{"id":2065,"date":"2016-11-04T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T04:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=2065"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:47:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:47:32","slug":"i-wanted-to-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2016\/11\/04\/i-wanted-to-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"I wanted to tell"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to thank Fr. Staudenmaier for the invitation to guest edit “A Work Day in Hard Times.”<\/a> As I mentioned earlier this week, my aim has been to explore what poetry might provide us in times of great uncertainty and division, and of great passion and importance.<\/p>\n

One of the things I find most important about poetry is the way it can exist in the gaps between things. By finding ways to describe the indescribable, poems find ways to span the seemingly unbridgeable: real and imagined, self and other, known and inconceivable. We need to be reminded that is possible right now.<\/p>\n

I teach Lisa Parker\u2019s \u201cSnapping Beans\u201d in my poetry classes. My students and I think it is a poem about the gaps that divide us. We believe it is a poem about the bridges between us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Snapping Beans<\/p>\n

for Fay Whitt<\/em><\/p>\n

I snapped beans into the silver bowl
\nthat sat on the splintering slats
\nof the porchswing between my grandma and me.
\nI was home for the weekend,
\nfrom school, from the North,
\nGrandma hummed \u201cWhat A Friend We Have In Jesus\u201d
\nas the sun rose, pushing its pink spikes
\nthrough the slant of cornstalks,
\nthrough the fly-eyed mesh of the screen.
\nWe didn\u2019t speak until the sun overcame
\nthe feathered tips of the cornfield
\nand Grandma stopped humming.\u00a0 I could feel
\nthe soft gray of her stare
\nagainst the side of my face
\nwhen she asked, How\u2019s school a-goin<\/em>?
\nI wanted to tell her about my classes,
\nthe revelations by book and lecture
\nas real as any shout of faith,
\npotent as a swig of strychnine.
\nShe reached the leather of her hand
\nover the bowl and cupped
\nmy quivering chin;
\nthe slick smooth of her palm held my face
\nthe way she held cherry tomatoes under the spigot,
\ncareful not to drop them,
\nand I wanted to tell her
\nabout the nights I cried into the familiar
\nheartsick panels of the quilt she made me,
\nwishing myself home on the evening star.
\nI wanted to tell her
\nthe evening star was a planet,
\nthat my friends wore noserings and wrote poetry
\nabout sex, about alcoholism, about Buddha.
\nI wanted to tell her
\nhow my stomach burned acidic holes
\nat the thought of speaking in class,
\nspeaking in an accent, speaking out of turn,
\nhow I was tearing, splitting myself apart
\nwith the slow-simmering guilt of being happy
\ndespite it all.
\nI said, School\u2019s fine<\/em>.
\nWe snapped beans into the silver bowl between us
\nand when a hickory leaf, still summer green,
\nskidded onto the porchfront,
\nGrandma said,
\nIt\u2019s funny how things blow loose like that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"lisaparker\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lisa Parker<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rosemary Weatherston, Ph.D.
\nAssociate Professor of English
\nDirector, Women’s & Gender Studies Program
\nDirector, Dudley Randall Center for Print Culture
\n313.993.1083<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to thank Fr. Staudenmaier for the invitation to guest edit “A Work Day in Hard Times.” As I mentioned earlier this week, my aim has been to explore what poetry might provide us in times of great uncertainty … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3182,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2065\/revisions\/3182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}