ON THE OTHER SIDE OF TOMORROW | New Anthology from California Poets in the Schools
On the Other Side of Tomorrow
California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology 2008
$12.95
ISBN-0-939927-24-1
Order at California Poets in the Schools
On the other side of tomorrow, amazing things are happening.
On the other side of tomorrow, yesterday happens again.
– Sarah Stretch, 5th grade
Cover image Gateways of Hope by Cherwith Hegawa, 9th grade
Cover deisgn by Ray Lemieux
Lucia Lemieux
editor
Daniel Zev Levinson, Chris Olander field editors
Foreword by Al Young
Waking Up the Other Side of Tomorrow
My breath tastes as deep as a poem written at dawn,
that breath alive longer than any of us; it has known
the time when the world was born and it has seen
the earliest of organisms open their eyes and inhale.
– Ellen Feldman, 10th Grade
Santa Barbara Music and Arts Conservatory, Santa Barbara County
While the chance and beauty of being born and re-born bubbles up for each of us as every moment turns, we mostly don’t feel life this way. We feel instead the gurgle and drizzle, the flaking and rot. Why not? Addicted to story, addicted to narrative, we either subscribe or tie into or buy into the story-notion that the ocean, which was once our home, is nothing but a corporate investment now. Let’s bundle and patent and sell all that water, all those micro-organisms, all that sea salt. The history and sadness of human ignorance has always been enough to break any heart that still beats, but now it stands a pretty good chance of killing us off. Stephen Hawking — eminent physicist and author of the poetically titled A Brief History of Time – gives the planet a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the 21st century. Given selfishness and fishlessness, given climate change, given greed, given the costliness of pride and prejudice — is this well informed forecast bleak, or what?
The what, the when, the who, how, when and wherefore of being alive leads inevitably, unalterably, and always backwards and forwards to poetry. Take away music, dance, painting, sculpture, theater, film, short stories, novels, textbooks, and the seeds for their survival will always survive in the playful rhythms and imagistic languages of poetry. Behind the doors of tomorrow a brand new breath is forever taking shape and taking heart and always, always, always — as the raw, creative kick of it springs loose – the bull’s-eye it targets is freedom. That’s what we come from. How can it be otherwise? Divine by nature, our kind, genetically encoded to speak poetry and tell stories, yearns to relax back into our original dwelling-place: spirit. To rule the world, to own everybody and everything that shines or soars or creeps and nods – what is that? What’s it all about, Alpha, Omega?
“If I were president I would promise / To save the American people from America,” is the way Mrs. Henley’s kindergarten class at Arena Union Elementary School in Mendocino County puts it. Backtracking, “If I Were President,” this kindergarteners’ poem begins: “Anyone could be president / Even a girl or boy or a fish / A shark, a shoelace, or someone in the army / A president can be a number, like the dollar bill / Or a wall or a nothing.”
Art does not progress. This has long been my contention. The cave drawings at Altamira in what is now Spain or Lasceaux at what is now France remain as beautiful and elegant as anything the Museum of Modern, the Louvre or the Egyptian Museum at Cairo has on display. What this means to me is that the human spirit is vaster than and deeper than the art business or the dreadful and ultimately superfluous art business. It thrills me as much today to introduce this current anthology of California Poets in the Schools as it did when I last composed a foreword in another century. Most importantly, poetry encompasses drawing, painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama, film, poetry and narrative. Put another way: Poetry quivers at the center of everything to which all the other arts aspire. Using language that makes us taste, smell, touch, sight, sound, and move, poetic speech, at its best, dramatizes all within its reach.
I’ve often spoken of graphic artist friends of mine who make a point of attending kindergarten through 12th grade art shows. They tend to take an ardent interest in the kindergarten through third grade grouping. “After third grade,” more than one painter and collagist has told me, “the kids begin to conform. Their imagination gets rounded up.” All the same, these well-trained and self-taught professional artists, understanding the delicate nature of creativity, often admit to stealing some of their best ideas from child artists.
With language it’s different. Kids don’t really begin to write poetry until third grade. We all live poetry from infancy, but don’t get to write it down until we take on penmanship and the mastery of keyboards. Storytelling and poem-making are natural to human all beings; writing is not. There is absolutely nothing natural about writing. It comes with conscientious and highly self-conscious training and effort.
What a pleasure and privilege it for me to introduce yet again another collection of poetry by our treasured children and their teachers. The new and remindful consciousness and vision that poetry brings into the world may be what saves us yet.
Our ancestors enjoyed and counted upon the profound d shape-changing powers and vitalizing effects of language and creative utterance, which we inherit as poetry. Their chants cherished memory, charted heavens and histories, changed weather. Part music, part dance, part spirit, part magic, poetry sticks fast to our DNA strands. Poetry stays and poetry keeps.
Translations: “I am the dreams of my long-gone people” (Vince Harjono); “I am the skeleton that is always left behind. / Divers just swim past me. / Fish think my ribs are their homes.” (Emily Pérez); “The world is full of liars, jokesters, and jerks, / But among them are people who will tell the truth even if it kills them. / The world is destroyed by those who don’t care, / But working against them are people who care and heal.” (Heather Mackay).
How unspeakably meaningful it becomes to know that through the doors of these strong and lovely young voices the other side of tomorrow is waking from nightmares and dreams.
I am the northern lights burning out.
I am the blue water lake drying up to a crater …
I am the one who can change the future, not the past.
I am the death, the life and the hope of the world around me.
I am a child.
– John Elliot, 6th Grade
Mill Valley Middle School, Marin County
Al Young
Poet Laureate of California
(2005-2008)
