Thanks to the recommendation of our own carrie, my poem “Wave” has been published in a high school literature textbook. (Pathways: Literature for Readers and Writers, 2008, Perfection Learning.) It’s the coolest moment in my writing life.
It’s a little weird and humbling to see this in the Table of Contents:
Unit Three: The Forces of Nature
The Interlopers, Saki
The Birches, Robert Frost
Haiku, Basho
spring is like a perhaps hand, e.e. cummings
from An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore
The Deadliest Tsunami in History?, National Geographic
Wave, Dale Wisely
Hope Is the Thing with Feathers, Emily Dickinson
Oh, and if you need a vast army of unsolicited letters heading in to the school board, you know, demanding a change to the mandatory texts used in the district, just let us know. We’re all over it.
Just the thought of all of those students having to answer the discussion question at the end of the chapter:
What does Wisely’s poem communicate about the power of water?
…and drawing little fighter planes shooting dotted lines at my poem and drawing little hearts with the names of their boy/girlfriends in 'em. It’s the coolest.
The poem is part of a section on the 2004 tsunami. Here’s the poem:
.
.
.
.
Wave
My child
Born to me by water
And by water
Swept away
All the internet journals in the world and no one is forced to read a one. But entire grades in schools across the country will be made to read ‘Wave.’ You’re lucky.
