The Ancient Mariner by Gustave Dore
in the public domain
Sometimes it is a particular poem that draws a child—or youth or adult--into the world of poetry. It grabs the reader’s attention, sparks imagination, pulls at the heart or mind and they are hooked. Something about the narrative, or the cadence, or the musicality of the poem speaks to them and they are changed in some way. They become avid readers—and sometimes writers—of poetry. Here are two accounts of such experiences.
A Tale of Penance
A 1797 British poem did what no other poem could do for me. I was a sophomore at Los Angeles High School and only slightly open to poetic expressions, but when Mrs. Edwards assigned Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, little did she know what lasting influence it would have on my life. This narrative poem starts simply with a sailor returning from a long sea voyage who stops a guest on his way to a wedding in order to tell him a tale, which the listener cannot tear himself away from. The tale is at once a confession, a psychological study, penance, and a warning.
As a sophomore I hadn’t thought too deeply about these matters. Looking back, I see how many life lessons I gained while reading this. I couldn’t go at the slow pace of the nightly assigned pages which limited us, so I gulped down the entire poem in one night. The poem grabbed me by the throat and squeezed so hard it made me bleed so many emotions and empathy over the pages and into my heart. As the sailor was forced to tell his tale over and over, I became his advocate, doing the same for the poem itself.
The content alone took hold of me, but along with it, I learned the techniques of personification, repetition, rhyme, alliteration, building suspense, and inviting the reader to suspend disbelief, techniques I still use.
When others ask me to tell them my origin story, I warn them they are about to become my “wedding guest.” I still talk about getting “rid of the albatross around my neck,” and at every opportunity I quote the lines:
“Day after day, day
after day,
We stuck, nor breath
nor motion;
As idle as a painted
ship
Upon a painted
ocean.
Water, water, every
where,
nd the boards did
shrink;
Water, water, every
where,
Nor any drop to
drink.”
This poetic experience taught me how to keep my readers’ attention and imbue feelings into my poetry. Having been a teacher myself, I am aware that I may never know the influence of something I taught on my students.
My last time in a bookstore, I found an illustrated copy of the poem and bought it for my granddaughters, but then found I couldn’t part with it and kept it for myself.
~ Evie Groch
About this piece, Groch says, “Research shows that things we learn in the first twenty years of our lives, our most impressionable years, carry their influence over us forever. Of course we can change, but a foundation is laid on which we build and the values we hold dear. After having done research on the generations and their unique profiles, I find this to be more and more true. Many things I learned early on in life still serve me well today, like the lessons I took away from an assignment from Mrs. Edwards.”
Tyson West records his experience with a poem that was one of my favorites as a child. Groch says she often quotes words from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” I have often quoted a few lines of “Little Orphant Annie” (sometimes spelled “Little Orphan Annie” as well as Henry Wadsworth’s poem, “The Children’s Hour.”
From Project Gutenberg
If You Don’t Watch Out
My old home town
wedged in the last Appalachian wrinkle
before land leveled west to the Hoosier State
a good Ohio away
left empty my
longing for a tornado to twist my
boredom to Oz.
Save dread of atom
bomb fallout
we slept safe from
Jets rumbling Sharks, hurricanes, and
heroin.
I ambled through A
Child's Garden of Verse
to learn only God
can make a tree,
until on the first
day of April,
alone, alone,
seated on a large flat stone
in tween hunger green
among Jell-O salad,
Appian Way pizza,
and all
the Disney I could
dream
Little Orphant
Annie came to stay.
She cleaned my
rhyme and meter up,
and shooed the
boredom off the porch,
then opened wide
my wardrobe’s portal
pulling me deep
into poesy’s carnivorous blossom
where two great
big Black Things snatched me,
charmed, and
cursed my foolish and forever dance.
Annie lost her
parents’ love while I spun
with the planet of
my clan’s private mythos
orbiting the black
hole of mom
and dad’s
immigrant never enough.
Though teachers
baked sports
as red, white, and
blue American pie
I never clutzed
the gridiron or B ball court
let alone reached
rarified
STATE WRESTLING
CHAMPION.
Still mom and dad
pardoned
my passion for
patterning sounds—
after all I
huddled at home studying and they could see
my eyes followed
the shape of girls.
Annie addicted my
soft soul to the needle of verse—
yes, she and her
goblins got me
and taught there
were other rhythms for me
and a story sails
true only
through the way
its words are trimmed.
~ Tyson West
Did you know that James Whitcomb Riley first published “Little Orphant Annie” in the Indianapolis Journal, under tit title, “The Elf Child”? According to Wikipedia, Riley changed the title to “Little Orphant Allie.” Allie was the nickname of Mary Alice Smith, an orphan who lived and worked in the Riley household while James was a child. The poem later inspired the comic strip, “Little Orphan Annie,” and the Broadway musical, as well as several movies and other spin-offs.
What brought you to your love of poetry? A poem? A poet? A teacher or mentor? A member of your family? It is not too late to submit your story (in prose or poetry or a combination of both). Just go back to the guidelines posted April 1.
Bios:
Evie Groch’s opinion pieces, humor, poems, short stories, word challenges, and other articles have been widely published in the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Contra Costa Times, Games Magazine, anthologies, and many online venues. Her short stories, poems, and memoir pieces have won her recognition and awards. erTravel, language, and immigration are special themes for her work.
Tyson West has published speculative fiction and poetry in free verse, form verse and haiku distilled from his mystical relationship with noxious weeds and magpies in Eastern Washington. He has no plans to quit his day job in real estate. He was the featured USA poet at Muse Pie Press from December 2019 through December 2022.
