Where the Past Meets the Present

Where the Past Meets the Present by Jan Greenberg Keeping in mind the theme of this conference, Journeys in Children's Literature, I would like to share a story with you. About fifteen years ago, I found myself seated next to a woman on a commuter flight from Boston to Burlington, Vermont. At the time I was terrified of flying, so I would immediately start babbling to anyone who would listen. However, on this occasion, my attempts at conversation were ignored by this woman who seemed totally preoccupied. Halfway through the flight, the ten-seater plane began to rock violently, and we were suddenly propelled into the eye of a storm. At that point, perhaps out of fear or in need of a diversion, she began to talk. She said she was a poet. Without skipping a beat, I said, "Oh, yes, I'm a poet, too." Actually, I was a housewife with three small daughters, and although I've always harbored secret yearnings to be a writer, my contribution to the world of letters consisted mainly of poems scribbled on the back of unpaid bills and grocery lists. Nevertheless, we chatted about writing all the way to Burlington. After we landed, she introduced herself. She said her name was Anne Sexton. Of course, I was very familiar with her volume of poetry, Live or Let Die, which had won a Pulitzer Prize a few years before. But instead of being mortified by my little white lie in the presence of this renowned poet, I took this chance encounter as a sign, a signal that I should begin to pursue my ambition, live out my dream of becoming a poet. I should have known then that fiction was more my style. In 1979 when my first novel, A Season in Between, was published, I wanted to send Anne Sexton a copy to tell her how significant that journey had been for me. But as you know, by then she had died, committed suicide, which many of her early poems had prophesied. So I began to write poetry, and for the next ten years, during which time I was working on a Master's and later a Doctorate in Education, teaching at Webster University and raising my family, I wrote at least fifty poems, only fifty I'm embarrassed to say, and failed poems at that. Many of them sounded overly romantic or were pre-feminist movement moanings about being housebound. That was about the same time that Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique was published. Very few of my poems were publishable; however, I figured out a way of getting back at all those editors who had sent me rejection letters. I've simply incorporated the poems into the texts of my novels for young readers. At this point I would like to share one of those early poems with you that I think works well in the context of a novel written 10 years later. In The Iceberg and Its Shadow, the main character, Annabeth Blair, has been the victim of a great deal of abuse by her classmates. She comes home from school one day and is sitting in the kitchen very dejected, staring at her goldfish bowl on the kitchen counter, and she scribbles out the following poem. Today, my tears have filled up a fishbowl. The fish welcomes them, Puckering her lips to cheer, Flickering her tail with joy. She thinks she needs my tears, But what do fish know about sorrow? Sometimes, it seems I cry for no reason at all, Feeling the tears well up, spill down my cheeks, My nose running, blending salt flavors on my lips, My face puffy, contorted, The sheer sobbing joy of it. I even flooded the basement. The bathtub overflows with my tears, And the floor becomes hysterical. You don't know that about me, Do you? 14 The fish, my golden fish knows, And she doesn't seem to mind. My advice to young writers is save everything —you never know when you can use it. My frustration with writing poetry eventually led me to experiment with literary forms that provided more freedom. I'd found myself...