Last night you were so lucky. You didn’t have to worry about your grumpy, tired teacher going through hours of journals ands doling out poor grades for what I am sure qualifies for good efforts by all of you. For every brief gust of frustration, there was an equal and mitigating breeze that kept my sails in trim and my mood as calm and beautiful as the moon in the night sky.  Sometimes I hoped for more. Sometimes I smiled at my good fortune to have such awesome students, and I always had hope that the next post, the next journal, the next page in someone’s portfolio would show a perfect mirror in a perfect sky.  And because you embraced the moment and at least tried to be “reflective,” your grades were pretty perfect, too.

 

Yes, that’s me. I am a fraudster, thief, and plagiarizer of the worst magnitude. I copy the very styles of classic poets; I steal from Noble Laureate novelists, and I copy words from every and any source I can. And even worse, I steal from myself. If you even dare to look at my journal entries from last week, there is such an uncanny similarity between all of them that I fear my secret is out: I am not an original anything. I am a shameless, old shop teacher using borrowed tools and stolen wood to make a bunch of fairly sturdy sea-chests and boxes–and they are only sturdy because I stole the plans from Captains Bligh, Hook and other Pirates of the Caribbean, and they hold treasure enough that I can still pass as a writer, at least amongst the uniformed and dim-witted.

 

      A contractor friend showed up at my house a few weeks ago just after I finished making the hearth and installing my new wood/coal stove. He complimented me on how “awesome” it looked. I then lamented that though it looked great, the reality was that it was built  on a series of mistakes that I had to keep fixing and working around. With a working man’s wisdom he replied, “If you don’t do anything, you’ll never make any mistakes.” It took me a while to realize that he was complimenting me because I was a doer of things. At least I tried and mucked through to complete something worth doing instead of not doing anything at all.

That’s a little bit like presenting your WW Fenn. Some of you gifted with great recall will present a flawless version of your poem or passage. Some of you who have recited your piece many times over with nary a stumble in your room, in the car on the way to school, or even just before you get on stage–but will blank out, stumble, and stammer through those same words you thought you knew and knew by heart twenty times already–only to have those same words fail you in the heat of the moment.

…but though the words may fail you, you have not failed. The only way you could possibly fail is not to try to succeed, and from what I have seen so far almost all of you are trying to succeed, and in the end that is all that really matters, for in the end I always hear Thoreau’s words ringing in my head: “Do not measure a man by what he is, but by what he aspires to be.”

Always be able to say, “At least I tried…”

      Free verse poetry is not, as many assume, poetry without rules. It is a measured and thoughtful crafting of an idea into lines, spaces, and breaks intentionally and willfully crafted to heighten and condense the power of the words into something that can only be called poetry–and with all due respect to Robert Frost, you can play tennis without a net if you are disciplined enough to create a net that only you and your reader can see and feel. Free verse poetry does free the poet from the “trappings” of convention, but it also should bind a true poet to an oath to seek the absolute truth of an individual poet’s vision of what is and what is not poetry.

      Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…but don’t let it totally define your day. Most of us see a snow day as an unexpected vacation day, though really what it is could be called “a day of opportunity.” We are given a blank slate and a whole slew of opportunities to fill that slate. Will you, to steal a phrase, “Carpe Diem [seize the day,” or will you wound the time given to you by doing, well, nothing that lasts. Time is a finite gift, and how you use or abuse that time is a measure of your own wisdom.

As much as any of you, I feel the need to rest; I feel the pressure of school, life, and family in much the same ways you do. What I might feel more acutely is the finiteness of time. I know that todays and tomorrows come and go like leaves in a storm, and if tomorrow I see a field of white in my backyard, then I damn well better see my tracks in the snow–the smoking gun proof that I did something with my day: I need to be able to say, “Yeah, I made that snowman; I read that book, penned that poem, and sang that song.” I need to know that I cooked those meatballs, cleaned that room, and stacked that wood. I want my neighbor to come home surprised that his driveway has been shoveled; I want my wife to discover that I can actually fold clothes, and I want my kids to “see” that there is more to the day than an iPad, Xbox, and “Duck Dynasty.”

Do I want you to do some English work? Yes, I do. Open your journal and pen a few thoughts. Go to your classmate’s blogs and journals and leave some comments—make someone else’s day as well as your own. Actually figure out the comma rules. Read what you need to read.  End the day with more in the do column than in the didn’t column.  It is a recipe for life that works.

Leave some tracks in the snow. 


Practice wisdom. 


And smile.