Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Years ago, I was invited to teach at Baruch College. My poetry writing class contained as diverse a population as any that I’d taught until then. The students were a mix of backgrounds and experiences. Around the seminar table, I liked to compare us as a group to world diplomats at the nearby United Nations.

I loved how encouraging and attentive my students were to each other, especially with their critical feedback. Even so, one of them, Sarah, never spoke.

Because of the sensitive and personal nature of some topics, that year I did not require students to read their poems out loud. I also understood firsthand that not everyone comes to college with the confidence to speak, especially first-generation students.

I know that feeling. My first year at Temple University, I wore my anxiety on my body. I sat in the margins of my classrooms, hidden away, hoping not to be called upon to identify a volta in a sonnet or, God-forbid, to read my own poem. I felt inadequate and ill-equipped and insecure.

My aim as a poetry workshop leader is to render such students seen. I wish for them to see and hear themselves over that self-critical, inner voice that says they are unworthy.

I can't be sure if that's what encouraged Sarah, but one day, out of nowhere, after six weeks of sessions, she asked if she could recite a poem she memorized, one of her own. We’d been talking about incarceration and the justice system. Most of the students read from their seats, but Sarah asked if she could stand.

In the poem, Sarah shared her experience of visiting her father in prison, the feeling of his stubble on her face, a parting hug that she wished would never end. It was moving; it was rhythmic, but even more, the poem was so stunningly raw and expressive. We all cheered. She had awakened to her power.

Sometimes, in poetry workshops, we must lower our voices, so that others can hear their own. Such powerful transformations are not limited to members of what are typically defined as marginal communities. I’ve witnessed that same magic of empowerment multiple times over in community centers, elder care facilities, and summer conference workshops.

When we discover the reach of our voices, we disturb the silence around us. We experience self-possession.

Today’s poem makes an allegory of small creatures who also render their presence both meaningful and heard.

Voices of the Air
by Katherine Mansfield

But then there comes that moment rare
When, for no cause that I can find,
The little voices of the air
Sound above all the sea and wind.

The sea and wind do then obey
And sighing, sighing double notes
Of double basses, content to play
A droning chord for the little throats—

The little throats that sing and rise
Up into the light with lovely ease
And a kind of magical, sweet surprise
To hear and know themselves for these—

For these little voices: the bee, the fly, 
The leaf that taps, the pod that breaks,
The breeze on the grass-tops bending by, 
The shrill quick sound that the insect makes.