Introduction to All Those Days

		Bromwell Elementary School

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BROMWELL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL (214)
2500 East
Fourth Avenue,
80206-4214
(Columbine Street at East Fourth Avenue)

Telephone:
(303) 388-5969
Fax: (720) 424-9355
E-mail: Bromwell@dpsk12.org

Mr. Jonathan Wolfer, Principal

Introduction to All Those Days

This is the introduction I wrote for All Those Days: A Collection of Poetry by Bromwell Students, Volume Two, published in 2005.

This book contains one poem by each student of Bromwell Elementary School. Some kids may wonder why the poems are all mixed up, instead of presented by grade level or by age. Some adults may wonder about this, too.

You see, all of us share certain experiences, no matter how different we are. Almost all kids in our country go to school and play on the playground, for example. Not all kids have homes or birthday parties (and that’s a very sad thing), but even kids who do not get a birthday party are asked a question every one of you has surely been asked before: “How old are you?” As a teacher, I ask that question many times each year: “How old are you?” It’s a universal experience, which means that every kid in the universe of kids experiences it.

This anthology can reveal great and strange secrets about such experiences, and about that universal experience. You aren’t really a particular age at all, not completely. Oh, sure, you are mostly a certain age, you are primarily six years old, or ten, or eight-and-a-half, but not entirely.

I am regarded in polite company as “middle-aged,” but there is truly a part of me that is much younger, especially when I read Daniel Scher’s poem in praise of “crispy, greasy, crunchy” chicken legs. I have an adult son now living in Seattle and a daughter in high school here in Denver. I am also, however, most decidedly a second-grader, especially when I read “The Sky” by Emily Friedman or “Soccer” by Olivia McDonough. When I read Ellen Mueller’s “Deer,” I reawaken my own fifth-grade self, who I must admit was never nearly as clever as Ellen (or any of our other fifth-graders, for that matter).

The same is true for you. You may only be in first grade, but a small part of you is already in fourth grade, thinking about “Life” with Elizabeth Hannifin. Fifth-graders, even though your heads are full of middle-school thoughts, I am sure you are also aware of the first-grader inside who wants to join Isabella Rahimi-Fry in “Playing Dress Up.”

Imagination is more powerful than anything, even birthdays. This is one of the best secrets I’ve ever discovered. As you read this book, keep it in mind, and I’m sure you’ll find it is true. Indeed, you are likely to discover other secrets of your own, stranger secrets or greater secrets. I hope you will pass them along in the next poem you write—no matter how old or how young you think you are.

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