Teacher as Transformer

My writing is one-dimensional now. I wrote a lot this week. I spend 15-30 minutes everyday free-writing and do more formal writing for classes and dissertation. Nothing has popped up for new poetry, but I feel that will change over the next week or two. Slowly, I am finding that creative, meditative space that poetry occupies and speaks when I am quiet enough to hear.

I read earlier today and came across this poem by Archibald MacLeish. I am unfamiliar with the poet or poem, but the lines about poems being silent and wordless make sense. It is sometimes in the spaces between words that we find the greatest meaning. Here I find my soul. In those moments of silence, regardless their length I am present and attentive.

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit;

Dumb

As old medallion to the thumb;

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown–

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs;

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees–

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory of the mind.

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

A poem should be to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf;

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea–

A poem should not mean;

But be.