Poetry Friday: I Can't Forget You

I read this poem with my eighth graders last week.  I got it from the Nancie Atwell anthology for middle school, Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons.  It looks as though it's out of print and only available for outrageous prices, but if you teach middle schoolers and you have access to the book, you should definitely grab it.  The vast majority of the poems work well with my kids.  There are many student-written examples, and a fun variety of published poets.  Each poem comes with a page of ideas on how to approach it with your students, including Nancie's "benediction" that encourages the kids to try something out in their own writing. 

This one is one of my favorites, because it's so relatable for my students.  They know graffiti; it's ubiquitous in Port-au-Prince.  They respond well to the idea of noticing something and wondering how it came to be.  And they know what it's like to miss someone. 

I CAN'T FORGET YOU.

spray-painted high on the overpass,
each letter a good foot long,
and I try to picture the writer
hanging from a rope
between midnight and dawn,
the weight of his love swaying,
making a trembling
N and G, his mind at work
with the apostrophe -
the grammar of loss -
and his resistance to hyperbole,
no exclamation point but a period at the end
that shows a heart not given
to exaggeration,
a heart that's direct with a no-
fooling around approach,
and I wonder if he tested the rope
before tying it to the only tree I can see
that would bear his weight,
or if he didn't care about the free-
fall of thirty or more feet
as he locked his wrist to form such
straight T's,
and still managed, dangling, to flex
for the C and G,
knowing as he did, I'm sure,
the lover would ride this way each day
until she found a way around,
a winding back road with trees
and roadside
tiger lilies, maybe a stream, a
white house, white fence
a dog in the yard
miles
from this black-letter, open-book,
in-your-face missing
that the rain or Turnpike road crew
will soon enough wash off.

Len Roberts
Here's the Poetry Foundation link to the poem.

Such amazing details!  I especially love the apostrophe, and the lack of an exclamation point.  And that phrase: "the grammar of loss."  Someone should write a novel with that title.

And while I'm waiting for someone to do that, here's very much a first draft of a poem playing with the idea.


The Grammar of Loss

is in the perfect tense,
of course,
because the past was perfect,

and there are
apostrophes
on the names
because it’s all about
belonging,

or used to belong,

in the past,

instead of this moment
when
it's over,

this present tense moment
where

whatever
or
whoever
you lost

is absent,

a misplaced modifier,
a split infinitive,
an interrogative,

missing
from a dependent clause,

a subject and verb
no longer agreeing,

a fragment.

Ruth, thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

By the way, speaking of fragments, if anyone is keeping track of my Quinquagenarian Writing Project (#QWP), in which I attempt to write 50 first drafts between last July and my February birthday in a couple of weeks, when I'll become a quinquagenarian, I'm up to 44 first drafts.  So, yay me! 

Donna (who's doing a lot of hosting lately) has today's roundup.