Carolyn Norred: Poetry, Seeing & Being

“We are each other’s harvest;

we are each other’s business;

we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”

Gwendolyn Brooks

Poet Carolyn Norred notices details. Whether a journey to the Everglades, a week with her family in Hawaii to celebrate their 50th anniversary, or a birding venture in nearby Sacajawea Park, I can often visualize the places and people she’s met along her wanders. She tells me about them or reads to me a poem she’s written.

We first met as colleagues, teaching in the Department of Language and Literature at Lower Columbia College. Soon after, she invited me to travel to Baja and kayak around the Sea of Cortez. Once fall quarter ended we flew out of Portland.

I always thought she was crazy for extending such an invite to an almost-stranger, the new hire. We’d hardly talked up until then but would take off together–both kayak-rookies: That’s how our friendship began–losing luggage, losing tickets, stranded on an island for several days because December’s not the best time to kayak in the Sea of Cortez (unless you like big waves and don’t mind taking it slow and waiting when the sea says so.)

Such ventures and her willingness to take a chance makes Carolyn the special person and poet she is.

Over the years Carolyn would tell stories about the trips we shared Continue reading “Carolyn Norred: Poetry, Seeing & Being”

April 6, 2014October 9, 2014

Julia Alvarez & Sarah Kinsel: “Being a Poet is a Political Act”

“How do I know what I think

until I see what I say?”

Joan Didion

Julia Alvarez spoke at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland, the final event of the 2014 Arts & Lecture series–and I left inspired.

She spoke of story and of possibility. She spoke of how books change lives and the best writing surprises the writer. She believe to live as a poet is a political act. It means stepping out. It means making choices that often won’t fit nicely onto a resume. It means writing about what matters and revealing what won’t stay hidden any longer.

She told about her arrival in 1960 to New York City and showed a photo of her sixth-grade self. Her family fled the Dominican Republic after her father’s involvement in an attempt to assassinate Trujillo–the cruel dictator who reigned for more than thirty years over that island country bordering Haiti.

Before We Were Free

by Julia Alvarez

She wasn’t a reader back then, but she had grown up surrounded by story. In New York, she had a teacher who encouraged her to write down stories of the family she dearly missed.

“Then you won’t be lonely,” her teacher said.

Julia also met the library–and began to read books.

Once she began to study writing, years later as a graduate student, Julia Alvarez would realize she already knew about plot, character development, setting and climax because her family had taught her the art from at an early age through the oral tradition.

“People say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, my family was a small village,” she said, beaming a black and white photo onto the back-wall of the stage, a huge gathering of people. Her father was the youngest of 25! His father’s first wife died–not of childbirth–after bearing ten children. His second wife bore fifteen.

I kept leaning forward, closing my eyes, taking in her words Continue reading “Julia Alvarez & Sarah Kinsel: “Being a Poet is a Political Act””

February 24, 2014February 25, 2014

“Ask Me” a poem by Esther Elizabeth–and a Tribute to Ponong

“The noblest and the wisest thing to do is to cherish others instead of cherishing yourself.

This will bring healing to your heart, healing to your mind, and healing to your spirit.”

–Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying

ponong009 — In memory of Uncle Berto (pictured), Uncle Dionisio–and all the kind people who accepted me as an awkward visitor–and shared their lives.

We human being are a lot alike. Some build houses while others discover cures for disease, but anywhere we roam we’ll meet people trying to find happiness, love, and how to charm their way into a child’s smile.

The more we travel, the more we understand how much we are alike. One human being is a lot like the next despite how much we can feel (and appear) separate and different. I can remember thinking–super-naive–that people in other parts of the world must get along better than my family and people in my hometown: I imagined brothers and sisters working together, and was certain they would never go months or years without talking. In other countries, families stayed close and didn’t hold grudges like we Americans.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Continue reading ““Ask Me” a poem by Esther Elizabeth–and a Tribute to Ponong”

February 16, 2014February 17, 2014

Inside Out & Back Again: An Immigrant Story in Verse

“We must learn to see the world anew.”

Albert Einstein

Lately, I read plenty of kid-lit, especially books for the “middle grade” readers. So many writers impress me with their poetic way of telling a good story, and not long ago I walked through Powell’s on Hawthorne as a writer-friend pointed to books she loves. She reached up and grabbed Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, and I was sold.

“A good immigrant story always gets me,” she said.

This story will bring any reader closer to understanding the pain of dislocation that many refugees suffer, and it’s the sort of read that changes you a bit–leads you into a world you didn’t know you didn’t know (the best kind of book!).

Awarded the 2011 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and one of the two Newbery Honors that year, Inside Out & Back Again is based in the author’s personal experience.

Hà, only 10, hasn’t seen her father in nine years, and now she’s forced to leave Saigon because of some war she doesn’t understand. Her family flees the comfort of friends and fresh papaya to meet glaring eyes and lonely lunches in Alabama.

[pullquote]No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.[/pullquote]

Yet during this first year of upheaval, Hà grows stronger. With the help of her older brother she learns to control her temper and to defend herself. Some kids at school ruthlessly chide her, and even her teacher lacks the empathy we’d hope to find in a classroom, but the “cowboy”–the family’s sponsor–helps. Hà’s mom remains a kind and gentle pillar of strength as well.

While full of both grief and healing, the novel is unexpectedly funny.

Inside Out & Back Again is an ideal read-aloud. For middle-grade or even high-school students, it is an ideal choice for teachers trying to blend the studies of Language Arts and Social Studies or parents who want to help their kids better understand people from around the world while also growing to love a good story.

Lai’s novel fits with other superb literature for young readers by writers like Karen Hesse–also a master of telling historic stories in verse. Hesse won the Newbury for Out of the Dust and other books such as Rifka and Witness. She was recipient of MacArthur Fellow in 2002. Continue reading “Inside Out & Back Again: An Immigrant Story in Verse”

February 10, 2014February 16, 2014

The Outlier: A Poem by Peg Edera & Thank You to William Stafford

“I tell you, Chickadee, I am afraid of people who cannot cry.”

Alice Walker

Portland’s icy-snow is melting, and some of us are staying warm with words.

For me it’s been sitting on the couch with one book after another, but on Friday night some lucky poets gathered at the Newmark downtown to celebrate what would have been Oregon Poet Laureate William Stafford’s 100 birthday: Li-Young Lee, Mary Szybist, Kim Stafford, Matthew Dickman, Paulann Peterson and Tony Hoagland (Ted Kooser did not make it as planned) read their own work, some Stafford poems, and they each talked about the influence the late-poet had on their own lives.

I’m sorry I missed the event, but here’s a video worth checking out to take in some of William Stafford’s wealth of words and life, The Stafford Centennial: A Conversation, an OPB production.

William Stafford is known as a poet who awoke early each morning to write. Everyday he would make poems, and when someone would ask how he does it, ask about those days when the muse didn’t seem to show up, he’d say, “I just lower my standards.”

We don’t gather at 4am in the morning, but a small circle of us meet several times a month and write poetry. During our darkest months, we gather as the sun rises, and that’s when Peg Edera wrote “The Outlier”.

Continue reading “The Outlier: A Poem by Peg Edera & Thank You to William Stafford”