Words of hope:
At the House of Peace, budding poets meet in a workshop and bravely fill the air with verses straight from their hearts.
I would have guessed that people learning to write poetry might be reluctant to read aloud in a group. Not at the House of Peace, where a dozen budding poets met in a workshop last week and bravely filled the air with words straight from their hearts.
Antonetta Smith didn’t hesitate when teacher Brother David Hirt asked who wanted to go first. Her poem was about her mother’s kitchen and the wonderful potato salad and cornbread she made there. The story takes a sad turn when her mother has a stroke and dies. Antonetta began to cry as she read, leading the women on either side of her to put their hands on her shoulders.
Kizzy Brown went next. “Did you C your reflection 2day? Not in the mirror, but in the sun. Did you C the stars last night? Not in the sky, but in your dreams. Did you hear that child laugh with joy? Not outside but in your heart.”
Each reading was met with applause and exclamations of “beautiful” and “all right” and “I like that.” A poetry slam this was not.
For nearly 50 years now, the House of Peace on Milwaukee’s north side has helped meet the basic human needs of the poor and disenfranchised. Brother Booker Ashe, a Capuchin monk, ran the center and was its face for many years. He died in 2000.
The poetry class meets in a room bearing Ashe’s name. Brother David’s interest in poetry began in high school in the 1990s, and he sharpened his skills at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind. He leans toward meditative, religious and nature poetry, but sometimes indulges his fun side. “My ‘Star Wars’ Christmas carols are quite popular among my friends,” he said.
The House of Peace serves the most distressed areas of Milwaukee.
“It is a community that often had had its voice silenced or ignored in the city. It is also a community with plenty to say. It is more than the sum of its pain and problems,” Brother David told me.
The poetry class right now is all female and all African-American. Past classes have included members of the Hmong community. “I have had young and old, men and women. I’ve had rappers and I’ve had stutterers. I’ve had participants who had never spoken in front of a crowd to those who perform spoken word poetry,” the friar said.
Bernadette “Ms. B” Williams read a poem that I imagined set to music. “One day I’ll find a lover, someone who loves me for me. One day I’ll find a lover, only God knows who this will be.”
Jennifer Wright’s poem, “A Message to this Madness,” begins in despair: “Down and out, no way out, facing time, getting down, feel the slime, it ain’t mine. Going crazy, getting real lazy, can’t sleep, nothing to eat.” But it ends in redemption: “I know that voice oh so well, that’s the one who pull me out of the depth of hell. The message to this madness is God may we find him now.”
Brother David told the class that April is national poetry month. He shared his own work and handed out notebooks to anyone who needed one. He talked about imagism and its place in poetry circles, explaining that it’s writing about things you can see and touch. A flower garden, for instance, or a little girl dressed all in pink waiting on a train platform.
The room became quiet and everyone tried to write about such a thing.
Sitting just to my right, Vanessa Baldwin got busy on a poem that makes you wait until the end to learn what it’s about.
“They came too early this year, too white for my sight, always looking like they swallowed something larger than they could eat. Small legs, small heads. Walking, talking, looking for this and that. Have you ever stood by one...? “The seagull.” This lively poets society agreed that a month was too long to wait for the next class, so they made it two weeks instead. If you want to join them, it’s at 1 p.m. on May 4 at the Capuchin Community Services House of Peace, 1702 W. Walnut St.