Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out? : Poem In Your Post

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave

your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap

one is best, with pages the color of weak tea

and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than

three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware

any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks

across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.

And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle

where a child a year or two old is playing as his

mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.

The title, the author's name, the brooding photo

on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray

book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher

it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower

falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody

in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.

-          Ron Koertge



Ours were much gutsier and more
inventive, but you get the picture.


This week my students and I went on a book troll, sifting through piles and piles of our school library's most popular books to find the ones that grabbed us.  We'll use them for our "personal inquiry" book projects, creating our own burning questions about 'how books mean' to focus our responses.  Inevitably, even with the focused excitement generated by such literary abundance, the loose piles of books became just too tempting:  On day two of our searches, the piles called out a challenge for the budding engineers among us, and towers grew.   And you know what?  The towers only added to the joy of it all.  In fact, some built towers as display racks for their favorite book-finds: love!  I say, if enthusiasm for (or even near) books can be cultivated, I'll take it.

I knew I'd read a poem about book towers in a library once, so I went on my own search.  And I found the poem at Poetry 180, one of my favorite places to troll for easily accessible yet richly-worth-re-reading poems.   Now I know which poem I'll bring to class on Monday. :-)

Koertge’s also a fine creator of young adult books, and you can find more of his writing at his website: http://ronkoertge.com/

MFB,

L