Poetic Transitions
For any fifteen or sixteen year old, leaving home is a transition. When our students come here from schools across the US and Chile they leave behind cliques, best friends, soccer practices, saturday night sleepovers, and family dinners. They say farewell to familiarity and comfort and make a choice to step out to the edge of their skin, to push themselves –to be uncomfortable. It is a lot of new. New things are difficult for all of us and I believe poetry helps us process these transitions; it helps us to process the eternal change, growth, death, rebirth cycle that life is and celebrate the beauty of transformation that is at the same time both a personal and universal experience.
In the first two weeks of school, in English, the students were asked to write a poem about where they come from. The intimacy and beauty of these poems is remarkable and helps these students honor all they come to Alzar with, all the support they have at home and serves as a point of departure for their next adventure here at Alzar. Here is an example of the I am From poems…
I am From
I am from the red door down the street
running out, is a pair of striped tights.
I am from the name Bela,
A girl who hides while her brother seeks,
shy, she hides behind the thumb in her mouth.
Where’s Isabela?
I am from the bath tub overflowing with bubbles
Curly haired, covered in bubble beards,
laughter overpowers the bruises from brother- sister fights.
I am from a place where competition brings out the worst in each other.
I am from the smell of pot roast on sundays,
tip toeing it’s way around every corner of my house.
Followed by monday, the start of a new school day
filled with, unfamiliar faces and new places.
I am from the long hours of carpool,
singing and dancing with my best friends,
yelling and laughing with my family.
I am from a crazy, now split household.
I am from the number two,
two houses, two beds, and two christmases.
I am from a family that has made me, Isabela.
I.DOBBS
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After we learned more about poetic devices and the students had time to settle into Alzar, they began to transform. They were asked to write a poem that located them within the present moment, that identified where they were now in their development, in their thinking, and in their hopes and aspirations. These poems had to include a lesson/extended metaphor from nature and use symbolism to convey a key message. You can see how powerful these lessons from nature are and yet how simple they are too. Nature is always teaching us things if we open our eyes enough to see. Here are a few of these “I am here” poems…
I am Here
We come from a material world filled with the new iPhones and name brand clothes, based around our unreliable supply of nonrenewable resources.
I break my head through the concrete wall that encloses my world just enough to see the light surrounding me.
I see canyons. Beautiful canyons.
Red, and orange, and yellow. Natural skyscrapers.
But skyscrapers are only that tall because of the billions of pieces that
Compose them, hold them up, support them.
One rock cannot form something so beautiful on its own,
They need to work together to create the postcard picture.
And only so many rocks can see the light, absorb the heat, appreciate the view.
But then rocks shift.
Each particle changes perspective.
One day they have a full view of what is in front of them,
The next they are completely in the dark, unaware of which direction is up.
But what will never go away
Is their responsibility to hold up the rest of the formation.
We are the particles of rocks.
We hold each other up, support each other.
Each story builds off of every page in a book, every word. It isn’t complete without all the pages.
Did we end the story before it’s over?
Are we supporting the rest of the canyon?
Once we leave the light,
It will still matter what we wrote on the pages,
How we altered the story.
And if we didn’t do our part,
Then the canyon will crumble to the ground
Into a pile of rubble,
Erasing the postcard picture that took thousands of years to create.
People don’t endure the blazing, scorching sun with limited water and a pack the weight of an elephant to see an ordinary mound of dirt that could have been something beautiful at some point. But it might just make it worth it to see the extraordinary canyon that has sustained itself for thousands of years.
A.RATHBUN
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I am Here
I am in a place where I am able to be free
as free as the river
free to grow, and free to make mistakes
I am gaining new perspectives above and below the surface
Looking for the red tab to independently rescue myself
I am doing it alone,
and stand on the warm, stable sand, looking back at the crashing waves
I just flew out of
I see the previous day when I never thought I would kayak through a class 4 rapid,
I see back to a month before, when the thought of living over 2,000 miles away terrorized me
I am back, settling into the plastic shell
A shell that is on a one way route
I am ready to dig in and let the slow blue track take me away
Fighting with the white monster, the brisk liquid rushing over me, and I see calmness
I am still, I am the kayak, I am the river, progressing as one
Wondering if I will find myself once again soaked, not wanting to surrender
I am constantly on the gliding blue between the towering solid
Always reminded by the ripples and gurgles bouncing off of the walls
I am waiting to breathe again
Anticipating the ease that I will have later
I am on a journey fast paced, and cannot wait for the succeeding breath
I get submerged, and then I am on top
and the rapids will no longer phase me
I am in a place where the only way out is through
M.SHAPIRO
Isn’t it amazing how they describe both where they come from and how they have changed up until this point? Don’t you connect with their images? These students are living and breathing in each day, tasting the sunshine, and embracing their transformation. They are paying attention. They are here and now. This is why I am enjoying English this semester.