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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
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Poetry and Luck
This is an introduction I wrote to a classroom collection of poetry in 2005.
Kids, I know it is rather boring when you are told by older people like me that you are lucky. I’m sure you’ve heard before that you’re lucky to live in the United States, or lucky to have a nice home, or even, perhaps, lucky to attend Bromwell. Sometimes older people, I must admit, try to use luck to trick kids -- “You’re lucky to live in the United States, now eat your stewed tomatoes!” or “You’re lucky to attend Bromwell, now do your CSAP homework!” Such tricks don’t really fool any kid, of course, although they can put a damper on the high spirits that go with feeling lucky.
The truth is that most of us, adults and children alike, don’t know what to do with luck. You can’t let it go to your head, because that may set you up for some kind of disaster later on -- after all, nobody’s lucky forever. You can’t ignore it, because that would be waste of a good thing. So what do you do?
Here are excerpts from work by the two poets who, luckily, visited our classroom this winter:
Our nine-year-old knees in drifts. Skates over a shoulder,
one in front and one behind, their promise
taps against me. Snow weighing
down boughs, the stillness of a sleeping wind.
Lizabeth’s slender body bending
over skates, hands plaiting laces on metal
hooks, then wrapping them lace by lace
around leather tops. White snow radiates,
crystal illuminates the trees.
from Winter Laces by Wendy Vergoz Carlsen
When I was a girl
my father dug four holes
under the chokecherry tree near the alley and
grounded the red metal poles of our new swing set in concrete.
My brother and I would wrap our small fists around the chains and pump,
toes pointed, heads back, panting, screaming, shouting out
the names of clouds we wanted to touch.
Rabbit. Cat. Horse.
from Flying by Rebecca Lee
I love these poems, and I love the poems you’ve written in this book. I am still not very sure what to do with luck, but if poetry is like luck (and I think it is, as much as anything is) -- perhaps the best thing to do is to pass it around, to share it. That’s what I’m going to do with your book. It sure beats eating stewed tomatoes.
Your ever-so-lucky teacher, really,
Mr. Replogle
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