blueprints

112 | robert hass
intensively worked and transformed landscapes of every region of our
country and its remnant farmscapes and preserved wildernesses—to set our
children to the task of studying that tradition and putting their hands to it.
The poems of the children, as they come into the offices of River of
Words, are annual evidence of the deep freshness and surprise that they are
capable of. As I talked to citizen’s groups about literacy, studying the ways in
which the lack of it and of a rambunctious democracy of spoken language
in our streets stunted people’s lives—not just their job opportunities, but
their lives—it became evident to me that a taste for poetry, an interest in
the liveliness and eloquence and impudence and sometimes the sorrowing
or wondering depths of the mind as it emerges in the rhythms of our language,
must be at the core of any effort to give our country and our children
the gift and task of literacy. It seemed clear that, as you could tell that
a wetland thicket was healthy if the little warbler called a yellowthroat
showed up every spring, or tell a healthy temperate rain forest by the low
calls of spotted owls, you could gauge the health of a culture by whether or
not it cultivated a taste for poetry. ROW has been one initiative among
many to put the adventure of writing, reading, and reciting poetry back at
the center of our common culture. I think it has served poetry and our
common life in this place where its context has not been purely literary,
that it can teach our children that much of our literature has been about
seeing and being in this place.
NOTES
1. I Got the Blues. Gerald Allen, age 13, 2002 River of Words finalist. Broadmoor
Middle Magnet School, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Teacher: Alan Morton.
2. “Sad Sun.” Nicholas Sanz-Gould, age 6, 1996 River of Words Grand Prize.
Argonne Elementary School, San Francisco, California. Teacher: Susan Sibbet.
3. “Letter to an Architect.” Rebecca Givens, 1998 River of Words Grand Prize.
Chamblee High School, Atlanta, Georgia. Teacher: Diane Lynn Farmer.
4. “Watershed Life.” Jeff Hwang, age 13, 1998 River of Words International
Prize. American International School, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Teacher: Amy
Shawver.
5. “Seven Haiku on Goldfish and Why.” Maddy Johnson, age 14, 2006 River of
Words Grand Prize. Submitted independently.
6. In the crush of that first year of River of Words, the original of this poem and
the name of the young author disappeared. This is the poem as I remember it,