This text by Kati Macaluso appeared on a blog聽organized and maintained by members of the Commission on Writing Teacher Education, a working group of the Conference on English Education.
So I鈥檒l tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.
鈥攆rom Naomi Shihab Nye鈥檚 鈥淰alentine for Ernest Mann鈥�
is right: 鈥淧oems hide.鈥� One was certainly hiding one Saturday morning in the health and beauty aisles of a local superstore. My poetry seminar professor had invited us to listen for a poem, instructing us to attend to the conversations and noises that surrounded us in public places, and to use those as our weekly writing inspiration. So I listened鈥攊n coffee shops, in my son鈥檚 childcare center, in restaurants, and finally, at a large shopping center. It was there that I found myself in the same aisle with an elderly couple whose conversation I overheard and soon became a part of.
and weeks later, I had written the following poem:
Forgotten Items
Navigating the health and beauty aisles
of their local superstore,
an elderly couple moves methodically
through their grocery list:
Skim milk, white bread, Vitamin A, orange juice . . .
But they have forgotten the orange juice.
The wife turns toward the grocery aisles,
several states over in this vast territory of merchandise.
And the old man, sensing his wife鈥檚 weariness,
offers to go in search of it himself.
Ok, she sighs. But don鈥檛 forget to come back.
Turning to me, the only other person
amid the rows of vitamins and aspirin,
she explains:
I always worry
he鈥檒l forget he brought me with him鈥�
that I鈥檒l be left all alone, in this great big store.
So I linger.
Somewhat in search of vitamins,
but mostly because I can鈥檛 have this woman
standing all alone,
in this great big store
because she has been forgotten鈥攍ike a gallon
of orange juice鈥�
by the one she loves most.
As I wrote my way through this poem, I was also pursuing a degree in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education, thinking long and hard about the K鈥�12 English language arts curriculum. I thought about curricular documents like the Common Core State Standards that make no mention of writing poetry. This blog entry is my response to the relative dearth of poetry writing in the K鈥�12 English language arts curriculum.
While some might rightly make the case that writing poetry sharpens students鈥� linguistic awareness or knowledge of genre, I鈥檇 like to reflect on how writing poetry, like the listening poem above, might serve as an invitation to students to 鈥渓ive,鈥� as Nye says, in a particular way鈥攖o be more finely attuned to the seemingly ordinary experiences they encounter on an everyday basis.
Here鈥檚 how:
Poems Defy Explanation: Poet has said of poetry, 鈥淭he labor of poetry is finding ways through language to point to what cannot be put into words.鈥�
Another way of saying this might be to claim that one can never fully explain a poem. As I reflect on my own poem above, I realize I could have returned home and explained to my husband what I had encountered: 鈥淚 was shopping in Aisle 30, when this elderly couple realized they had forgotten to grab orange juice. The wife was too tired to walk all the way back to Aisle 6, so her husband offered to go get it. But the wife鈥攑oor thing鈥攚as afraid her husband might forget to come back.鈥�
This explanation would have been accurate, but it would not have done justice to this experience. It needed a poem. A poem鈥攂ecause it defies explanation鈥攔equires that the writer be keenly present to an experience, and all its characters, sights, sounds, and senses.
In order to engage in the labor of finding language 鈥渇or that which cannot be put into words,鈥� a writer of poetry must work in the spaces between experience and language.
Poems Can Alter the Way We See the World: Former U.S. Poet Laureate makes this argument in his book
And, indeed, once a writer begins to work in the spaces between language and experience, the way she sees the world is forever altered. Several drafts into my poem, I knew I needed a metaphor to show how the expansive store accentuated the frailty of human beings. I dare say, I鈥檝e never again set foot in a superstore without seeing the 鈥渧ast territory鈥� of merchandise stretch before me, nor have I felt the weight of a full gallon of orange juice without feeling the weight of being forgotten.
My hope is that more K-12 students write poetry. I have tremendous faith in what poetry writing can and will do for these students鈥� linguistic dexterity, knowledge of form, and other technical knowledge.
But I also wholeheartedly believe that the opportunity to work in the gaps between language and experience, like my own experience listening for and writing 鈥淔orgotten Items,鈥� will serve as an invitation to live in a particular way: to seek out poems by becoming more fully present to the details and people that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Kati Macaluso is a doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. Program in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education at Michigan State University. She can be reached via email at