Analogy fun!

Poetry is like cupcakes. Sure, pick your favorite flavor to play along here. For my purposes, though, we’re going to use a red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting (!!).

So, you have your red velvet cupcake. It is composed of a moist, delicious little pastry and a thick, rich cream cheesy frosting. Now you could take these two components apart and eat them separately. The moist, delicious red velvet cake by itself would make a decent little dessert. The frosting would be outrageous on its own (until it made you sick and gave you a headache). But- when you combine the two you get something much better than its individual parts. You get yummy, cupcakey goodness- the perfect balance of moist, tender red velvet cake and creamy, rich cream cheese frosting awesomeness.

Now this isn’t a perfect analogy because poetry isn’t something that is weak or incomplete, needing something else to help make it relevant. Poetry is a vibrant art form that stands on its own. However…when it is mixed together with another component- let’s say, history (since that is the point of this blog)- you suddenly have a dynamic combination. It’s yummy, cupcakey goodness! Minus the threat of diabetes!

**Aside: I haven’t always felt this way about the power of poetry. Until a year or so ago I was intimidated/baffled/confused by the stuff. Enter today’s cameo appearance by the Illing Middle School Poetry Club in Manchester, CT. Every Tuesday afternoon, my friends Ryan Parker and Kathryn Grimshaw (language arts rock stars at our school) whip middle and high school students into a poetry frenzy.They are dynamic, dramatic, and explosive with their passion for poetry. And every single kid at the Club meetings goes nuts for them and for how they are taught to channel their unique voices through all kinds of poetic forms and performances. They have blown the door off of what poetry used to mean to me. You should see the Club in action. They’d love for you to come. Alas, they can’t reimburse you for plane tickets, though, if you fly in from out of state. Which you should. (I’m only partly kidding.)**

Anyway, it turns out that poetry is the perfect platform for all kinds of history. Why? Because history involves people, and all people groups cry out for their voices to be heard. Poems require precise wording and structure; they pack a lot of meaning into small spaces. This turns out to be a perfect strategy for highlighting a historic time period or event- a voice from the past that shines a small light on someone’s personal experience. This small light, consequently, can illuminate a whole realm of human existence.

For example:

Exploring the Middle Ages could potentially be a death march of boredom- farming, feudalism, lords, ladies, ye olde dirt-encrusted relics. (This does not, by the way, reflect my own personal opinion. I’m trying to approach this subject as a middle-schooler with no frame of reference might see it.)

Laura Amy Schlitz, however, gleefully skips through the Middle Ages with stylish, carefully crafted poems meant to be performed- in other words, poetry meant to breathe, in her Newbery Medal-winning Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village. While reading her stunning poetry I imagined myself in her classroom (late elementary school/early middle school) diving into the colorful maps and illustrations in her book or researching career oddities like falconry and glass-blowing. Best of all, who wouldn’t have a grand old time piecing together period costumes and acting out these vibrant, ebullient poetic monologues (and dialogues, in some cases):

from “Hugo, the Lord’s Nephew” (on killing a charging wild boar):

It charged- my uncle lunged

            and I behind him- thrust!-

                        felt the spear pierce.

                        Braced myself- end to armpit- shoved.

                        It took a long time,

            the dogs keening and the boar struggling-

                        blood on the grass-

            but I stood my ground.

 

from “Barbary, the Mud Slinger” (on news of her step-mother’s pregnancy):

I stood there

            with my jaw almost touching my knees.

            More babies?

                        There’s the twins, up and running,

                        They don’t sleep at night.

                        They still puke out

                                    most of what you scoop into them.

                                    They shriek like hawks all day long.

                                    The cottage stinks like a midden-

                                                baby’s mess everywhere.

            More babies?

 

 from “Giles, the Beggar” (on having an abundance of villagers to con out of their money):

We sup by the road,

            ask Our Lord to look after us:

            “Send us more fools

            for our food and our keep.

            Forgive us our trespasses,

            pardon our lies;

            look after your foxes

            as well as your sheep.”

 

Schlitz’s many voices are colorful, musical, and charming. They are also stealthily sophisticated in their use of a whole slew of poetic forms and structures. Every time I re-read these poems I actually feel the voices of these characters. They almost shout out with their vivid humanity.

But let’s say yours is a more blood-thirsty sort that needs more death and tragedy (although Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! contains both) to suit their fancy. Be careful what you wish for, because The Watch that Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic by Allan Wolf delivers heart-wrenching stories of lives saved and lost on April 14, 1912. This is one of the greatest books published in 2011 (see my post “Top Five Listy Goodness- Part 3”) and it’s scope and power is like a tidal wave of human tragedy and heroics.

Wolf can barely contain all of the history summoned through his magnificent collection of poems. Where do you begin to determine the themes present? Class systems, mankind’s hubris, immigration, teen love, parent love, it’s all accounted for in The Watch that Ends the Night. And at the heart of it all looms The Iceberg (!!!)- the author’s voice of Fate/Death/Time/Inevitability that prepares itself for it’s seemingly pre-ordained collision with this ship that holds story after story after story on board.

from “The Iceberg” p. 7:

I am the ice. I see tides ebb and flow.

I’ve watched civilizations come and go,

give birth, destroy, restore, be gone, begin.

My blink of an eye is humankind’s tortoise slow…

 

…At last the frozen river made its way

and calved me with a  splash in Baffin Bay.

Since then I’ve traveled southward many weeks,

for now that my emergence is complete,

there is a certain ship I long to meet.

 

So there you go- poetry, history, and cupcakes! See? You didn’t think I could make that work did you? (If you’re still wondering about that, please just nod and smile and let me have my moment.) The voice of human experience is powerful stuff- it reminds us of what we have in common wherever and whenever we exist.

Here are some other excellent poetry/history hybrids to find- they range from upper elementary to high school levels, if you need a “level” as a frame of reference:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford

 

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

 

The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle

 

Never Forgotten by Patricia C. McKissack

 

New Found Land: Lewis and Clark’s Voyage of Discovery by Allan Wolf