High School English teacher Terry Wilson returns for this week’s Poetry Friday segment. She’s talked to us before about the ‘Gift Poems’ she reads to her students every day before class begins. There is no assignment involved. She just wants to give them something thoughtful and powerful. It’s a beloved ritual Wilson’s been doing for decades. This year, with classes online and new students who don’t yet know the tradition of the ‘Gift Poem’, Wilson wondered if the power of poetry would transcend the Zoom classroom. We are happy to report that the answer is a resounding, ‘yes!’ Here is Terry Wilson with her first ‘Gift Poem’ of the 2020-2021 school year, Charles Bukowski’s The Laughing Heart.
TW: I had to make a decision about which poem I was going to read, and I knew it had to be powerful in a different way. So, I started thinking about the world which has produced the environment in which we have to read a poem over Zoom or have a class over Zoom, and I didn’t know what to do.
So, my friend Priscilla Aydelott suggested Charles Bukowski’s The Laughing Heart. And immediately when I read it I knew it was the right poem. For me, I knew it was right because I knew that it offered a message of hope. I knew that I had two classes full of students I had had last year, so they would understand the Gift Poem thing. But, I also had a class of students I had not seen before and who had not seen me and didn’t know – as far as I knew – anything about poetry, in particular the Gift Poem. So, I didn’t want to only speak to the kids who knew what was going on, I wanted to speak also to the new students. I didn’t want to turn them off or make them feel like the poem was drudgery. I wanted to give them a gift.
So, it turns out the two classes I had first on Zoom were the classes full of students who had experienced Gift Poems before. I anticipated what their reactions would be, and I was right. Then, I got to the class full of students I didn’t know, who didn’t know me, so I wasn’t expecting very much of a response; remembering that it is a gift and that I should let them do with it what they wanted.
I read the poem, and there was a little bit of wait time, and then a student raised his hand on Zoom – raised his virtual hand – and said, “I love that poem.” And I asked him, “Why? Can you explain to me why?” And he said, “Because I’ve been thinking about that I’m on a path. I’m on a path that’s part of my life, and the poem made me think that maybe my parents are right that if I make good choices on my path right now, that my life will be easier and I won’t have to undo a bunch of things that I did that I didn’t intend to do. It really made me think about I can have some choices on the path that my life is going.”
And he talked for a while, and he was pretty enthusiastic. And the most amazing thing about all of it was the next day, Tuesday, when I started class, he clicked on his audio or raised his hand, I can’t remember how it went, but he said, “Do we get another poem today?” And at that moment, sitting at my desk in my house, I thought, ‘It’s already happening.’
This is The Laughing Heart, by Charles Bukowski:
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
Poetry Friday is produced by KNAU's Gillian Ferris. If you have an idea for a segment, drop her an email inquiry at Gillian.Ferris@nau.edu.