Revisiting Old Poems

Old prompts and old students resurface, and "Stardust" by Amaya Banga

First of all, excuse the very long silence here. The beginning of the school year has been a wild time. The beginning of the year is always busy, as we get systems and rhythms in place and smooth out interpersonal dynamics between kids and get all of us settled in. There has been a lot of metabolizing hard things in the world, and noticing kids doing the same and hoping to be subtly supporting them. On top of all that, I took three weekends out of town since mid-September, was in four literary readings, won a GAP Grant from Artist’s Trust, and did all the usual parent stuff. Mostly very good things, but it’s been a busy, busy season.

And the whole time, I’ve been wanting to write about something wonderful that happened this summer. This year, several old students have gotten in touch: walking in to surprise me at the open house, inviting me to their college graduation party, sending me postcards from Europe. Oh man, does this make a teacher’s day. Seriously.

So, you can imagine how happy I was when a letter arrived with a poem inside from my old student Amaya Banga.

I began working with Amaya and her sister Arabella when Amaya was seven and Arabella was nine, and I loved their poetry right from the beginning. At some point that year, we read “Orchids Are Sprouting From the Floorboards” by Kaveh Akbar, which is one of my favorite contemporary poems to teach, and which we returned to a few times during their years in Frog Hollow. That first time, Amaya wrote:

Dodo bird I want you on this earth
I wish I could give you a note
Dodo bird where have you gone?

(I wrote about Kaveh Akbar’s poem, the prompt I use, and Amaya’s response in more detail a few years ago.)

I’ve always loved her poem. It’s so clear and full of heart and also asks big questions and has such fresh language. I want you on this earth. I love it.

Since the Bangas have moved on to middle school, they’ve kept in touch, and even come back for a visit day, all of which makes me really happy.

The poem that Amaya sent me this summer was also modeled on Akbar’s poem, this time very closely, but wow, has her poetry grown and deepened!

Stardust
By Amaya Banga
After “Orchids Are Sprouting From the Floorboards” by Kaveh Akbar

Stardust sparkles around me.
Stardust sprays from a little girl’s mouth in the form of a laugh.
Her dress is made of lace entwined with stardust.
The pens the students use as they take their tests lay stardust in their wake.
The mother closes the blue stardust drapes of her toddler’s room.
I ride the bus, bumping away above the stardust road.
Your cat stares back at me at midnight with her stardust eyes.
The clocktower strikes 9 o’clock as the stardust people drive in their stardust-emitting cars.
Through the window, I see a woman in stardust sweatpants jogging down the street.
In my neighbor’s yard, I drag my fingers over a rusted car, which is coated in stardust.
I sit in the wet grass, eating my stardust-and-jelly sandwich, chatting away in the bright sun.
The people screaming in the drama-filled hallway are breathing in stardust by the ton.
The small tears of stardust streak down my face.
Your simply painted nails are covered in what looks like glitter, but is stardust.
The sound of bright music bouncing around in my headphones is collected stardust.
Those eyes that haunt me in my sleep wish they were made of stardust.
Heavy stardust rain splatters on the ground and turns my hair to a wet curtain.
The clouds, in all their puffy glory, are misted stardust.
You, as the reader, are also complete stardust.
I don’t lie when I say the world around you is all stardust.

I’m so thrilled to read this poem, and to see seeds planted at Frog Hollow continue to grow in Amaya’s writing. I’m thrilled to see her engage with an old favorite poem in a new way, a more complex and mature way. I love the way she takes an idea we all know abstractly (we’re all stardust), and shows it to us in detail that is at once everyday and magical. The specific, vivid details in this poem, which are very much in the vein of the Akbar poem, feel so alive and particular. Playful and meaningful at once. I have the feeling of walking through a world that is suddenly charged with the wild and profound, even in its most mundane detail. The rusted car, covered in stardust. The stardust-and-jelly sandwich. I’ve felt that feeling in life sometimes. I hope everyone has. Maybe when the sun comes out after a spring rain, or when I’m in love, or just sometimes for no reason as a teenager especially. And here it is again in the poem, that feeling.

So thank you, Amaya. And thank you patient readers. I’m so glad I finally found a moment to pass this poem along to you all.