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Editor’s Note: The arts are a significant thread in the fabric of Rockland County. They inspire, enrich, and chronicle our lives. They also play a role in our economic well-being; theater, writing, dance, crafts draw us to spaces. They invite strangers to share in our bounty. They are an indelible contribution. Welcome again, Christine Potter, a poet, to RCBJ.
Rockland’s Rising Student Poets: Clarkstown High School North
By Christine Potter
One of the best things a poet can do is get the next generation writing. I tried to do that for quite a few years at Clarkstown High School North in New City. In my teaching days, North was Poetry Paradise.
Twenty years later, it still is; Sticky Notes, a festival of writing workshops, celebrates each spring. A poetry/performance/coffee house night, Java Jive, usually follows it by about a month. I was present at the birth of both happenings—and both are now entering their third decade! At Clarkstown North, kids cheer on their poets like they do their sports teams.
In big letters over a window in the second floor writing lab, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” still inspires young poets to get real. The kid who painted that Robert Frost quote, a young spit-fire named Allison, is now a beloved English teacher at North. These days, the name’s Ms. Stein-Jackter—and she helps kids submit their finished writing to student literary magazines and contests. I’m proud to say she was one of my students. My favorite memories from teaching days are all set in that writing lab! Many thanks to Allison for putting me in touch with with three remarkable young poets from North: Angela Xu, Melissa Shields, and Melody Beron.
Melody’s a junior, an ee cummings fan, and she likes writing poetry about unexpected things. So this poem—written because she wanted to perform at an open mic that was just about to take place—is bubbly light verse, a fantasy about haircuts.
An ode to my haircut
I got a haircut last Tuesday,
An advancement I was nervous to make
My hair is my central identifier,
So there was definitely a lot at stake.
Three inches swiped from my head!
I held my breath as it snipped away
Thankfully when I looked in the mirror,
I felt nothing but glee and the display.
I felt like a private supermodel
Schooling in the day, strutting at night.
I was Hannah Montana, Batman, Incognito
Living a secret double life of pure delight
I hurried to show my peers,
My new haircut! I gushed and roared
But they scoffed and hissed with criticism,
Unimpressed and bored.
My friends were just jealous
They wanted to sport my do
I pushed aside my hurt feelings,
I had a new plan to pursue!
In the dark of the evening,
With even the mice sent to rest
I crept into their rooms,
And made them look their best
The dawn brought such excitement!
Screams of joy through the square
How thankful I was,
That they all loved their new hair!
So let this be a warning to you all,
Friends far and wide,
Next time I get a haircut,
You better not hide.
I will find you all
And sneak up on you without making a clamor
I will snip, cut, and fry
Then we will be together in our glamour!
I like the playful use of meter and rhyme here; definitely this would have knocked ‘em dead in a slam situation. But Melody gets at something important: hair as a “central identifier.” She shared with me how a particularly bad haircut she got in junior high made her feel like a “chubby Shirley Temple.” Oh, dear. I’m many decades older, and that idea leaves me nodding yes: same, girl, same.
I also like how she deals frankly with the frenemies who were mean about the new hairdo, who “hissed with criticism.” Cool use of assonance! That the narrator of the poem avenges herself on those not-so-kind friends by being a better friend—giving them flattering new haircuts herself—is funny and sweet. I loved this poem. Like the best light verse, it deals with something serious and important with a smile.
Junior Marissa Shields says she writes poems starting with something very specific in mind: “I begin writing poems after seeing a quote/image that inspires me, then I list the ideas and phrases I think of when seeing the quote/image.” She loves both Margaret Atwood and Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry—and I love that. Until I reread Atwood’s spooky “Morning In The Burned House” to get her poetic voice back in my head, I wouldn’t have seen a through-line, but there is one. And both writers produced fiction as well as verse, of course. Here’s Marissa’s poem about New Hampshire, a place she misses when she’s back here in New York.
Dirt Roads and 24 Acre Backyards
In New Hampton, New Hampshire
Where my mother was a daughter
And the town looks the same
As it was two hundred years ago
It’s American history; almost primordial
Each cabin and gift shop celebrates this culture
With star spangled galore, like an old western holster
I know the customs well; my mom knows them better
That smell of fresh cut wood; evergreen evermore
Candy filled barrels and pickles and more
I know these country cravings
And rural necessities
But they don’t know me
My shoes are from New York
Decorated with adornments and embroideries
So when age attacks them,
Charm holds them together
Like an embodiment of thread
The shoes I see in New Hampton are different:
monolithic
Held together by what’s acceptable
not sentimental
at least, in the same way
But small towns are close
even when separated by their 24 acre backyards
they see each other the most
and that’s all they know, their limited scope
so when I march around with my ripped flared jeans and vandalized shoes,
they don’t understand
Another really good poem! The narrator loves her mother’s old home state, although she feels not quite accepted there in her “ripped flared jeans and vandalized shoes.” Marissa’s got a Poe fan’s ear for music (“evergreen evermore”) and specific image both. I admire her use of New York vs. New Hampshire shoes as metaphor; her shoes are held together by “charm” but “monolithic” New Hampshire shoes are “held together by what’s acceptable.” An important truth emerges in the poem’s close: “small towns are close/even when separated by their 24 acre backyards.” Yes. That’s absolutely right. And I hear the echo of another New England poet in the line: Robert Frost.
Senior Angela Xu admires Sappho, the visual poet Monica Ong (whose work incorporates art and photography with words), and the ethnic Manchu poet Na Ye. I have to thank Angela for Na Ye; I’ll admit I had to Google her, and loved what I found. She’s contemporary and her stuff is just beautiful! Angela’s poems have that kind of richness, too. It was hard to settle on just one to share, but I picked “Children in the Storm.”
Children in the Storm
The storm seems never-ending
Raindrops pounding against the skull of the earth
Gentle gunshots reverberating in the heavy acoustics
Aiming straight down, aiming at us
Caught in the crossfire, we run, we hide, we wait
For the pouring assault to cease,
For the battalion of clouds to be chased away
By peaking tendrils of smoke and fire
We are the helpless children
Born of paper and sand
We pray for and praise the storm,
But cower under its seraphic beating
Angela came up with this poem during a workshop at North’s Sticky Notes festival, when student poets had been asked to write to a few different audio clips. She was “inspired by the heavy ambience and rain sounds in one of them. I wanted to combine both humanity and nature in my writing.” I like how her poem captures the dual nature of weather in these parts lately, how we “pray for and praise the storm/ But cower under its seraphic beating.”
Seraphs are terrifying angels: fiery, six-winged. They are the boss angels, the ones singing “Holy, holy, holy” around the throne of God. You don’t mess with seraphs. We use the word “seraphic” to mean the opposite of that fierceness sometimes, but Angela clearly knows what she’s talking about. This rainfall is an assault! I love the “helpless children/Born of paper and sand” also. This is a smart, interesting poem.
Rockland County has been gifted with truly excellent public education. The academic freedom I enjoyed when I was working at Clarkstown North was pretty exceptional, and the poetry workshops I ran there taught me as much as I gave to the kids. Twenty years later, I see my old students performing and publishing, and it makes an old lady poet’s heart glad. It makes me equally glad to see my old workplace sending such strong young poets out into this challenging world. We’ll be needing poets like that here in Rockland—and everywhere. Poetry saves lives.
Thanks to Allison-Stein Jackter, and writing teachers Sabrina Riccoboni and Ann-Marie Sevastian for nurturing these talents—and to English Department chair Karen Czajkowski for keeping the show on the road!
Here’s a little poem I wrote about being the intense, arts-loving age of these student poets. I wrote songs, too, as a teen, and wasn’t sure whether I liked music or poetry better.
To Music
There was always so much of you, my fingertips
creased and callused from my cheap guitar, my
giant stereo speakers bumping out bass, always
a tiny harmonica on a cord around my neck,
new strings in a bag from Manny’s on 48th street,
the train home too slow. I had to get my hands
on you, play until it hurt, play until it didn’t hurt
anymore. Had to put on a record soon as I got
anywhere. Or tune something up, admiring
the new drum, the new album, the ridiculous
six-part harmony my friends sang at each other
instead of just talking. How strange, now, to be
old and love the chaos of your absence: my quiet
house breathing water pumps and radiators,
the creek outside littering the rush of the wind.
-See you in April: National Poetry Month!!!
