Author Archives: sara holbrook

About sara holbrook

Poet/Author/Educator

June 30, 2007

Nothing trumps crab grass

I dream about crab grass. What a pathetic confession! Crab grass slinks into my gardens, sending its scouts ahead of each invasion like spacewalkers suspended on life lines. Its tentacles lurk beneath the grass as it races to strangle all growth. I love growing things and have tried to live in harmony with crab grass, but it chokes out the blooms on my lavender, thyme, and yarrow and I hate it.

Night before last I took a break from pulling crab grass and walked around the neighborhood with a letter to our city council about our disgust with the way the developer at the end of the street is mutilating and overdeveloping a small plot of ground he wheedled out of the financially strapped school system without paying them any cash. There is so much wrong with this development, it’s hard to articulate without beginning to splutter like Daffy Duck. Anyway, up and down the street I went looking for signatures on my letter. Apparently the developer doesn’t read the papers or even look at the ubiquitous FOR SALE OR LEASE signs in the city and doesn’t realize the real estate market is depressed, because he keeps gaily ripping down trees and playgrounds to build structures no one needs on not only this, but several sites in town. Deer are committing suicide on the freeway. See what I mean about the spluttering?

So, I approach a neighbor I’ve never really talked to before who is standing on his lawn with his smiling wife and adorable 18 month old. He is a young guy, overweight in shorts that might have fit him better last summer or the five before. His hair is leaving him. I explain the purpose of the letter, its 6 points including traffic snarls, flooding, lack of classrooms in overcrowded schools for the three story townhouses the developer previously assured us would be populated by retirees (see above on financially strapped schools). This is a lot like purporting that a used car was driven to and from church by a little old lady when in truth it was a rental car. Maybe this young man does in fact sell cars. At any rate, he knows the game and that we’re being played. I want his signature.

“Yeah, I’ll sign,” he says. “I don’t want any shines moving in down there.”

I haven’t heard the label “shine” since I was a kid, before the riots in Detroit. Before MLK professed his dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Before Brown vs the Board of Education, the exact same decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court this week, went head to head with the likes of George Wallace. For two days talking heads have been debating on the media whether race is still an issue in our “united” states. I want to introduce the Justices to this young man.

He said, “shines,” and he looked at me hard as he said it. Measuring me? Daring me? His wife and child smiling at his side.

I stood silently as he signed the letter. I don’t have to agree with him on everything, right? I don’t have to make a scene in front of his wife and kid, do I? I can just smile, whisper insults under my breath, and live in harmony with his guy. I don’t have to take on every asshole I meet. We can be in agreement on the over-development and disagree on race relations, can’t we?

Can we?

The letter feels dirty to me. It sits on the dining room table unsent. Evidence of a compromise that I can’t square in my mind.

This neighborhood is being strangled by unseen tentacles, arrogant and bold. Words of hatred uttered by people wearing their patriotism and religiosity on their car bumpers. Uncompromising, bolstered by ignorance and unapologetic greed. It’s always there, aggressively trying to choke out what could be beautiful. More than any one pair of hands can pull out.

It gives me nightmares.

June 26, 2007

The News?

Everyday I read the Huffington Post the way my Dad used to read the Free Press in Detroit. Today I read that some high school scholars took Bush to task for his stance on torture, that politicians take money from big tobacco (like this is news?) and that Murdock is close to firming up his deal to buy the Wall Street Journal, which is just one more reason to get the news on line. I read the business section to see who has been arrested recently and the living section to investigate new ways to relax, which in light of the current news is a hot topic.

But when I saw on the front page today a picture to click to read about Paris Hilton’s release from jail, I passed. Not because I wasn’t at all interested, the story is like a flat tire on the side of the road, you glace over just because it is there. I didn’t click on the story because I know somewhere, someone is counting. The people who choose the news are counting clicks and I don’t want to add to the pile. Particularly since I read yesterday the Michael Moore was booted from an interview on Larry King where he was to talk about the health care crisis so that Ms. Hilton can tell all about how hot her prison cell is.

Mostly I get my news from Democracy Now, Huffington Post, Think Progress, BBC, and Alternet. Once in a while MSNBC. And of course, The Daily Show. These are channels my Dad and Walter Cronkite never dreamed of.

And before marketing moguls started counting clicks, measuring the next newsflash against how much interest a related story received the last time. How else can one explain Anna Nicole outplaying troop casualties on the nightly news?

I know, I know. The topic about as welcome as a nasty doormat. But unless we keep hosing it down and occasionally beating the tar out of the doormat, we are just going to keep tracking dirt in.

June 25, 2007

Beaches

Our family flows toward the Atlantic each summer with our rafts, sunscreen and spawn. We go there to study our familial three R’s, to relax, reconnect and recollect. Memories of past trips to the beach are filed in my head going back to when I used to hide True Story magazines under my mattress to be secretly studied with my cousins while the grown-ups drank beer and played cards in the swaying cottages we’d rent in places like Ocean City, Maryland and the Outer Banks.

This year (as in the past 3) we have trekked all the way to Oak Island, NC. I’m not sure how many of us were there in total, the extended family has a lot of extensions. But in our bank of four cottages we had twenty-one sun-toasted surfers.

Beyond celebrating the sun and the sand, we also celebrated my Uncle Bill and Aunt Sophie’s 65th wedding anniversary with cake, barbeque, and two cannon blasts that rocked the iced tea right out of my cup.

Scottie (3) learned to ride waves, Steph (6) learned to body surf, Ben (7) learned it takes patience to fish on the pier, Thomas (2) couldn’t get enough of the waves running headfirst, getting blasted in the face and popping up with a smile, wanting more. Danny (3) sat in his chair or played putt putt on the par 2 course his mother Kelly made for him. Frank (15) built Frankopolis, the deep sea fishing expedition brought in 200 lbs of fish now in freezers in OH and VA to be retrieved like a warm memory on cold winter nights. Sara Kelly (7 months) just bided her time till next year when the water will come to tickle her newly walking toes. And the grown-ups?

We rode waves of gratitude.

June 9, 2007

NYC

Everything in NYC is bigger, faster, brighter. After a day’s work in Brooklyn, Louisa, Kelly and I supped at a little Italian (yummy) place and went to see Spring Awakening, which would later sweep the Tony Awards. Here’s the truth — I didn’t love it. I liked it. But I wanted to LOVE it. One thing for sure, it made me want to return to the city immediately and see 4 more shows.

This picture is of Kelly and Louisa singing at a Karaoke place on Times Square — what you can’t see is that their performance was plastered on one of those mile high neon signs. They did Kelly Clarkson very proud — and me too.

June 2, 2007

A Long Way Gone

Just back from a Janet Allen Institute in Florida. The skies were blanketed heavily with what looked to be rain clouds but turned out to be clouds of smoke. Florida is on fire, and you can smell it everywhere, even in the hotel room. Made me add a line to a poem about the environment about Florida catching fire.

I don’t know if it was the smoke, the book I am reading (great book about boy soldiers in Sierra Leon, A Long Way Gone, see link above) with its vivid imagery of eyes dripping blood and children lost to bullets and cruelty, my general state of tiredness or staying too much up on the news, but I read too many dark poems in my set. That’s twice I’ve done that this spring, here and in IL. I couldn’t sleep last night worrying about it. The set and my state of mind that put me up to it.

At 4AM I was up walking Suzi through the quiet breaking dawn, listening to birds and trying to find my happy place. At this point I think I need a map and a guide to find it. One place I’m certain NOT to find it is on CNN or in a newspaper.

I need to move away from machines and take a shower of sun.

May 19, 2007

IRA Toronto

Once a year reading teachers from all over gather at the International Reading Association meeting — this year in an attempt to fulfill its name, the conference was moved across the border to Toronto — a town with great theater, efficient public transportation and terrific restaurants that just happens to be in Canada. I wish more people would have come, the number of attendees was way down. Was it the passport requirement? The fact that it was later in the year? The fear of the unknown?

Who knows. But I do know that those 200 or so who attended the 11th annual, newly revamped, IRA Poetry Olio were treated to a funny and poignant reading by two leading children’s poets, Jane Yolen and Lee Bennett Hopkins. Only two people who have known one another for years could have pulled off the perfectly timed but totally unrehearsed, thoroughly delightful show. Surrounding them were other poets, but it was Jane’s and Lee’s performances that stole the show.

And I don’t think that either one of them would classify themselves as performance poets, thereby confirming what we all know — or should know — anytime a poet gets in front of an audience with a poem in hand or in heart and recites it aloud, it is indeed a performance. No news to these two pros who have done more to entice kids into reading than anyone can measure with some 500 books between them.

Allan Wolf and I hosted the event while Micheal stage managed and Ginger West lent muscle and a calming influence. Joining us was Jim Blasingame in cowboy persona, always good for a hoot ‘n holler. Them cowboy poets always know how to stir-rup the emotions and then rein them in at just the right time.

Lots of free books and door prizes. It was a grand night for all. See y’all next year in Atlanta where the featured poets will be (hopefully and if the creek don’t rise) Ashley Bryant and Naomi Shihab Nye.

May 10, 2007

Mother’s Day Proclamation

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe, 1870

May 9, 2007

And sometimes they steal your heart . . .

It’s that time of year when every kid, teacher, custodian and fraying folder starts crying RECESS. Summer break is breathing hot and heavy on the other side of June 1st and everyone wants to answer the call. Assemblies are restless, teachers are checking their watches and writing workshops slip (skip?)into silliness without even mentioning underwear.

And then there was James. He looked to be maybe 10, a carrot top neatly trimmed, narrow shoulders and a metronome rock. He sucked his fingers and rocked through the assembly and afterwards slid away from his aid to rush the table and grab my idle microphone. His aid came quickly and kindly, “no, no, James, that’s not yours.” She held his hand to lead him to the door of the gymnasium, pausing to talk to a teacher. James was straining at her hand, reaching toward the table. Rocking. I took the microphone over and put it in his moist fingers. He felt it all over, not grabbing, but insistent. After a minute, it was time to return to his class. I took the microphone back and he pointed to his heart, two quick taps and then pointed at the microphone, universal sign language for “give to me.” The aid said, “you already held the microphone, James.” He tapped his heart again and pointed. I held it out for him to stroke again.

His aid finally encouraged him out of the gym as others were coming in for the next show. James followed, lurching and rocking as she held his hand, one more longing look over his shoulder.

Totally non-verbal. Reaching for the magic of that voice maker microphone and taking my heart away in his pocket.

May 2, 2007

and again . . .

Yesterday at an elementary school came this question from a fifth grader, “have you ever written a poem about the idiot president?”

Excuse me?

He smiled impishly. A few around him proclaimed the Bush to be the greatest president of all time (all time to a nine-year-old is a somewhat limited perspective.) Others laughed madly.

The fact that these elementary school kids even make a connection between poetry and politics is AMAZING given the degree to which all the poetry offered to them is homogenized almost past the point where one can recognize the writing genre. In elementary schools the poetry books are shelved with the joke books.

Today at another elementary when I was grilling the kids to name poets they know, one boy offered up the name Phyllis Wheatley. Accustomed to a constant stream of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky responses, that one stopped me dead.

Who did you say?

“Phyllis Wheatley. She was a slave . . .”

Sweetheart, I know who she is — I just can’t believe YOU do. Kudos to your teacher!

There are some significant poetry connections being made in Birmingham, MI. Very cool.

May 1, 2007

Do you write politcal poems?

The eighth graders were restless this afternoon. Every poem inspired a volley of verbal fire with the cannons to the right of them, cannons to the left. Not at all sure that I was connecting with any of the 250 of them crowded onto the library floor. Questions and answers went better than the presentation — thoughtful questions (maybe they were listening?) and then one student from the way back: Do you ever write political poems?

I was immediately transported back to a conversation I’d had at a polite gathering of poets in Cleveland a couple of weeks ago. Professor One was bemoaning the fact that Nikki Giovanni had actually written a poem for the Virginia Tech family. “I call this Polaroid poetry,” he haughtily declared. “What she should have done is find a poem from the past and read that one at the memorial.” I questioned this as did another poet standing in attendance at his proclamation. Another professor chimed in, “yes, I don’t believe in political poetry at all.”

My friend said saomething along the lines of “Eh? You kidding?” She was more polite than that, but direct. “No,” he continued — political poems may possibly be written but not until maybe 100 years after the event. It takes that long to get perspective.”

One hundred years later? Who cares 100 years later? No wonder so much poetry is seen as irrelevant if that is the academic attitude toward contemporary commentary in the form of poetry.

I questioned professor #1 citing Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry on child labor and how that was read in Parliament and helped to change the laws. He looked at me blankly and then he looked over my head to see who else had entered the room. That was the end of the discussion.

Times of crisis (is a massacre a political event?) are exactly the right time to reach for poetry — to call on our poets to put attempt to put words to the feelings we share. I thought calling on Nikki Giovanni was EXACTLY the right thing to do and that she was able to offer verbal comfort, encircling the wounded with her verse.

Do I write political poems? Yes. And I will continue to do so. In a world where every activity from schools to bees to peace have become political hot potatoes — how can any writer not be political? In fact, I have a goal. I want to write a poetry book that gets banned in schools for being politically forthright. I’m bored with getting banned for being satanic and anti-familiy values and some of the other goofy things I’ve been labeled.

Poets are supposed to stir things up. It’s a proud tradition that apparently our eighth graders recognize as being important, if not our “scholars.”