ACCEPTANCE SPEECH, FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 2007
BERTHA ROGERS
COMMONGROUND 2007 CONFERENCE
I’m going to begin and end this speech with two of my poems about teaching. The first one is about Emily Dickinson and Thomas Higginson, the editor of Atlantic Monthly, who wanted, in his way, to be Emily’s teacher, but she was having none of that.
EMILY, SENDING OUT SESTINA
“Cameo girl,” her strictest critic comments,
“you’re as ambitious as any learned man,
I’ll give you that, and I like some of your expressions
though they don’t, for heaven’s sake, compare to Walt’s.
Honey, what’s the point of calling the sunrise
a ribbon? Find truth in planted flowers,
“not narrow fellows in the grass, crushing flowers.
The things you notice! Depend on it, my comments
are meant kindly. Call the everyday sunrise
what it is, a lacy wake up, and forget about writing like a man.
Oh, and take out the dashes; Walt’s
poems stand without ceremony; your expressions
“are far too awkward; strangely brief. Try expressions
in complex sentences. Try a garden of flowers
instead of buzzing black flies. By the way, Walt’s
got a fashion sense, too—that hat! You’ll get comments
I guarantee it, if you pad your bosom, walk less like a man,
stay away from your sister-in-law, the grazing sunrise.
“Have you considered sunglasses?— the sunrise
must irritate, and your odd-eyed squint, almost manly expressions
don’t help. Give mystery a shot, Emily; a man
likes enigmas, aloof yet approachable flowers.
We can’t this way tour you. There would be comments.
The last time we published a book of Walt’s,
“for instance, he made it a hit. They applauded Walt’s
American way, not knowing he was fey. The sunrise
was lost to him; he partied and played to favorable comments
all night long. I’d fancy marketing you, but your expressions
mostly leave me cold, like a field of farmed flowers
lost to frost. But, my dear, I’m just a man.”
The poet crumples the letter written by the man
whose assessment she thought was imperative, and Walt’s,
too. What does a critic know of shrouded flowers?
She turns to Will, and Sappho, and Dante—the sunrise,
fine weather of weeping, dying tale—like expressions.
I’ve got, Emily finally cries, all the comments
I need! The answer is in the sunrise, baffling flowers,
a blizzard of words and expressions. Who wants Walt’s
comments? Tell Edna, tell Marianne and Elizabeth, I’m my own woman!
My heroes have always been teachers. When I was in the second grade, I stopped sucking my thumb for the whole school year (I knew it then, and I know it now) because of Mrs. Burns, who made sure all the books I wanted to read were available to me. When I was in eighth grade, I fell in love with Mr. Bickert, was fresh out of college and incredibly handsome; he introduced me to the Saturday Review of Literature and encouraged me in writing and public speaking.
When I was in the ninth grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Hutloff, was discussing careers; she mentioned “free lance” and, when she told us what the term meant, I said, “That’s what I’d like to do; I want to be a writer and an artist.” Mrs. Hutloff, who also taught Latin and inspired her students to publish a Latin newspaper, said it was a hard life.
Ms. Frank, my eleventh-grade English teacher, guided me toward Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and I was instantly transported from the rural Iowa community where I was raised to a dark and enticing world of degradation and sorrow. There were no teaching artists then, but I was a lucky student.
When I went to college, where, majoring in art and minoring in English, I became incredibly sophisticated and worldly, I heard the prevalent expression, “Those who can’t. . . .teach.” And I, being a pure artist, believed it, heart and soul.
Then, in the 1970s, in California, when my older daughter was in the fifth grade in a newly-designated arts magnet school, I was asked to teach drawing to her class. The school was situated in some rooms in the corner of an old building in a city park. I remember taking the students out to draw some trees and trying to explain to them how to make the eye and hand work together. I was trying to find the words for what I knew was teachable, what I knew I surely could teach.
Now, some 35 years later, I am still a writer and a visual artist. I have worked in many different occupations, including founding and directing Bright Hill Press, a not-for-profit literary organization. But I am still, and have been, aside from some forays into other jobs and commitments, a free-lancing teaching artist, and every year I love this work more. I know that, because of the path I’ve chosen, I’ll probably work until I’m dead; retirement just isn’t in the cards.
But here’s what I’ve learned: very often the best artists are the best teachers, and the best teachers are artists at heart or in practice. There is unsurpassing pleasure, for me, in passing on what I’ve studied and implemented, knowing that every day of teaching is a day of learning, not just for the students, but for the teacher. I’ve watched seasoned educators, women and men who’ve been in the field for twenty to thirty years, who’ve tried everything their administrators have asked of them, who’ve hung in there through innumerable educational philosophies handed down by different political regimes. I’ve observed, with great admiration, how they begin each school year with a clean room and hope, and how a great many of them sustain that hope all the way through June. I’ve taught in brand-new buildings on stunningly landscaped campuses and structures with floors that buckle, faucets that leak, toilets that don’t work. I’ve taught in public schools where 37 languages are spoken and schools where there are only Caucasian children. I’ve taught autistic children and children on the verge of suicide and profoundly disabled children. I’ve been in residence in private schools and led community workshops for kids, teachers, and adults, including one woman who was 102 years old.
It’s not always easy—we teaching artists have to learn fast, have to read the classroom quickly, adjust to distinct mores; sometimes we’re assigned to classes where the teachers would rather work alone. But these challenges are what keep us trying to find new ways to communicate just why that sentence works, or doesn’t; why figurative language is so much more eloquent than straight narrative, and why it’s essential to the poem (that ultimate form of distillation) — the joy of watching a student’s eyes when he finally understands metaphor, of seeing her hands grasp spatial relationships! And we’re lucky because we get to learn new ways of teaching from those very educators and students with whom we work.
I like the variety that comes from being a teaching artist. I could never teach every day; I don’t have that kind of long-term stamina, but I love residencies—walking into the classroom for the first time, meeting new students, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. I like to collaborate with teachers and administrators, knowing that the experience will be just one day long, or three, or, if I’m fortunate, ten. I love the intensity that the life of a teaching artist provides. And I know I’m not alone in this.
Most of us teaching artists are also practicing artists. Whenever a student asks me what kind of money a poet can expect to make, I tell her that being a poet is a wonderful thing because you never have to worry about money, that you’ll find other ways to earn your keep and, if you’re lucky, you’ll become a teaching artist.
I am deeply grateful for this award. When I was told it was being given to me, I was stunned. I will cherish this very great honor, and I will do my best to continue this work, in this amazing field.
I’ll end with another poem, written while sitting in my car in an upstate New York school parking lot, between classes, on a rainy November day.
LESSONS
At sixteen I cut into the worm, I
contemptuously dissected the frog,
laid out on mirrored metal—I saw my face.
Who, you ask, will kill the cat that murders
the bluebird's chick? In the doomed orchard
dying trees forget how they edged toward
bees, convulsed to fruit. High in the woods,
beneath the hawthorns, the skirted brambles,
deer the color of dying leaves turn and
turn and go to sleep. The clock in the kitchen,
time-swollen, ticks. I talk to the dishes,
the immortal cats. Days like this, the dew
dazzling the sky, it's all beauty to me;
even the stopped wing; the bent, wet grass.
Thank you.
Acknowledgments: “Emily, Sending Out” was first published in Rattapallax. “Lessons” was first published in Off the Coast.