April 1, 2015: Princeton Friends School’s annual Poetry Night. For many in the PFS community, this is a favorite event of the year. Culminating the school’s “poetry season,” which has spanned the weeks from January through March, this is the evening on which the entire community assembles in the school’s Great Room – standing room only – to be present as each 1st through 8th grader, in ascending order through the grades, climbs the stairs to the stage, steps up to the microphone, and reads aloud an original poem.

The early poems are typically a few lines only. First grader Juliana has discovered the pleasures of alliteration: “In the park / there are puppies / black puppies. / They are playing.” James shares some wisdom beyond his years in few words: “Even the rain / doesn’t know / where it will fall / only the wind / does.” Baron reflects, perhaps unknowingly, on his relationships with peers: “I am a moose / And I hate my horns / It makes other people go away / And I can’t get other animals / to like me.”

As the event unfolds, the music stand and the microphone are progressively raised to accommodate the increasing height of the readers. An annual procession of the ages, the evening provides a space for each student’s voice to be heard. Some of the poems selected for the evening are playful experiments with sound and rhyme, designed to surprise or elicit a laugh, while others are sober attempts to capture a meaningful memory or to interpret a life experience. What takes my breath away each year, above all, are those students who find a way, through poetry, to take a stand and affirm who they are.

There’s sixth-grader Emmet, for example, who has long struggled with other forms of written expression, but for whom the economy of poetry opens previously unexplored depths of reflection. He reads, “soul after soul / life after life / and in the attempt to wash / the blood stains off / our nation’s apron / we make it yet more bloody.” Children whose quirkiness is sometimes off-putting to peers in the normal course of events, are rewarded – are cheered, in fact – as their sensibilities find an outlet in poetic expression. Daniel draws strength from a poem about his name: “I’m enduring / courageous / rarely angered / discerning / brave / and kind. / I withstand heat / cold, and pain. / I am the fifth in my line. / I am Daniel. / Beware.” Third grader Charlotte, who for the past two years has been gradually overcoming a reluctance to speak in the presence of adults, is able this year to sub-vocalize the lines of her poem as her teacher reads each aloud into the microphone. Speaking is also difficult for Annarose, a 7th grader, due to vocal cord paralysis sustained during surgery as an infant. And yet in this space, she is able to whisper her lines into the microphone, and they are received with open-hearted appreciation by the entire community.

Truth be told, it occasionally happens that a student will choose not to read on this night. It’s frightening, of course, to stand before well over 200 people, alone, and speak one’s truth. Some of the 1st graders are able to read only with the help of a trusted teacher by their sides. Emma didn’t read aloud on Poetry Night until third grade, and then only tentatively. This year, though, as a 6th grader, she delivered her poem confidently, not a trace of her long-ago shyness lingering.

Throughout his six years with us, from 3rd grade on, Jonah never did read on Poetry Night. Nor did he ever tell a story at the school’s annual Storytelling Festival. But by the end of his 8th grade year, when he was expected to write and deliver “departing remarks” to the full community as part of the school’s Moving On celebration, Jonah courageously confronted his long-standing anxiety and delivered an eloquent speech. Having overcome this significant obstacle, Jonah went on during his high school years to learn the guitar, compose songs, and perform in coffee houses. And now, as a twenty-one year-old, he is an acclaimed up-and-coming blues singer/songwriter who tours extensively, has performed at the Newport Folk Festival and the SXSW Festival, and whose recently-recorded “Mockingbird” was chosen last year as one of NPR’s “Ten Songs Public Radio Can’t Stop Playing.”

How does this happen? How is it that our students find their voices, even in the face of the most challenging circumstances? And why is it that each June, when the Arts Council of Princeton publishes aMuse, a volume of poetry written by students under the age of 18 in the greater Princeton area, Princeton Friends School is typically represented well beyond what our numbers would predict?

I’ve always assumed that meeting for worship is the reason for all of this. Sitting together in our 1760 meetinghouse once a week for a period of reflection, month after month, and year after year, our students are practiced in quieting their bodies and minds and listening for the “still small voice” within. They know where to find those innermost stirrings, and over years of listening to the vocal ministry spoken into the silence by their “elders” – others in the community a few years to a few decades older – they know as well what constitutes a message and how a message may best be shaped for sharing with others. And they know that whatever they have to share will be respected by all who are present. Meeting for worship, as the center of school life, provides a space for self-discovery and affirmation that extends into the rest of the children’s experience of school.

As our students approach the end of their Princeton Friends School years, they typically come to appreciate more fully, both intellectually and emotionally, the environment in which they’ve been raised. Zonia, given her family’s Guatemalan heritage and her limited experience with English as a young child, was academically challenged throughout her early years. Increasingly throughout middle school, however, she came to into her own, in English as well as Spanish. As an 8th grader, four years ago, Zonia chose to read on Poetry Night a poem she’d composed in Spanish, claiming with pride on the eve of her departure her dual-language identity. “Y hoy me toca despedirme / Como un pájaro que deja su nido / De con afecto y desconsuelo y gratitud / Por las cosas asombrosas / Que dejo y llevare / En el alma para siempre.” “Today I say goodbye, like a fledgling leaving its nest, with affection and sadness and gratitude for the amazing things that I will carry with me in my soul forever.” Zonia is graduating this year from high school, where last year she earned her school’s most highly-coveted award for citizenship, was elected the student council president for this year, and will most certainly be chosen by the senior class to deliver their graduation address in June.

Zonia’s sentiments were echoed by Will in June of 2015 as he delivered his departing remarks to the Princeton Friends School community. He opened with a story about Roy Sullivan, a National Parks ranger who, despite being struck by lightning seven times in his career, kept returning to his job. After weaving in a reference to the poetry of William Carlos Williams, describing the moment when he realized that “the plums that were in the icebox” were a metaphor for life, Will wrapped up his remarks with this reflection: “So why did Roy Sullivan go back to work each day? I believe that he went back to his job day after day because it meant something. It mattered…It was something he loved. And he did it for a reason. I think it’s the same reason why the PFS staff comes to work each day; it’s the reason why we continue to go to Guatemala every year; it’s why we participate in Community Outreach each month, and why we donate money to the school to keep it running year after year. It’s because we have been struck by something. We are connected to something. We have been changed by something bigger than ourselves.” And then Will finished off with lines of poetry that stunningly captured his experience of his middle school education at Princeton Friends. “This school is where I have become the young man I am today,” he read. “Now, after an amazing, beautiful four years, I have finally found that I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox. Forgive me; they were delicious, so sweet, and so cold.”

This, in short, is the reason that I have spent the past three decades at Princeton Friends – to be part of this remarkable Quaker school community, a sacred space for self-reflection, and for poetry, and for allowing and encouraging young people to find their voices and discover who they are to be in the world.

Jane Fremon
April 2015