Photo by L.L. Barkat.

I close my eyes,
blot out one hundred
and fifty shale driveways
pickup trucks, Ford
pintos, trailers barely
tied to this ground
by wires, gas lines
cable TV.

I can still see
dirt road, Queen
Anne’s Lace, goldenrod
blue chicory,
field mice nesting
under leaning timothy
and the apple orchard
rooted beyond tall firs

where a woman
in navy sweat pants and
red Budweiser t-shirt
is just now hanging laundry
to drift upon the wind,
sing with ghosts
of spring white
blossoms, honeybees.

Photo: Kelly Langner Sauer

walls, square bedroom to myself
that shut out sounds of a new place
and trouble I found in line after gym
(she kept nudging, named me
Vanilla, so I stared hard, whispered,
“Chocolate bar!” and was called
on a different kind of carpet,
not golden, not soft).

Just when I learned my times tables
we went back; the house and our things
were gone (I remember no talk of it)

Photo: Kelly Langner Sauer

and we lived in a trailer, its linoleum
golden brown—meantime, they topped
soot-covered stones with plywood,

Photo: Kelly Langner Sauer

raised studs, put sheetrock in place
(after Scribner and Sons, men with
tattoos and nipple rings ran wires,
smashed cigarette butts into mom’s

used-to-be pink petunia garden).
All the while they were spackling,
cementing, whitewashing walls,
sister had begun collecting the mail

Photo: Kelly Langner Sauer

for a couple who lived half mile up our
straight dirt road. Bills, letters, ivory-
backed bird book with the prettiest
cardinals, jays, sparrows– a guide–
until someone found the whole
stash under her bed. Didn’t anybody

understand then that she and I
had, each in our own way, simply
been grasping for words.

Photo: Kelly Langner Sauer

Poem by L.L. Barkat, author of InsideOut: poems. Photographs by Kelly Langner Sauer.

What is poetry,
she asked…

fetching it to me…

with full hands.

How could I
answer the woman?
I do not know what
it is any more than
she…

I guess it must
be marks on tender
skin…

bearers of sin…

cool cups of rain
and bottles of tears…

collected on midnight
trains…

from the eyes
of old men, old women
and infants traveling
to God knows where…

it hangs and is lifted
from our hair…

goes onward and
onward speaking
itself…

tripping us
as we debark
chewing-gum-mottled
metal stairs.

Photographer Claire Burge is a photographer, entrepreneur, poet and writer in training who lives in the countryside of Ireland but calls South Africa home. You can find her at www.claireburge.com.

L.L. Barkat is a staff writer for this magazine.

Verse
Reprinted from InsideOut:poems, published by International Arts Movement.

By L.L. Barkat

What is poetry,
she asked, fetching
it to me with full
hands. How could I
answer the woman?
I do not know what
it is any more than
she. I guess it must
be marks on tender
skin, bearers of sin,
cool cups of rain
and bottles of tears
collected on midnight
trains from the eyes
of old men, old women
and infants traveling
to God knows where,
it hangs and is lifted
from our hair
goes onward and
onward speaking
itself, tripping us
as we debark
chewing-gum-mottled
metal stairs.

The principal was cheery when I asked about curriculum. “This!” she said, sweeping her arm towards the window and the river beyond. Then she smiled like she’d given me the biggest gift an administrator could give a new teacher who would welcome 30 kids to an empty classroom in just a few short days.

Looking outside, the river seemed far off. Our view was enviable, in its way, but we wouldn’t be skipping down to muddy shores anytime soon. For all intents and purposes, the river was not going to replace my need for pencils and math books.

That year was one of the worst years I spent, in any profession. The school’s philosophy was that children are endlessly creative and could make the curriculum, direct their learning. Everything depended on what was inside the kids. But each day felt like a monumental struggle, as the gaping external environment sat waiting for us to magically fill it with creative products and responses.

Six years later, I entered a different classroom-not as the teacher, but as a parent. Books lined shelves. Bright red paper apples were strung along walls, inscribed with children’s names in black marker. Plastic stackable containers held math manipulatives, blocks, paints, scissors, and paper. Children sat in neat circles around oblong tables. Before each child was a sheet of paper with the letter “l” in bold, followed by blank lines. It was the end of the year, the alphabet taught long ago. But kids were carefully copying the letter and raising their hands to wait for the teacher to check their work.

Photo: Markus Rödder

Here, it didn’t seem to matter what was inside the kids. Their external environment-the room-was filled with colorful things and teacher-directed products and responses. It was quiet and orderly and, suddenly, terribly stifling. I couldn’t wait to leave.

Two rooms. One where everything depended on what was inside the kids, and the other where everything seemed focused on what was outside the kids.

Where was the room that saw the necessity for both-where inside and out were purposely, inextricably linked?

This is not just a classroom question. It is an artistic question.

One of my current roles is to help people write poetry. I begin with them where they are, and that’s exciting. Some fledgling poets come with image stacked upon image and form upon form (usually a kind of rhyme scheme). These poets rely on externals. Indeed, they are not so far off – except perhaps in particular points of skill – from certain published poets whose work does everything “right” but lacks an emotional center.

Others come bursting with emotion, spilled verse after verse in abstract language. I know the poets are sad or happy or confused or in love, because they tell me in so many words. However, if I were to line their poems up on the apple wall you might not discern the difference, except that each is stenciled with a distinct name.

Before I go any further, let me be very clear. This is not a criticism of beginning poets. I absolutely love the enthusiasm, efforts and warmth, the beautiful relationships I form with people who offer their words to me. Furthermore, I struggle with the same issues, especially when I’m trying to write poetry that is a first-try at a fresh life theme.

So that you’ll believe me, let me share a poem I composed as part of a new endeavor to write about my childhood loss of three homes to fire. Losing three homes in any fashion is hard; losing them to fire is a deeply emotional reality. This was my first try at putting it into poetry:

“After the Fire”
 

Come with me to chicory
lacedfoundation, gutted,
wheresit the stones,
burned and blackened,
like memories obscure
they stole away. I will take
 

your hand, lead youup
the thistled hill at back, where
stood three lilacs purpling
in rising mist. We can lean
and lift, cart soot-dust rocks
to nearby field, let greening
 

timothy lick them clean in
rain and wind. I will search
for new pine, iron nails, glass
to set in place. Such trifles
will notraise lost reveries
to life,but they can trace
 

my love, erect as grace.

While nice things are beginning to happen structurally-things having to do with momentum and subtleties in rhyme (“blackened” and “back,” “greening” and “clean”), there is little I can salvage from this poem. My favorite lines are “I will search/for new pine, iron nails, glass/to set in place.” I also like the “lilacs purpling,” as well as the thistles, chicory, and timothy.

Yet the poem isn’t quite what I hoped it would be.

What’s happening here? Most likely, I’m still lacking on two points: inside and out. What is inside me regarding the fire losses is buried too deep and perhaps afraid to assert itself more clearly with emotional power, much like the children tentatively raising their hands in that orderly, predictable classroom. So I’ve relied on abstract language (e.g., love and grace) to attempt an emotional expression. Unfortunately, the externals I bring to the poem do not make up for the emotional lack. The blackened stones could be in anybody’s poem. They are as undefined as the empty classroom that overlooked the river from a great distance. How could they possibly elicit a deep emotional response in me, or you?

My troubles in writing on this childhood theme will only be addressed with a two-fold solution: attend to both inside and out, through time and repeated attempts. Someday I hope to come back with a fire poem that will take a person’s breath away. But before I do, I’m going to have to feel more and sense more. Maybe I will need to visit a burned building or spend time free-writing to unearth the finer details of my lost homes and how I feel about their disappearance. There is hope, I believe, since not long after writing this poem I remembered how my sister and I got in trouble for feeding a fire-scorched container of Nestle Quik to our niece. This is a much more interesting image than blackened stones. And getting in touch with the fear and anger of the adults who punished us for the feeding-session might be a better entrance to the past.

In any case, are the troubles I’m experiencing confined to the poet? I don’t think so. It’s my belief that musicians, painters, dancers, even classroom teachers whose work lacks power might try a similar approach: cultivate both inside and out, then let the two ignite, embrace.

L.L. Barkat cherishes the lines of others who are making their poetic way. Visit her sometime at Seedlings in Stone, and join in the poetry celebrations she hosts at High Calling Blogs. Here’s a poem from her current collection InsideOut, published by International Arts Movement…

“Incident”
 

Dava Sobel
envied her friend,
who had somehow
got hold of moon dust-
about a tablespoon or
so, from an astro lover boy.
 

It could have been bottled
for posterity, sprinkled in
the garden or put in biscuits
to feed the five thousand,
if only
the woman had not
swallowed the whole
damn dose of it.
 

I kid you not, she claimed
it for her own and now
she is one with the moon.

Photo: Rebecca Brame

It was the suckiest letter I ever received.

One friend pored over the words and responded, “It reads vindictive. How could someone speak this way about your beautiful writing? I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut and can hardly breathe.” Another said, “Throw that away and never look at it again.”

The reactions were strong, and I admit that if I hadn’t been around the block a few times, I might have taken the letter to heart-maybe cried all day or used the sheet for target practice, and certainly not chosen to share about the sucky-letter-in-question.

So why am I here now? And why did I tell my 12-year-old daughter about those unfriendly words? Too, why am I seriously considering framing the feedback, or at least stuffing it into an envelope to be found posthumously in my journals?

Here’s my three-word answer: Marschall, Johansson, Gehry.

As luck or the Divine would have it, I taught a children’s art class the day I received the-suckiest-letter-ever. There’s nothing extraordinary about that except I’d chosen to focus on the story of Ken Marschall. Marschall is a gifted artist whose facility with realism has earned him a solid career as a film matte painter. He’s also a Titanic aficionado and has produced countless meticulously-detailed pieces, commissioned both privately and commercially.

But Marschall’s first attempt to enter an art show was rejected when the committee said his Titanic painting was “not art” because it was “too realistic.” Soon after, a gentleman who had seen the rejected piece recognized Marschall’s talent and commissioned a new work. This was the beginning of a long and lettered artistic life, and today he is the world’s leading Titanic artist.

Was the focus on Marschal’s story a kind of serendipity for me? Maybe. I had spent the morning reminding children to embrace their gifts regardless of criticism and rejection; good work often finds audience, just like Marschall’s did, and I wanted to inspire the kids with a message of resilience.

Over the next week, my own message repeated itself through various unexpected means. Listening to an interview with Scarlett Johansson, I was struck by her observation that artists have to live with criticism. It’s pars for the course. Good work doesn’t just find audience; it also finds anti-audience.

Take architect Frank Gehry, for instance. A few days after the Johansson interview, I was treated to someone’s remote-control roulette spin: a documentary on Gehry’s journey and achievements. Like many artists, Gehry has his moments of doubt and creative mishaps, but as a successful architect he also demonstrates remarkable resilience and accomplishment.

Still, some critics have made it their mission to save the world from the likes of Gehry by being “honest” about his work. Such honesty has been expressed through words likeugly,monstrosity, andperverse.

This is not to say his critics are never right, which is what makes the whole process a tricky matter. Harsh criticism can hurt and disillusion, because it sometimes includes insight about our needs for growth. And this is why I discussed the sucky-letter with my 12-year-old daughter. She and I have been having conversations that go something like this…

“My writing isso bad.”

“Well, it does have certain weaknesses, but that’s not the whole story. Listen, Sara, it’s important to be realistic in two directions. You need to be realistic about your weak points, but you also need to be realistic about your strong points. A lot of your writing is incredibly beautiful-better than a great deal of adult writing I’ve seen. You need to remember that.”

It’s essential for my sensitive daughter to develop this kind of clear-mindedness if she’s going to face the criticism she’ll eventually encounter as a talented artist. By sharing about the letter, I was introducing her to the way of the artist’s world; I was also demonstrating the very resilience I hope she’ll develop over time.

In the end, the problem with extreme criticism is that it doesn’t tell the whole story. Or maybe it almost does, but in an unexpected fashion. Thinking on Gehry, I concluded that one reason he draws such intense criticism is because he’s done an excellent job of honing his vision and craft. People who don’t like Gehry’s brand of architecture are going to have an extra-strong reaction to his work; it’s just sogood in a way they despise.

My daughter and I discussed this too, on a sunny day, driving through a peaceful residential neighborhood. Then she surprised me by bringing up the matter of the sucky-letter. “Hey, I think that person actually gave you a big compliment.”

Perhaps.

That’s why I’m seriously considered framing my critic’s words. Or folding them up and deliciously licking an envelope. Now, if only I actually kept a journal . . .

Breathing sultry air, I witness the moment: on, off, on, off. I feel my arms in motion, my feet hitting the pavement. Buildings rise, old, connecting me to a past I cannot really touch. Billboards change rapid-fire and signs rotate. In just a few short minutes I witness Mary Poppins, Bubba Gump, race cars speeding.

In the midst of this are offers to come and go – somewhere, but I’m not sure of destinations. The bus stop. Theater tickets starting at $31.50. A giant beer bottle rising up golden, then disappearing.

“I will write as soon as I get to New York,” said Father Byles. I saw his words, bigger than life, white against amber, just an hour ago in the exhibit for Titanic. I will write as soon as never came. Still, the words are hanging somewhere near Times Square, in a dark hall where you can touch a piece of sunken ship, buy a fragment of coal that powered black and white promise (virtually unsinkable! they said). My daughter reached into the touch case – a fragile child’s hand traced remains of wreckage. We passed on the coal purchase, refusing to buy tragedy.

Mary Poppins floats skyward, clinging to her black umbrella. I watch her go and wish for my own umbrella against time. And a red dress. I could use a red dress, singing past tragedy.