Last week my Thursday class focused on using primary sources, interpreting documents and analyzing art and photographs. We also looked at the book THE ART OF FREEDOM: HOW ARTISTS SEE AMERICA, by Bob Raczka. Using very simple text and art from the likes of Georgia O'Keefe, Thomas Hart Benton, John Trumbull, Stuart Davis, and more, Raczka provides an introduction to the things that make us American. In pictures and words America is depicted as hard work, jazz, baseball, freedom, and more.This book got me thinking about the stretch this week. Since the 4th of July is Friday, this seems like a perfect time to write about what America is. I hope you will join me in writing about America this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.
America for me is a place of dreams, but some of those dreams are long deferred.
ReplyDeleteThis from my newest book of adult poetry--The Bloody Tide: Poems of Politics and Power--but this is a poem that could be used with kids (5th grade and up
Slow Train Coming
“(A) reminder to all of us that at times equality can feel
like a slow train coming”-- LZ Granderson
Somebody coughs.
It’s cold at the station, wind blowing from the north,
blustering, posturing, blueing the children’s lips.
They stamp their feet, rub mittened hands impatiently,
breathing cumulus from open mouths.
I glance down the long line.
Somebody hears
the grinding wheels on the rails right before the train
huffs into sight. We dare not grow weary, do not grow weary.
The children’s laughter is the thin thread pulling the train,
like a clacketing tin toy, along the tracks, racing entropy
even as it nears.
Somebody asks,
Where is the train, where is that damned train?
A long time coming, I think, the years wear on,
and what do we have to show the children?
Only the songs, Freedom, Freedom,
and the dreams.
©2014 Jane Yolen, all rights reserved>
Lots of us
ReplyDeleteall different stripes
and always were
lined up, stacked like
logs of a cabin
alternating contrasting
taking turns
Red for blood shed
(that's what makes
the red man red)
and white for that other
imaginary skin color
and for the pure intent
of democracy
Stars we are all stars
on the blue ground
of an earthly heaven
our pointed hands
and feet jostling
for a place, for a time
of our own
Thanks for the suggestion, Tricia...and can I link back here on the 4th when I host PF? Incidentally, that Jasper Johns map on the cover of Raczka's book hangs rather largely on my living room wall!
America Is
ReplyDeleteBig prairies, big skies,
big lakes, big trees,
big canyons, big mountains,
big roads, big bridges,
big buildings, big cities,
big minds, big mouths,
big ideas, big dreams.
—Kate Coombs, 2014
all rights reserved
America for me is also the land of dreams, some whimsical and fanciful. Early-20th-century American cartoonist and animation pioneer Winsor McCay, best known for his newspaper comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland. On the evening of February 8, 1914, at the Palace Theater in Chicago, at the height of Vaudeville and World War I, McCay premiered one of the first animated (and interactive) short films, after drawing thousands of frames on his own, and introduced the world to the antics of a friendly “dinosaurus” named Gertie. Gertie the Dinosaur was a success and is now highly regarded by critics and historians.
ReplyDeleteGERTIE THE DINOSAUR
By Steven Withrow
In Winsor’s waking flicker-dreams
The editing’s inelegant,
But to the crowd an elephant—
No, older than a mammoth—seems
To live. “He’s bound to bank a million,”
A man says on the mezzanine.
“McCay has built a time machine!”
And now this dinosaur vaudevillian
Giraffes her neck and plucks a plum—
It’s obvious that she’s a she
By feminine agility—
From the chalk-talk master’s inky thumb.
She swallows whole a cartoon stone
And races with a mastodon
Whose upcurved tusks McCay had drawn
In frame by frame by frame alone.
She lumbers to a lakeside stop,
Then dips her head and drinks it dry,
And, when she’s scolded, starts to cry.
Her tears are yet another prop
McCay, tuxedoed, whip in hand,
Had bundled in her bag of tricks
Far back as Nineteen-Hundred-Six.
It works precisely as he’d planned.
Their grand finale—what a lark!
House lights drop; McCay shrinks down
And rides away on Gertie’s crown
Into the thaumatropic dark.
©2014 Steven Withrow, all rights reserved
I found your challenge at Heidi's site today, Tricia. I know the book, & it is beautiful, I agree. It was also lovely to see everyone's ideas of America. FYI-the first letters were in bold, but didn't come through.
ReplyDeleteChoosy (Chewsy) Americans
Apple pie
Moo Gai Pan
Egg Foo Yung
Ravioli
Irish potatoes
Clam chowder
Arroz con pollo
Linda Baie ©All rights
Linda, I love your poem, and I do think that list shows what is still best about us. I wish I were feeling upbeat about America today - on her birthday! - but ever since Citizens United and the recent school shootings, well, the truth is, I'm not feeling very sentimental about America recently - I get increasingly cranky about the word "freedom" (freedom to buy assault weapons, freedom to exclude health care choices to women, freedom to buy elections....) and "dreams" (immigrant children being sent home, people seeking amnesty but being turned away....) So my poetry stretch reflects that. Hope it isn't too glum - it's really just full of questions.
ReplyDeleteAmerica
Maybe what isn't
Wasn't ever, maybe
What wasn't couldn't
Even ever be, maybe it was just
Me - a middle-class old-timer -
Singing "Free to be..." but
Not understanding that
Nobody new was still believing,
Maybe the ones still yearning
To breathe free wish they
Had never come, maybe they wish
They were leaving, I'm sorry but
The majesty of those purple mountains
Bumping into banks too big to fail
And people too small not to -
That leaves me bruised and blue
And it's true, I'm having a hard time
With the new Hard Times.
Someone said don't blink but
I blinked, and I find myself more
And more thinking isn't it time
To take off the blinders and cry?
I hear you, Julie. And raise you a blinker or two.
DeleteJane
Jane, I know you and I and a lot of us are questioning things right now - maybe we can take our questions and be good advocates for change. I felt like a killjoy adding that "poem" (okay, just a stretch!) into the mix, but the 4th made me bluer this year than other years. Probably the recent SCOTUS decisions?...or maybe, as Ilan Stavans says in his new book (A Most Imperfect Union) there was "too much myth-making for my taste." In any case, I've calmed down and decided to be little more upbeat :-) As usual, I'm swinging like a pendulum (and why do I want to add "...but at least I'm swinging!") Crazy times.
DeleteAmen to all of your thoughts here! The "corporations as people" thing has my eyes crossing, and--I'll just stop there. So sad. On the other hand, and thank heavens there's an other hand, this country is still amazing in a lot of ways, from the Grand Canyon to (most of) the people. Plus the lovely fact that it's NOT North Korea! Thanks for sharing, and for the poem.
DeleteEnjoyed reading everyone's poems! Interesting about the "dreamy" theme. Linda is making me hungry. One of my favorite stanzas is Heidi's
ReplyDelete"Stars we are all stars
on the blue ground
of an earthly heaven
our pointed hands
and feet jostling
for a place, for a time
of our own"
FORGIVENESS
ReplyDeleteTo ask for forgiveness from fevered lips
Still doesn’t quell your ancestors whips
Or burning our houses, marching our streets
With angry mobs in ivory sheets.
Blasted with hoses, strung out in trees,
Thinking our color was a disease,
Admitting mistakes takes a lot of heart
Forgiveness is a good place to start.
(c) Charles Waters 2014 all rights reserved.