Poetic Drive-bys

Bryan Ripley Crandall lives in Stratford, Connecticut, where he directs the Connecticut Writing Project and is Associate Professor of English Education at Fairfield University. He gained his teaching legs at the J. Graham Brown School in Louisville, Kentucky, a K-12 public school with a mission for diversity, inclusivity, and equity, and currently brings a love of verse to award-winning Young Adult Literacy Labs and teacher institutes. He is co-host of  National Writing Project’s The Write Time.

Inspiration

Pedagogy is a gift (Luke, 2008). On the best days, we teach/write and write/teach in anticipation that our  words might be unwrapped by another. 

As an undergraduate at Binghamton University, I was gifted with the wisdom, mentorship, and wit of poet Ruth Stone. In her workshops, and on occasion, she’d stop someone after a reading to say, “Oh, you’ve written a poem-poem,” which she explained as, “ a gift to the universe.”

I share a gift from In the Next Galaxy, her collection  that won a National Book Award.

Entering the Student’s Poem
By Ruth Stone

The most beautiful videos
come from reading poetry.
and they’re in your head.
How many times you speak
to the woman wrapped in a black shawl;
how many times you go up to her
where she sits on the bench
near the railroad, alone, waiting.
But she speaks no English
and the tall girl you have become;
your straight blond hair in a Grecian bun,
your voice melodious, shaking,
because the language is so difficult,
because you are traveling alone;
all this comes to you
from three or four lines
written by a student
who always sits midway in class;
smiling if you call on her,
the blood rushing to her forehead.

Process

I like to assign students to think of a person, place, or thing worthy of a poem, and to write as if making an offering. My Kentucky high school students used to call these ‘poetic drive-bys’ and would chalk their poems on sidewalks or write them for strangers to find in the mall (a few ‘tagged’ abandoned buildings and one young man delivered his poetry to fast food employees around town).

Write today’s  poem for someone else: the boy who bags your groceries, the neighbor who walks by your front window every day, that colleague or friend who has been on your mind. Craft the poem  to be left for another to unwrap (a gift that we all need).

Bryan’s Poem

Deliveries
~b.r.crandall

You don’t belong to us,
these porches of boxes,
driveways, & sidewalks –
yet, you bring stamped smiles
to our criss-crossing streets,
always carrying that satchel of language
over your shoulder:
sales, news, bills, birthday cards –
a correspondence of snails
assigned to chase Paul Revere.

We see you in the morning
working with packaged purpose,
eyes on lookout
for fuzz-nuggets
yanking idiots like me
at the end
of their ropes.

You might as well be my mom,
aunt, therapist,
reader of Tarot cards
who explained to me that death
is just like Publisher’s Clearing House.

Karal asked me to write you this poem
in exchange for the milkbones –

Joy, she says, comes from a delivered gesture.
Yours, hers, mine.

That’s why I let her lick
the envelope.

BTW. This is Karal.

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe.