In my “other” life I make poems, which New Jersey’s own William Carlos Williams once described as “small (or large) machines made of words,” a not inelegant definition, when one considers that a machine is something devised by human beings to do some work, often work vital to our survival.
As a poet, it is my work and responsibility to choose words and the arrangements of them, how they accumulate and dance, how they proclaim or hint –making them into something that has a form – whether it be free and open or formal and rule-governed.
That responsibility can feel heavy at times, and that is one reason why taking up the art of storytelling was such a gift, a relief, for me. The stories I tell are those from the oral tradition: folk tales, myths, fairy tales, legends. They’ve been part of the human experience for centuries, sometimes for millennia. My work is simply to become acquainted with them, or to use another metaphor – to put a story on, like a beautiful garment I’ve been lucky enough to find at the second-hand store, one that has been loved and worn into pliability and comfort, but which, being made of a magic fabric, will never wear out. It welcomes each new body, each new voice, wants again to spin in a dance, to till in a field, to walk down a street nodding at strangers.
“Old things become new with the passage of time,” I copied down in the little notebook I keep in my purse. A quote from Nicostratus, painted in lovely script on one wall of a Greek tavern in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Yes, I thought, that is one of the gifts of story – each time a story is told, it becomes new, new through the telling in just that particular place and time, but new even more fully, through the quality of the listening in the room, or under the tree, or at the table, or on a bus.
Listeners draw the story forth, and this is another blessed way that, at least for me, telling a story is a reprieve from working on the creating of my own poems (something I actually do love doing, at least after I have a first draft). I am not at all fully responsible for how well, how completely, a tale is realized. The eyes and the shoulders or those who listen, their laughter, their sighs, their interruptions to ask a question that just can not be held in – all of these contribute to the texture of the story, sometimes even taking it to new directions.
Whenever I think of stepping away from the work I do with storytelling, I remind myself of these experiences, these ways of strengthening human bonds, of keeping alive direct human connection. We have been given so much.
It was our grown-up, out-in-the-world son who took us to Niagara Falls during our recent visit to his new home in Toronto. As we strolled along the walkway above the falls, we were mesmerized by the force of the water, the frothing cascades, and the river’s hue in the roiling path just before the drop: a deep dark aquamarine frosted with white. It was a humbling force, nature not to be questioned. But the people: they were another wonder: all hues, all ages, many languages, many styles of apparel, much delight and awe.
“The people, it’s as wonderful as the falls,” I said to our son.
“Yes, he said. “It gives one hope.” As do stories, as does their longevity, their persistence, their ancient ever-newness in our ears and voices.
