Anne Porter used poetry to describe how text becomes a living thing, always seeking new meaning from readers and listeners. As we read and listen, we find new meaning in the words, the spaces, and the punctuation.
Text is not only about the words, but about the context (who, where, and when), pretext (previous meanings), and subtext (what is hidden from sight). As we read and listen, we ask questions that cannot be fully answered.
Our poems
Are like the wart-hogs
In the zoo
It’s hard to say
Why there should be such creatures
But once our life gets into them
As sometimes happens
Our poems
Turn into living things
And there’s no arguing
With living things
They are
The way they are
Our poems
May be rough
Or delicate
Little
Or great
But always
They have inside them
A confluence of cries
And secret languages
And always
They are improvident
And free
They keep
A kind of Sabbath
They play
On sooty fire escapes
And window ledges
They wander in and out
Of jails and gardens
They sparkle
In the deep mines
They sing
In breaking waves
And rock like wooden cradles.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
ivonprefontaine
Teacher as Transformer 
Very nice poem and excellent message.
Thank you.
Delightful!
Thank you.
So true! And the poem exemplifies the message so well. Many layers and meanings.
So true.