THE WORK OF WINTER

The Work of Winter (from www.ncarts.org)

By Kathryn Stripling Byer

This time of year poet Adrienne Rich’s words bubble up into my

consciousness: “The work of winter starts fermenting in my head / how with

the hands of a lover or a midwife / to hold back till the time is right.” She

urges to “trust roots” and “learn what an underground journey / has been,

might have to be; speak in a winter code / let fog, sleet, translate; wind, carry

them.”

This time of year my imagination wants to trust roots. To go underground

where so much of our inner journey takes place. In other words, it wants

time to think about the origins of memory and language. It’s a time when I

pull out my Oxford English Dictionary, hold up the magnifying glass and

look up the sources of words I use everyday. Where did they come from?

How have they changed? Inevitably, this always leads me back to the

question, “How have I changed?”

Because I recently turned sixty-five, a truth that women of a certain age are

not supposed to own up to, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “old.” I

don’t feel old, I just feel as if I’ve been around for a long time, learned a lot

(though not enough) and that I’m in my prime.

When I turned to the origins of the word “old,” I found that it’s a very old

word indeed, and that its root many centuries ago meant “to nourish.”

Tracking it into Old English, I discovered that it becomes “oeld,” meaning

mature and lasting, something to be valued. The word appears numerous

times in medieval writings, and nearly always in a positive context.

Knowing this, I now no longer mind thinking of myself being described as

“old.”

When we begin to think about how our language began, we are drawn back

to a speech that sounded earthy, no trace of Latin in it. A language of

survivors in a cold, rough landscape. Over the years that language changed

by absorbing words from all over the planet, but mostly words from French

and Latin. Just about any word one picks out of a dictionary contains a piece

of that history. The renowned English poet W. H. Auden once said that

every one of his poems is a hymn of praise to the English language. A poet

in any language feels the same way about what we call the mother tongue.

Our mother tongue nourishes us. Just as the word “eald” meant centuries

ago.

Each morning my husband reads a page from his “Calendar of Forgotten

English,” a ritual that began 5 years ago when I gave him the 2000 calendar

for Christmas. These calendars collect words no longer in use, or not often,

and they lie on our table, waiting to be read while my husband drinks his

coffee. Words like “flaws” (gust of wind) and “blague” (humbug). Old

words. And, finally, not forgotten. Here they lie beside the cereal box, the

jam and butter, another morning’s invitation to look back and realize what

the word “old” really means. Still here. Ready for another year. Pick a word.

Any word. And it will carry you back to the roots of our language, and

forward into a present made even richer for knowing how the past spoke

itself.

Prodigious Honesties: A Test for all the Candidates

This is a replay of a "Language Matters" column I wrote two years ago. I updated it a bit.

PRODIGIOUS HONESTIES


The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley declared poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” These days we snicker at such an inflated claim for poets, or for any other voices claiming that language used well and with poetic intensity matters at all. And yet, what can we say of the real “legislators” of our world? Their world of spin and double-talk? Now that another election is upon us, the t.v. ads, the debates, and the bumper stickers, I’m left, yet again, wondering what qualities a leader worthy of our nation should embody.

This is a difficult question to answer. We exist surrounded by television, cell phones, computers, ipods, and palm pilots, all sending signals that can either confound or instruct. We watch the images of men and women on the screen professing this or that value or policy. How can we tell if they are worthy of our respect, not to mention our vote?

I think I have found a way, thanks to a recent speech by former University of Chicago President Don Randel. He begins his speech by quoting noted poet Richard Wilbur, whose poem “Clearness” begins this way: “There is a poignancy in all things clear,/In the stare of the deer, in the ring of a hammer in the morning./Seeing a bucket of perfectly lucid water/We fall to imagining prodigious honesties.” Mr. Randel then laments that we live in an age of “prodigious dishonesties,” but his solution does not require more classes with “ethics” in the title. “Perhaps,” he declares,” we should require everyone to study poetry.”

He concludes his speech with a revolutionary idea! One that might help us focus our attention more accurately on the men and women whose faces we see in the media: “The next time you see a face on the front page of the newspaper... you might ask yourself whether the subject reads much poetry.”

I don’t think it’s asking too much that our leaders read poetry, that they be able to speak our language clearly and precisely, nor do I think it is asking too much of them to be well-read in the texts that our canon of great literature has given us. After all they contribute, as Mr. Randel observes, to our understanding of what it means to be a human being and how we ought to behave in relation to one another.

When we have leaders who proclaim that they read nothing much at all, what does that say about them? And about us? When those candidates who do value education, literary culture, and artistic achievements are called "elitists," what does that suggest about our values?

I suggest that as Election Day bears down upon us, we apply Dr. Randel’s litmus test to all the candidates asking for our votes. Or dare we? Might we come away disappointed that no one, not a single solitary one, would pass muster?

If so, we face a future worse than any of us could imagine, one in which language is used not to draw our attention back to those “prodigious honesties” that the poet expresses, but to deceive, confuse, and seduce us into supporting policies that will ultimately undermine and silence our own voices. Then the word “democracy” will have been robbed of all meaning.

Snow in August

After being named Poet Laureate, I began writing a monthly column titled "Language Matters." Here is one from last August.

SNOW IN AUGUST


Here it comes, the start of another school year, and August, as always, seems to be hotter than all the other summer months combined. When I was in school, we had no air-conditioning. We sweltered through classes, longing for the first hint of autumn in the air. No wonder, as I think about these first days of classes in our public schools, I want to forget about global warming. I want it to snow!

Imagine it, snow in August! What a sight through the classroom windows, as if the Muse herself were scattering snowflakes over the playground, calling to us. But what to do? There are lesson plans to work through; standardized tests students must be taught to pass; all sorts of schedules to follow. Where is the teacher able to take a class outside into the cascading crystals, letting the children catch them on their tongues like words to be tasted?

Because I’m a poet, I can indulge in such happy fantasies and make them so. I know that the reality is closer to what happened on the day of another snowfall—not in August but December. My daughter, recently graduated from college with a degree in English, was working as a reading tutor for second graders in nearby Fairview Elementary school. A book lover from babyhood, she was doing her best to share her love of reading with the children having difficulty with their reading skills. The work was challenging, all the more so because of the rigid class plans required. There was hardly any room for creativity, for the sheer joy of learning.

One morning snow began falling. The weatherman hadn’t predicted it, but there it was, as if by magic. The children were ecstatic. “Can’t we go play in the snow?” they begged. But there was no way the morning could be altered to let them go outside or even spend time at the windows, watching and wondering about snow and all the ways it makes the landscape change, the ways it calls to the imagination to sing and dance.

My daughter came home depressed, not an unusual occurrence those days. She had begun to find her work in the classroom frustrating. “Just think of what we could have done,” she mused. “How we could have broken free of the grind and gone running out into the snow, just as everybody wanted to do. Then, we could have had so much to talk and write about when we came back inside!”

These days teachers dare not let snow alter their lesson plans. Their careers depend on following the rules, teaching to the numerous tests, dealing with the growing burdens of bureaucratic expectations and demands. And that is why I wish for snow this August, an event so thrilling that no one dare be indifferent to it, casting lesson plans to the wind, letting the joy of learning lead the way outside. So, forgive me if, several months early, I begin to sing, “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”


UPDATE: Below is a photo of our dog enjoying the snow. How can we encourage our students, not to mention ourselves, to experience the natural world, which feeds the imagination, upon which all future growth depends? How can we do that even as we sit in classrooms or around our dinner tables or stroll through our days, unwired, I hope, from cell phones and ipods? How can we let ourselves become as avid in our focus on the world around us as my silly dog Pooh is below? (Yes, she looked like a Pooh Bear when she was a pup.) Let me know. Send me some ideas, some poems, some images.