Two Poems by Harry Behn

Poems 27 and 28 (Pandemic Day 40)

Evening

Now the drowsy sunshine

Slides far away

Into the happy morning

Of someone else's day.

The Dream 

One night I dreamed

I was lost in a cave,

A cave that was empty 

And dark and cool,

And down into nothing

I dropped a stone

And it fell like a star

Far and alone,

And a sigh arose

The sigh of a wave

Rippling the heart

Of a sunless pool.

And after a while

In my dream I dreamed

I climbed a sky

That was high and steep

And still as a mountain

Without a cave,

As still as water

Without a wave,

And on that hill

Of the sun it seemed

That all sad sounds

In the world fell asleep

Harry Behn, Windy Morning, Harcourt, Brace, 1953.

I have two little volumes of children's poems by Harry Behn written in the late 40's or early 50's; full of generally cheerful, happy poems. They are the kind of poems you might expect would be right for the classrooms and nightstands of the "Leave it To Beaver" generation--my own sometimes idealized generation.  There were many happy traditional-values families like the Cleavers on TV--including Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet among others.  The parents and the children all had well-defined roles within the home and without. The view of children as reflected in literature, too was constrained by the gender and age expectations of the times. They were expected to be happy and sheltered from the unpleasant things in life.

So did children actually like Behn's poems?  I'm not certain.  I am not blown away by his verse, but I'd have to say that I really like these little books--I like their size, their clean design, the font style and size and the small enigmatic one color pictures that the author created to accompany his poems.  Books have an aesthetic of their own, outside of their content or of the reputation of their author.  They can give pleasure just by being held or gazed at; a pleasure that ebooks are challenged to match.  Sometimes you can actually judge a book by its cover!

But let's speak of the author.  Harry Behn (1898-1973) is not a well-known literary figure, but a surprisingly interesting character. Born near Prescott, AZ,(he named one of his son's Prescott) he attended Stanford and graduated from Harvard in 1922.  He went to Sweden for a year on a fellowship.  Shortly after returning from Sweden he went to work in the relatively new field of screenwriting in Hollywood.  Later he taught creative writing at the University of AZ, created their radio bureau (writing scripts for radio shows); established the University of AZ Press, as well as the Phoenix Little Theater and was vice-president of the Tucson Regional Plan.  He wrote 21 books for children, winning Graphics Arts awards for 3 of them.  He seemed to have many talents and used them all in pursuit of his dreams.

For Strong Women by Marge Piercy

Poem 26 (Pandemic Day 39)

For Strong Women

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing “Boris Godunov.”
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears

 in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren’t you feminine, 

why aren’t you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Marge Piercy, The Moon is Always Female,  Alfred A Knopf, 1997.

To be a woman is to be many things, but quite often it involves being misunderstood, undervalued and overworked.  Sometimes the misunderstanding is almost enticing; as it is when"Old Blue Eyes" is saying it---

"I'm supposed to have a Ph.D. on the subject of women. But the truth is I've flunked more often than not. I'm very fond of women; I admire them. But, like all men, I don't understand them." Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)

But it's also demeaning and removed from reality--

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)--I tried (unsuccessfully thus far) to track down the source of this quote, since Shaw was an enlightened man and a supporter of women's rights.  He may not have personally felt that way, but it was a widely accepted social view.  (A well-articulated article about the "proper" place for men and women in politics from a 1903 article in Atlantic Monthly is a window into this point of view-https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/09/why-women-do-not-wish-the-suffrage/306616/) 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), a writer, lecturer and social reformer drily and with wit summed up the undervalued and overworked concept when she said,  "The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses."

The perceptions of women's roles in economics, politics and society have evolved and expanded in my lifetime, but there currently seem to be forces determined to diminish and contract those advances.  It truly does seem that "a woman's work is never done."

Still, whether or not they were recognized for their strength, most of us have needed the women in our lives to be there for us in one way or another and they usually came through for us.  I think of my mother as an example of the women in this poem.  She contracted rheumatic fever at age 8 and languished in bed for a year, needing to relearn how to walk; this had a lifelong impact on her health and strength.  I'm picturing her now as that small child confined to bed and adding to this picture for the first time in my mind, my grandmother's experience.  Grandma was  already 28 when she married Grandpa in Skeitz, Germany and they immigrated to America in 1911 along with their 4 children (a 5th was on the way), when my mother was 3 years old(she was the 3rd child).  By the time of Mom's illness about 1916, there were 8 children under 12 years old, and 3 more yet to come.  Grandma had her last child at age 46. I tremble to think of the unending work and effort she had to expend every day.

From that example of perseverance, my mom faced her own challenges; widowhood with 2 small children at age 32 and needing to find a way to survive through the Depression and WWII which sent 4 of her brothers to war.  She was both strong and weak, independent-minded, but sometimes purposefully helpless and dependent (traits probably acquired in her sickbed). Sometimes she put on her rags of martyrdom and complained.

 "Oh," she'd say, "you'll never know how I suffered..." 

"So, tell me already," I would think to myself.

But the sum of her was joyous and generous and loving and was she was loved in return.  My friends and so many others always spoke of her with outright affection.  She had a disarming way of turning strangers into friends. The coffee pot was always on and something tasty cooling on the counter. She's been gone almost 30 years; but of course, not really.  I'm starting to see her everytime I look in the mirror...

Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other.

Poems by Ogden Nash

Poems 24 and 25 (Pandemic Day 38)

The Duck

Behold the duck.

It does not cluck.

A cluck it lacks.

It quacks.

It is specially fond

Of a puddle or a pond.

When it dines or sups,

It bottoms ups!

The Purist

I give you now Professor Twist,

a conscientious scientist,

Trustees exclaimed, "He never bungles!"

And sent him off to distant jungles.

Camped on a tropic riverside,

One day he missed his loving bride.

She had, the guide informed him later,

Been eaten by an alligator.

Professor Twist could not but smile.

"You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

Ogden Nash, Custard and Company, poems by Ogden Nash, selected and illustrated by Quentin Blake, Little, Brown and Co., 1980.

I love it when my friends surprise me with an unexpected talent or a quirky new interest.  My longtime friend and former roommate, Wanda, did just that when she recited from memory "The Eagle", by Alfred, Lord Tennyson one day when we were together.  She had decided to memorize some of the classic poems, just as her mother had as a girl.   She was working on Joyce  Kilmer's poem, "Trees" also.  

Reciting poetry in front of the classroom recalls to us Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and other images of long ago days.  Can't you just smell the chalk dust?  

Now days we don't have to remember anything in particular; even phone numbers, our own or those of our nearest and dearest; not when we carry the sum of the world's knowledge in our pocket or purse!  But our memory is a prodigious thing and it should be exercised.  

I've memorized a few poems in my day, but the poems I've committed to memory aren't quite as uplifting and erudite as Tennyson and Kilmer.  Ogden Nash fits the bill for me and the two I've shared above have rattled around in my brain for years.  It's surprising how often I pulled them out for amusement--I'm always amused and sometimes others are as well!

Lucinda Matlock by Edgar Lee Masters

Poem 23 (Pandemic Day 37)

Lucinda Matlock 

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,

And played snap-out at Winchester.

One time we changed partners,

Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,

And then I found Davis.

We were married and lived together for seventy years

Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,

Eight of whom we lost

Ere I had reached the age of sixty.

I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick

I made the garden, and for holiday

Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,

And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,

And many a flower and medicinal weed--

Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys,

At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all, 

And passed to sweet repose.

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness

Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?

Degenerate sons and daughters,

Life is too strong for you--

It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Collier Books, 1962.

I remember being introduced to Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology in high school English and about the same time the play, Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, was performed by the senior class.  

All of a sudden, the voices of the dead were everywhere and they had stories to tell the living.  The Diary of Anne Frank was probably still on my bookshelf and still holding sway in my mind.  The Vietnam War was raging and I would get letters from a neighbor, who had been my first crush (I was 8 and he was 11).  For an adolescent at anytime the world can be strange and uncertain; for my generation which had experienced the assassination of President Kennedy (I was in Mr. Peterson's 4th period Social Studies class) and would soon be in the shadow of Martin Luther King's and Bobby Kennedy's assassinations; the world was in upheaval.

Still, just like Lucinda Matlock (a stand-in for his grandmother, his ideal of the undaunted pioneer woman) we went to dances, we fell in love, we persevered.  At least the lucky ones among us.  Now after all these years my classmates, my fellow travelers from the 50's, may be speaking from the graveyard of their sins and their sorrows, their triumphs and their pain.  Our voices have been added or soon will be to the laments of Spoon River.  But until then--live life; love Life!

Little Rooms by William Stafford

Poem 22 (Pandemic Day 36)

Little Rooms

I rock high in the oak--secure, big branches--

at home while darkness comes.  It gets lonely up here

as light needle forth below, through airy space.

Tinkling dishwashing noises drift up, and a faint

smooth gush of air through leaves, cool evening

moving out over the earth.  Our town leans farther

away, and I ride through the arch toward midnight,

holding on, listening, hearing deep roots grow.

There are rooms in a life, apart from others, rich

with whatever happens, a glimpse of moon, a breeze.

Youwho come years from now to this brief spell

of nothing that was mine: the open, slow passing 

of time was a gift going by.  I have put my hand out

on the mane of the wind, like this, to give it to you.

William Stafford, An Oregon Message: Poems, Harper & Row, 1987.

Today is Income Tax Day, or it was; back when life passed for normal.  I mark today however as another Wednesday when I go to the Minnesota Unemployment website to check in.  For the past year I had been spending 2-4 days selling clothes and helping customers at Christopher and Banks.  I met lots of wonderful people, both fellow associates and customers who have become friends.  Now, however, I'm on furlough while the stores are closed and I am uncertain when (or if) I will go back.  

Why today's poem should make me think of work is just another quirk of a mind's meanderings.  I'm picturing myself as a word, looking for employment.  Where would I choose to go?  In a conversation perhaps?  But the job is brief and often inconsequential--blown away in the wind.  In a newspaper marking important news, but then put in the bottom of a bird cage, or wrapped around potato peels and tossed out? Words in textbooks have an important job, but are seldom loved.  

I think I would seek work in a poem, perhaps one awakened by William Stafford in the early hours of each day.  Words in a poem do a lot of heavy lifting.  There usually aren't many of them (133 in this poem, including the title) and they carry emotion and double meanings and their placement in a line is significant.  Even the punctuation works hard (although it is sometimes its absence that does the work).  Consider how well-beloved the dash was to Miss Dickenson--employed over and over again--

To appreciate the work that the words do in "Little Rooms" you need to spend a little time with them; read them out loud, envision the picture they are painting, feel the emotional tug.  You might even want to tuck them under your pillow and pull them out when the moon is too bright, or your mind is troubled..."I have put my hand out on the mane of the wind, like this, to give it to you."

The Facts are there!

Today's project:  Begin the cleanup of my vast collection of computer bookmarks on Diigo.  As a teacher, tech strategist and trainer I amassed a huge collection, dating back to 1998.  Many of those are probably dead-ends, right?  But some are treasures.  Since sifting through thousands of links may get tedious, I'm going to share some sites very pertinent for today before I get back in the slog.

The Facts Are There...Let's Find Them...Let's Use Them!

I'd like to introduce you to GapMinder.  

WHAT GAPMINDER IS

Gapminder is an independent Swedish foundation with no political, religious or economic affiliations. Gapminder is a fact tank, not a think tank. Gapminder fights devastating misconceptions about global development. Gapminder produces free teaching resources... Gapminder promotes a fact-based worldview everyone can understand...

WHY GAPMINDER EXISTS

We humans are born with a craving for fat and sugar. But we are also born with a craving for drama. We pay attention to dramatic stories and we get bored if nothing happens.

Journalists and lobbyists tell dramatic stories. That’s their job...The... dramatic stories pile up in people’s minds into an overdramatic worldview and strong negative stress feelings: “The world is getting worse!”, “It’s we vs. them!”...
For the first time in human history reliable statistics exist... The data shows a very different picture: a world where most things improve; a world that is not divided. People across cultures and religions make decisions based on universal human needs, which are easy to understand. The fast population growth will soon be over. The total number of children in the world has stopped growing. The remaining population growth is an inevitable consequence of large generations born decades back. We live in a globalized world, not only in terms of trade and migration. More people than ever care about global development! The world has never been less bad. Which doesn’t mean it’s perfect. The world is far from perfect.

The dramatic worldview has to be dismantled, because it is stressful and wrong... We know this because we have measured the global ignorance among the world’s top decision makers in public and private sector. Their global ignorance is high, just like the ignorance of journalists, activists, teachers and the general public. This has nothing to do with intelligence. It’s a problem of factual knowledge. Facts don’t come naturally. Drama and opinions do. Factual knowledge has to be learned. We need to teach global facts in schools and in corporate training...The problem can be solved, because the data exists.

WHAT GAPMINDER DOES

Instead of wasting our time blaming the media or condemning the human brain, we develop free teaching material to dismantle misconceptions and promote a fact-based worldview.
Gapminder measures ignorance about the world

We identify the most ignored global facts by comparing what people think against the official statistics. We run public polls and we ask knowledge questions to live audiences from stage.
Gapminder makes global data easy to use and understand

We develop data visualization tools to let people explore the vast treasure of global statistics. Since many people hate statistics, we use photos as data to give the numbers meaning...

We also develop teaching materials and knowledge certificates. With our teacher certificate we want to create a global network of trusted Gapminder teachers who can represent us locally.
Gapminder promotes Factfulness, a new way of thinking... It is the relaxing habit of carrying opinions that are based on solid facts.

Here is an introduction to the founder of Gapminder giving his Ted Talk.

The best statistics you've ever seen

Belinda by Stanley Kiesel

Poem 21 (Pandemic Day 35)

belinda

This five year old burglar

Has stolen me out of myself.

Without socks and in an

Emaciated dress, she

Twitters and warbles and

Whistles and pokes the 

Sun in the ribs.

This culturally-deprived

Mexican child dances

Upon nothing. Fortunately

Joy has no need of soap 

Or water--nor a ribbon

In its hair (children

are its ribbons).  It needs

Only the indestructible

Assent. And Belinda,

Little cicada, sings

Without any operatic

Ambitions. Life would

Not be worthwhile

If one could not throw 

Snowballs at the Mona Lisa.

Stanley Kiesel, The Pearl is a Hardened Sinner: Notes from Kindergarten, Nodin Press, 1976

When I became a licensed media specialist in 1977, I was hired by Gladys Sheehan, Director of Media Services in the Minneapolis Public Schools to work in two schools; Hiawatha and Minnehaha.  I started at the end of December, when the librarian moved to Toledo. (Something I always think about when I travel to Ohio)  I spent two days a week at one school, two days a week at the other and rotated the 5th day between the two.  I had two media centers to run and classes to teach in both buildings, two principals and lots of staff to serve.  For a new librarian, I had bitten off a lot.  

Stanley Kiesel was a Kindergarten teacher at Hiawatha during the time I worked there.  He had been born in CA and had taught Kindergarten in Los Angeles before he came to Minneapolis, where he would spend many years as a poet-in-residence.  Unfortunately, I didn't really get to know him well.  I remember being aware that he was a published poet (The Pearl... was first published in 1968 by Scribner's but was expanded and reissued by a local Minneapolis publishing company just before I came to teach with him) and he seemed like a nice older man and that, folks, was that.  He went on to have several novels for children published.  The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids,1980, was well received by critics and loved by its select readers; although it was too absurd and imaginative for many, including me.  

What I've come away with though, from my small connection with him, was his passion for his students.  That kind of passion was shared by so many of my teaching colleagues over the years in the challenging situations that the Minneapolis Public Schools presented us with.  What was different, is that those children's lives, which came to blend and blur and fade away for so many of us; were captured so clearly and indelibly by Stanley in poem portraits that can still impact us many years distant from their time in the sandbox and the story corner.  Belinda's life was meager, financially, but rich with her character, and ultimately enriched by the caring of her teacher.