Keeping Still with Poetry

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

Every outreach session with Bookworm now includes a poetry reading. We  bring the same intensity of experience that we demand from story telling to poetry that also tells stories but more importantly demands of us to feel the stories that flow out of words. Children already still as they await the reading. We ask no questions, tell no lies after the reading, but we all keep still. Poetry demands this of us, now more than ever.

The outpouring of words that compel us to feel more than they say emerges so brilliantly in one of our new books at Bookworm; Pablo Neruda Poet of the People by Monica Brown illustrated by Julie Paschkis.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

The poetry sessions particularly at our energetic MOP sites allow the listeners to feel. This seems like such a luxury as our children navigate so many languages to emerge into a muddle of literacy. Poetry of the kind that we read-aloud is only asking of us a stillness and already there is built into every session the anticipation that now a poem will be read.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

This gets heightened when we meet Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda’s special teacher who gave him books from faraway places and changed how he thought about himself in the world. The experience of being part of a library program and the feelings of the poet come closer together. We don’t need to say anything, we simply need the experience and often a visual of this specialness to allow ourselves the logical conclusion, reading brings.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

We take great courage from the knowledge that stillness is part of the process of engagement and activity follows inactivity. We grab hard and fast to the imagery and feeling that poetry brings and talk, share, paint, record and remember when our telling is done. Every week the Bookworm team reads poetry aloud within the Bookworm house, explores forms, discusses poetry and studies ways in which this form can be merged with growing awareness of self and the world.

Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

We realize that to keep spaces like Bookworm alive we must work harder and grow stronger and find a community that will walk with us.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

“KEEPING QUIET” BY PABLO NERUDA

from Extravagaria (translated by Alastair Reid, pp. 27-29, 1974)

Clip Courtesy:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/28/keeping-quiet-sylvia-boorstein-reads-pablo-neruda/