I'm spending all day tomorrow at an elementary school in Tenants Harbor, Maine, where I'll be leading poetry workshops for several classes spanning grades 2 through 5. Because the kids are concurrently studying their local watershed, I'll be working primarily with poems that involve human-water interaction. I'll begin by introducing students to a few stanzas from May Swenson's "Cardinal Ideograms," as a way of leading them into language as imagination. Here are the first two stanzas of that poem:

0

A mouth. Can blow or breathe,

be funnel, or Hello.

1

A grass blade or a cut.

Then second and third graders will work with a Dickinson excerpt and a Chu Hsi poem, while fourth and fifth graders will work with the Chu Hsi and an excerpt from the Odyssey. All classes will write a group poem and will begin work on individual poems.

Except for the fact that I have to get up at 4 a.m. and drive for two and a half hours each way, I'm looking forward to the day.

from Poem 520

         Emily Dickinson

I started Early—Took my Dog—

And visited the Sea—

The Mermaids in the Basement

Came out to look at me—

The Boats Are Afloat

         Chu Hsi (1130-1200), trans. Kenneth Rexroth

Last night along the river banks

The floods of Spring have risen.

Great warships and huge barges

Float as lightly as feathers.

Before, nothing could move them from the mud.

Today they swim with ease in the swift current.

from The Odyssey

        Homer, trans. Robert Fagles

Bright-eyed Athena sent them a swift following wind

rippling out of the west, ruffling over the wine-dark sea

as Telemachus shouted out commands to all his shipmates:

“All lay hands to tackle!” They sprang to orders,

hoisting the pinewood mast, they stepped it firm

in its block amidships, lashed it fast with the stays

and with braided rawhide halyards hauled the white sails high.

Suddenly wind hit full and the canvas bellied out

and a dark blue wave, foaming up at the bow,

sang out loud and strong as the ship made way,

skimming the whitecaps, cutting toward her goal. . . .

and the ship went plunging all night long and through the dawn.