I thought was very quixotic and probably more impossible than anything else he was asking me to do.
“I was touched by his faith in poetry and by his regard for it…”
Reading this I remembered that I’ve heard this twice before. Barbara Kingsolver said the exact same thing about her book The Lacuna, which tells the story of Trotsky’s time living in Mexico. In The White Goddess, Robert Graves describes a time in ancient British history when poets sat next to kings in government. Poets are, and have always been, valued in other cultures far more than they are in ours. They interpret, clarify, and vivify the times to which they are witness.
Read on. Finish the post.
Lithgow shows you the beauty and importance of poetry.
What is the role of poetry in the Common Core curriculum? Will poetry help you write a market analysis? What does it do? Why does it matter?
“Barbara Kingsolver said the exact same thing about her book The Lacuna, which tells the story of Tolstoy’s time living in Mexico.“ Not Tolstoy, Trotsky. 🙂 He lived in a community with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and was assassinated there.
You have enlightened me. I did not know that Trotsky was living with them when Stalin’s assassins arrived.
further, it is interesting that we both were thinking simultaneously of Rivera (you spelled it correctly, I might add).
How does Geraldo fit in?
In the folk culture of America, poets teach, or rather used to. Every lurid hostility between lovers or neighbors (or both) was turned into a song, even as it had been for ages on the British Isles that were home to so many of our early immigrants to this continent. Whether it was Barbara Allan or John Hardy, singing the lurid tales of human interaction has long been a part of the telling of the story. But what story? Who gets the narrative?
In the Great Depression, two interesting voices on our continent were Woody Guthrie and Diego Riveria. Both were self-styled Communists (neither would have lasted a minute in the Stalin version of that philosophy), and both had much to say about society that grabbed the megaphone for a time.
Modern popular music has a way of silencing those who would change the narrative. Popular culture has become a manipulated part of the media that silences critics in some ways and amplifies them in others. Rap has become the part of the subculture that used to arise from poor whites (think early country and string band) and migrant Blacks ffrom the Delta (think Robert Johnson and Blues).
Hi Diane, Love your work & tireless commitment. But, Barbara Kingsolver wrote about Leon Trotsky not Tolstoy in The Lacuna Solidarity
On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 9:01 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Robin Lithgow titles this wonderful post Flores y > Canciones: The Poet as Witness. She writes about a culture that values its > poets. She writes: I’ve just finished a riveting memoir titled “What You > Have Heard is True,” by Carolyn Forché. It is about” >
I copied the writer’s post without noticing her error. As a rule, when I quote others, I don’t revise their writing. In this case, the error is glaring. I know that Trotsky lived in Mexico, having fled from Stalin. Stalin initiated a horrendous purge of anyone believed to be sympathetic to Trotsky. Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico by a Stalin henchman.
Ironically, I was supposed to be in Mexico City this week, and Trotsky’s home was on my itinerary. I had planned to take my 13 year old grandson while he was on spring break. Obviously we had to cancel.
The Grand Scheme
Poet doesn’t matter
Doesn’t mean a thing
Really is a Hatter
Entropy is King
Thanks be to all the gods for those mad as hatters poets!
Poets “interpret, clarify, and vivify the times to which they are witness.”
Since I taught ELLs from a variety of countries, I always included translations first language poems and folktales as a shared reading. If a student could read in his native language, the poem was read first in L1, then English. Students were highly motivated to read material from their cultures, eager to discuss the commonalities and differences in the themes. Sometimes, a poem or folktale crossed national boundaries, often with a slightly different twist in it. This activity made students think critically, and it was also relevant in affirming students’ cultural identities.
While there are fewer political and social poets today in our culture, we can still see political and social references in some of our African American poets like Langston Hughes. Here is Langston Hughes’ poem, ‘Merry-Go-Round.”
Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can’t sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There’s a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we’re put in the back—
But there ain’t no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where’s the horse
For a kid that’s black?
Langston Hughes
Great poets speak to us in all times. Across the ages. When I lost a child many years ago, the only comfort I found was Ben Jonson’s “Oak and Lily.”
Jonson also knew, himself, three times, this unspeakable loss. “Oak and Lily,” the poem you refer to, sometimes called “The Noble Nature,” is breathtaking.
” in ancient British history… poets sat next to kings in government. ”
So did court jesters.😀
This explains Trump’s cabinet.
LOL
In SomeDAM, they could have gotten both in the same person!!!
So grateful for you, SomeDAM!
Progress
Jester had a chair
Right beside the King
Now, there’s nothing there
Single chair’s the thing
We need an epic poem for our times, “The Saga of the Trumpster”
Misplaced Trust
Poets aren’t wiser
Wiser than the rest
Poet as advisor
Needn’t be the best
Rudyard Kipling (The White Man’s Burden) is proof of that.
Ah, but the poets are at least more entertaining!
And who’s the fool, and who wears the crown?
That’s not a question that needs an answer when there is only a single chair
Jester had a chair
Right beside the King
Now, there’s nothing there
Single chair’s the thing
Thank you for continuing to share these magnificent pieces by Ms. Lithgow.
In answer to your question, Diane, I think that Lord Coleman, like Plato, has banished poets from his ideal Republic.
I could say what I think of that, but such language is not allowed on your blog.
Poetry does not have a place in the Common Core. If your boss asks for a market analysis by noon, to paraphrase David Coleman, he doesn’t want to hear Tennyson or Coleridge. Actually, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” feels appropriate to this moment.
HAAAAA!!!!!! Oh. My. Lord. SPOT ON, Diane!!! Best comment I’ve read about this virus, yet!
The Crime of the Common Coroner
The Crime of the Conman Core
The Crime of the Common Coroner
The Crime of Common Coroner
Is “Standard and the Test”
It’s information boringer
Than regulations text
It’s ELA that makes no sense
Except to David Coleman
And math that’s really rather dense
Except to Zimba mole men
To poetry, a foreigner
To classics, it’s a stranger
The Crime of Common Coroner
Is really quite a danger
In case someone didn’t get the reference to Zimba mole men, Common Core math was produced by Jason Zimba, holed up for a year (like a mole) in his garage.
When he finally emerged to the light of day, he carried the result of all his painstaking labor : entropy in action, a tangled mess.
Forche’s “The Country Between Us” is, I have always maintained, one of the great books of he 20th century. It is also VERY approachable with students: try “The Colonel” with kids from Middle School on. No, it doesn’t teach you how to “add value,” only what “values” mean.
Thanks for the recommendation!
And, beautifully said!
Techno-poets
A Window on the $oul
Is current poet’s goal
When poet’s name is Gates
The Windows are our fates
I’ve been writing little poems for friends based on autocorrect errors in our texts. Good fun. Here, “sourdough bread” was changed to “spurned bread.” So, a haiku:
The bread I left her
In the cornflower basket?
It goes uneaten.
and “making biscuits tomorrow” was corrected to “making biscuits timorous.” So, a free verse lyric:
Bow down and lick my boots
Ye galley slaves,
For I am queen of the kitchen!
Lo, even the biscuits are timorous!
And finally, an autocorrect poem I wrote on the very topic that the brilliant Ms. Lithgow raises–people who want to “protect children” from older children’s literature and orature–from stuff from the oral tradition like the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm:
OMG! Something Is NOT Purrfect Here!!!
Writing children’s stories –> Worrying children’s stories
The candy-minded graduates of the best colleges,
back from their trust-funded sabbaticals
playing the hang drum on the beach in Goa
and dancing in clubs in Ibiza
with other pedicured sons and daughters
of the Illumined Ones at CitiGoldmanBoozHamilton,
take the jobs their Daddies arranged for them
at Simon and Schuster and set about
worrying children’s books into cuteness.
They red-pencil the razors in the Mermaid’s slippers,
nix the Beauty and Beast tales,
obviously some sick medieval rape fantasy.
No Greek God Eros, of course;
Valentine’s Day cherubs are so much less,
well, troubling. Don’t want to worry the children,
they say, slipping their Tickle Me Pink iPhones into
their Aubergine Coach bags, and heading to lunch
at the Russian Tea Room, where they share the horrors
of that children’s story from Mali about Sundiata,
the lion king, who actually sent his sister
to sleep with the sorcerer Suomo
and get him drunk on palm wine
and cut the hair that was the source
of his power. They called that a children’s story,
those griots, and told it for centuries!
Thank God for Disney, they say.
Isn’t Simba so much more just, like, adorable
and still true to, you know, the spirit of the thing?
They pay the bill with Daddy’s black Master Card,
and head back to their Ministry of Truth and Purity,
not worrying, at all, their so trendily coifed heads,
about creating a world of worry-free childhood,
where pearls of imagination and wisdom
never form around specks of grit.
See Diane Ravitch’s great The Language Police on this topic!
I grew up with “One Hundred and One Famous Poems” likely a 1929 edition.
Robin Lithgow’s post about poetry provides an occasion to look at the treatment of Poetry in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), adopted in California and in theory fully implemented in 2014-2015.
Poetry is there, but the writers of the CCSS argued that reading “informational test” was more important than reading literature, including poems and stories.
In the CCSS, stories are more important than poems. I judge this from entries in Appendix B which function as specific “ready to use” exemplary texts but with several caveats.
One is offered as if an apology. It is an acknowledgement that poetry escapes from the otherwise dearly loved criterion for all CCSS text selections–having an appropriate LEXILE score. The absurdity of that scoring system is taken down by an expert in teaching English, Susan Ohanian, in this post https://vtdigger.org/2019/12/19/susan-ohanian-data-derived-student-reading-lists-fail/
The exemplary readings in Appendix B are limited to those for which the writers of the CCSS could secure copyright clearance. In many cases clearances were only wanted and secured for snippets—excerpts of much longer works.
The suggested readings are organized by these grade levels K-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-10, and 11-12 with some at grade 11 tagged for “College and Career Readiness.”
For Grades K-1 and 2-3, some selections are for “read aloud” presentations.
For each grade span there are “sample performance tasks for stories and poems.” There are only eleven for poetry. Teachers who love poetry may be grateful for this meager number of tasks. Why?
Each performance task tells what students must do. For teachers, the key concepts or thought processes are italicized. Each task also has a handy alpha-numeric code to show which CCSS the task helps to meet. This helps teachers who are required to put the number of the standard into a computer-friendly instructional management system.
Here is an performance task for grade 3: “Students read Paul Fleischman’s poem “Fireflies,” determining the meaning of words and phrases in the poem, particularly focusing on identifying his use of nonliteral language (e.g., “light is the ink we use”) and talking about how it suggests meaning. [RL.3.4] In this task “words and phrases in,” and “nonliteral language” are italicized.
I wanted to see how many poems and poets are included as exemplary. Answer: There are 79 poems, and 56 poets. Here are the favored poets (more than one poem) and titles of poems.
Dickinson, Emily. “A Bird Came Down the Walk,” “Autumn,” “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” “The Railway Train,” and “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark.”
Hughes, Langston. “April Rain Song;” “Grandpa’s Stories;” “I, Too, Sing America;” and “Poem.”
Frost, Robert. “Dust of Snow,” “Mending Wall,” and “The Road Not Taken,”
Giovanni, Nikki “A Poem for My Librarian, Mrs. Long;” “Covers;” and “Knoxville, Tennessee.”
Anonymous. “As I Was Going to St. Ives,” and “The Fox’s Foray.”
Donne, John. “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” and “Song.”
Eliot, T. S. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “The Song of the Jellicles.”
Lear, Edward. “The Jumblies,” and “The Owl and the Pussycat.”
Merriam, Eve. “It Fell in the City,” and “Weather.”
Neruda, Pablo. “Ode to My Suit,” and “The Book of Questions.”
Rossetti, Christina. “Mix a Pancake,” and “Who Has Seen the Wind?”.
Sandburg, Carl. “Chicago,” and “Fog.”
Soto, Gary. “Eating While Reading,” and “Oranges.”
Whitman, Walt. “O Captain! My Captain!” and “Song of Myself.”
I have a neice who teaches writing. She went through a phase of producting sonnets with great ease. A friend just asked me to help circulate an email with a poem that might be upifting for others. I am think of something by Edward Lear.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] approach is always to take the work as an occasion to mine for some literary element mentioned in the Gates/Coleman bullet list. Forget what the speaker might actually be saying. Forget the vicarious experience that the poem provides. Instead, explain how the poet’s use of figurative language affected the poem’s mood.
Sick.
Ironically, there is simultaneously a) more poetry being written today than ever before, and b) fewer buyers of books of poetry. Longfellow, Wordsworth, Byron, Longfellow, Tennyson, both Brownings–these were best-selling authors–the Tom Clancys and Stephen Kings of their day.
It is precisely the kinds of approaches encouraged by the Common Coring of our curricula that have made our students rather get a root canal than read a poem.
The fact that fewer books of poetry are being sold probably doesn’t mean much.
Like everything else, people now get — and distribute — their poetry on the web.
Poets are probably making even less money than in the past (when most did not make much), but so are lots of other people who write for a living.
The internet has basically made many writers into unpaid artists.
Sad, but true.
Doesn’t mean much in terms of how many people are reading and writing poetry, that is.
It means a lot if on is trying to make a living writing poetry, of course.
The vast majority of dedicated poets and authors of books do not make their living through their poetry or books. Most of them end up being teachers and write at night, on weekends and on longer times off like summer, when time permits.
No one makes a living writing poetry now. Most professional poets teach in a university and write as an avocation.
In other words, one has to have a PhD (or at least a Master’s) to be a professional poet.
That’s a real problem because the University is about as far as one can get from the life of the “ordinary” person.
And universities have vanity presses that publish faculty work. Ofc, there’s not problem getting a book of poetry published if you are, say, Jewel or Charlie Sheen. LOL.
Well, at least Jewell bases her poetry on life experiences that are close to those of ordinary people.
She was actually homeless for a time before her songs became hits.
I can say one good thing for Common Core. The reading list includes “The American Reader,” which contains lots of poetry and songs. I edited it, although the reading list doesn’t say so.
I so, so, so recommend this anthology!!! Great stuff!!!
Why does poetry matter?
Because Poetry uses figurative language/metaphors tho capture meaning indirectly with few words in dramatic ways and the fact that many cultures in the world communicate through figurative language/metaphors through the spoken and printed word.
If you do not learn how to interpret figurative language, spoken or written, you will not understand what it is trying to teach you.
Most Americans are literal in their thinking and cannot understand people that communicate with figurative language/metaphors. Instead, those Americans take what they read and get the meaning behind the language all wrong.
For instance, the Bible was written by cultures that thought and wrote through figurative language/metaphors, and the interpretation of the Bible by most Amercian fundamentalist evangelical Christians does not take that into account, so they grow up with no idea what the Bible actually means and get it almost all wrong.
Technologists like Bill Gates are very literal, so it is not surprising that they encourage literal thinking with stuff like Common Core.
These people can’t understand the value of figurative language.
Bill Gates — who could afford even the most expensive artwork — chooses to have digital paintings in his house, for God’s sake. That pretty much says it all. He has absolutely no concept of anything artistic or humanistic.
I think it is safe to say that Bill Gates’s brain is filled with zeroes-and-ones and nothing else. In fact, he is an AI.
I’d have to say mostly (if not all) zeros.
Gates is an AI-hole
LOL
In Latin America, the stereotype of poets is that they are strong men and that poetry isn’t for women. Dominican author Julia Álvarez turns this notion on its head in her wonderful novel, In the Name of Salomé. Great reading in these times of rising authoritarianism.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11210.In_the_Name_of_Salome
Of course, the role model for poetry as a masculine endeavor is José Martí, the Cuban General and revolutionary who fled Cuba to Mexico and then returned leading a ragtag band to confront Spanish troops on the battlefield, knowing full well he would be targeted for assassination, and indeed was.
Many know the words to his quite famous poem, Yo soy un hombre sincero as the lyrics to Guantanamera, popularized by Celia Cruz. Israel “Cachao” Lopez, the Cuban inventor of the mambo, bassist and composer, has a wonderful homage to Martí on his album Cuba Linda from 2000. In one of those twists of history, Cachao was born, in 1918, in the same house where Martí had lived.
Here are the lyrics in English and Spanish for Martí’s poem: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/yo-soy-un-hombre-sincero-sincere-man-am-i.html
The arts are such an important part of our culture. Important enough that it should be a part of the curriculum from kindergarten on (and I hope those of you who are “home schooling” your kids are including singing, an art project, some sort of movement, story time, etc. as part of your “curriculum”).
We had an Erie County Executive, one Chris Collins, who couldn’t understand why the county should pay to help the arts, so he reduced funding for places like the Buffalo Zoo, The Buffalo Philharmonic, Sheas Buffalo, the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, and totally cut funds to support the smaller arts organization. The poor animals at the zoo had to eat pellets because fresh fruits and vegetables were too expensive (many people donated money to feed the animals), public libraries closed or had reduced hours, etc. Collins didn’t go to the library or zoo or attend a concert or play. He didn’t see the need. What a surprise when he lost the bid for a second term. He almost lost the first time around (it felt so good to vote against him) then the district was gerrymandered so that, as a Republican, he could maintain his Congressional seat (no longer my representative). “Surprisingly” he was a huge Trump supporter. Imagine my “chagrin” when he was accused of insider trading (which didn’t stop him from running – and winning – another term). Luckily the judicial system is bipartisan and he’s now in prison. It couldn’t have happened to a “nicer” guy.