Spaces

Reading books that your older brother and sister leave strewn around the house is the inalienable right of any younger sibling. On a summer day when I was in my teens and I found this book of poetry sitting on the wobbly hall bookshelf, I didn't think twice. I remember leaning up against the wall and flipping through the pages. When I got to page 96, I stopped.
In the top left hand corner were the words:

WE WERE ON THE TERRACE

DRINKING GIN AND TONICS

when the squall hit. 

There was nothing more. 
The rest of the page was white space.
I looked at the cover and for the first time noticed the author's name. I wondered who John Ashbery was and how he got to write a book where thirteen words were called a poem. This wasn't poetry. It was nothing like what I'd studied in school. Where was the rhyme? The meter? The rest of the words? Clearly this guy pulled one over on a bunch of people
I read the poem again and again.  Then I closed my eyes.
Soon I began to imagine myself, a little older, sitting on that terrace surrounded by fabulously witty people, all of them with drinks in their hands. I could smell the sharp scent of gin and the heaviness of chlorine from the nearby pool. Floating toys drift on the water.
There's a sound of ice clinking on glasses.
And laughter.
The storm moves in fast. Rain comes in from all sides.
My fabulously witty friends scatter.
Someone grabs the drinks,
another reaches for the tray of limes
and a third brave soul runs to get the towels hanging over a fence.
We head into the house but the mood is different. Not as carefree.
Everyone is wet.
Uncomfortable.
The drinks don't clink.
The chlorine smell is replaced by stuffy inside air.
We watch through the windows. The floating toys are still out there banging up against the sides of the pool. There is a conversation about who should go back out into the rain to get them.
Soon the people with drinks have personalities and problems. An entire story comes to light.
When I finally opened my eyes, I'd decided that maybe John Ashbery knew what he was doing after all. It wasn't only about the words. It was about the spaces between them. The spaces between those thirteen words were filled with images.
All that happened a long time ago. In the years that followed I'd lost track of the book. I'd assumed it was reclaimed by an older sibling. This summer, when I was cleaning out my parents' house, I found it again. For many reasons, emptying out your childhood home is an arduous task. Despite my mother's pleading, I didn't want any of the china or the crystal bowls or the fancy tea sets, but when I saw the book in my brother's old bedroom, I grabbed it.
It's sitting on my desk now and every so often, I turn to page 96. There's something magical about those thirteen words. They can scrape away the decades and make me feel seventeen again. I remember everything: That summer day. That hallway bookshelf. The feeling of confusion. That moment of understanding. It all feels so close.
When I read that poem for the first time, I learned something important about the spaces between words.
But this summer it taught me a different lesson
about the spaces between years.

How to use poetry to solve tricky domestic disputes

 

 

I enjoy poems. When I was a teen, my friends and I memorized ones by  Frost, Whitman, and Browning  (wish I still knew them now). Recently I can't stop reading the works of Hafiz and Rumi. And thanks to a poet/library customer, who gently pointed out to me that many great poems have been written by people who are not dead, I've discovered some wonderful contemporary ones written by actual living people.

I've always known that the rhythm and beauty of poetry can heal you and bring peace to your soul. But what I didn't know is that it can also be used to solve domestic disputes.

Here's a hypothetical situation:  Let's say you've been married for many years and your normally considerate spouse has a habit of leaving empty milk cartons in the refrigerator. And imagine for a moment that this bothers you because before you shop, you look in the refrig and see one (and sometimes two) milk cartons and think you're good for the entire week. So when you go to the supermarket (which you hate to do) you don't buy milk. And you never notice that you're out of it until very early in the morning when you need it for your cup of coffee. Imagine also that over the years, you've had many many conversations about empty milk cartons and offending spouse promises to do better but usually within the week, he slips back to his old habits.

How to solve this problem: Forget meaningful conversations. Save them for other issues. And of course, nagging doesn't work (however, in this current hypothetical situation, the spouse who does the shopping would be completely unaware of that fact because she never nags). 

A heartfelt and well-placed poem could solve the domestic crisis. 

Here's how to do it:

Go for high drama and purple prose: You're in a crisis. This is not the time for restraint.  Begin poem with lines like: "My heart is like the milk container in the refrigerator. Empty."

Forget rhyme, meter, rhythm: Ha!  All that stuff is not necessary for effective dispute resolution. If your spouse cringes when he reads it, it will be more memorable. This poem should be intentionally horrendous. "Help build a marriage bridge by making sure milk is in the refrig". Yes. That line shows you exactly how far you have to go for the poem to work.  

Have it stand out: Remember, it's all about presentation. Try not to type the poem in a conventional font on regular paper. Poems should be handwritten, scribbled, and barely legible.  Neon-colored sticky paper works well for the marital-dispute poetry genre. If you happen to have a crayon or magic marker in a color so bright it is not known in nature, use it.

Put the poem in the center of the dispute: Get that poem right in the middle of the action. In the example above, the poem would be placed in the refrigerator and taped on the milk carton.

So next time you find yourself in a crisis, try mediation through poetry. Who knows, you might even get a scribbled and barely-legible poem written back to you *speaking hypothetically, of course*

[Hey teachers and school librarians, have you noticed the brand new "For teachers" section of my web page? Tracey Graham, teacher extraordinaire, created a very fun literature unit for Neil Armstrong is My Uncle. Check it out.]

Milk container clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com and created by artist Mark A Hicks.