For details about that experience -- and a video about how I approached the assignment-- click here.
And here's the complete poem:
You Cannot Measure Courage
by Irene Latham
And you cannot
hold
one life
above another.
But what if you must?
How blind the blade
that shreds
the rope,
how rapidly
fibers untwine,
gravity pulling
down,
down
its silence
both question
and answer.
How comfortless
those glittering medals
for the cutter
whose heart flails
like a hooked fish
forever
after.
Wow--I love your voice here. It'd be a challenge writing for a younger audience, I think, but you do it gracefully and without condescension or watering your ideas down.
ReplyDeletePowerful and original, Irene! Congrats.
ReplyDeleteI like to see children's poems that are poems, and this is a good poem first. That's hard to do! The video is fascinating. I am always interested in process :-) I love your description - "you want to go in sideways as a poet, you want to sneak in..." - that seems so at odds with the methodical logic of arriving at the poem on the page, as you describe it. Would you have been able to articulate this process before writing, or is this an after-the-fact account that gropes for justification around the edges of mystery? You remind me -- in a very good way -- of Dickinson's "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant -- Success in circuit lies...."
ReplyDeleteVery interesting subject, Irene! You handle it well. Thanks for sharing your process with us.
ReplyDeleteThat ending. Wow. Perfect.
ReplyDelete