My Teachers Shoal Loved Me
Each one teach one, child.
For what doth not grow without
love's great helping hand.
While I've been savin' the li'l nuggets for last, I thought I'd begin this post with my treasured haiku. I get such good feedback from y'all on the haiku that I just can't stop it. I love them.
So I thought that for today's post I'd try and tell you what led me to them and why I love them so.
Rushie Sorrenti.
Seventh grade English. I loved her. She was like a gypsy to me, I remember, seeing her for the first time. Her brown hair streaked with gray, wavy, her round face set off by large round frames. Ina small rural area -- we couldn't possibly be a town as this was before we had a stop light even -- she stood out to me. She was loud and vivacious and creative.
Her classroom was next door to my 7th grade math teacher's, Mrs. Neal, who was her drastic opposite in appearance. Prim in her polyester, her virtually monochrome uniform of greys, browns and ochres. The 60s prints that were actually vintage, but not exactly "vintage." Her hair was always pinned with bobby pins behind the ear. She spoke through lips so tight, so pursed, that I waited all year and counted the moments when she'd smile, certain that somewhere pieces of the earth shattered under the pressure.
But Mrs. Sorrenti was bold and loud and had the heartiest laugh. And she taught us about Ponyboy and The Outsiders and a slew of other things that a half-bottle of red wine won't allow me to recall right now ... but she also introduced poetry to me in a way that for the first time I was encountering words in a way that made sense to me. Through rhyme and rhythm she brought us limericks, the familiar ababa patterns, couplets and the whole family of poems. But she also brought us the haiku.
I wish I had those haiku handy right now, but I don't. They're packed away somewhere most likely. But instantly I loved it. I loved it because it was Japanese, and at that time my love for Mr. Miyagi had not dare faltered. I also still pined for visits to the Yagoto Nippon center in Greenville for more green tea ice cream and tea ceremonies and kelp. I wanted a kimono, and I still do.
But she was the very first person to teach me about some five, seven, five. How I loved it so immediately. I loved putting puzzles together and this to me felt like a great word puzzle. Only a certain amount of "space" in each line and of all the words that I knew, I could choose any to make it fit and tell a wee story, capture a moment. I loved it.
I don't remember what they were about. I know they were about nature, because that was the assignment, but I don't remember them in the way I thought I would. However, I do remember her telling me that they were my best. We had to compile a poetry book showcasing all the different poetry styles, and she said my haiku were my best. Little did I realize that some 8 years later or so, in my senior year in college, my professor, a rather esteemed playwright in the community, would tell me the very same thing. Out of everything I submitted in my end-of-semester portfolio -- the one act play that left my entire, rather intimidating, class in absolute stitches and won me mad props, the short story so full of song lyrics that I had to submit an appendix that left my professor speechless, the commemorative 9/11 poem that helped everyone to breathe easier in recognizing that I was not one of those perky, PR liars, ready to spin everything a certain way -- out of everything, he chose the haiku series that I wrote in one sitting, kneeling on my bedside because I was tired of sitting at my desk. I wrote them on plain sheets of white paper, haphazardly. Completely not the way I'd previously written anything ... well, not completely. I wrote these at the last minute, which just so happened to be the way I wrote everything, and it never failed to be the best things ... still baffles me to this day.
But it was my haiku. He loved them. Once again, the assignment was to stick to the natural content when writing haiku -- no punny, funny haiku. Make it about nature.
My absolute favorite one:
I.
Beguile me red moon
with your face screaming like sun
feigning dawn at dusk.
My other favorites:
IV.
Rain's laughter splatters,
thunderously sharing God
with tin-roofed sleepers.
- A nod to some of the sweetest memories from my childhood. Asleep on the screen porches of beloved great aunts, who woke me up offering hot biscuits and homemade jam, popsicles and candied sweets to tickle all my fancies.
V.
Hastily, wind sweeps
up the tidiness of man.
Mama Nature speaks.
And so it is now that I salute Mrs. Sorrenti. Her enthusiasm for teaching us sold me on the power of literature ... on the potential that words hold. She harnessed my fascination with stories and words just long enough to allow me to see the possibilities and to see avenues for my own unique ways of expression.
And so I am here today, but by the grace of God to be sure ... but also because of the tender touches of my teachers. How they painted my world in colors I had not dare dreamed to see ...