Mary Jo Salter: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Erasers

 

As punishment, my father said, the nuns

   would send him and the others

out to the schoolyard with the day’s erasers.

 

Punishment?  The pounding symphony

   of padded cymbals clapped

together at arm’s length overhead

 

(a snow of vanished alphabets and numbers

   powdering their noses

until they sneezed and laughed out loud at last)

 

was more than remedy, it was reward

   for all the hours they’d sat

without a word (except for passing notes)

 

and straight (or near enough) in front of starched

   black-and-white Sister Martha,

like a conductor raising high her chalk

 

baton, the only one who got to talk.

   Whatever did she teach them?

And what became of all those other boys,

 

poor sinners, who had made a joyful noise?

   My father likes to think,

at seventy-five, not of the white-on-black

 

chalkboard from whose crumbled negative

   those days were never printed,

but of word-clouds where unrecorded voices

 

gladly forgot themselves.  And that he still

   can say so, though all the lessons,

most of the names, and (he doesn’t spell

 

this out) it must be half the boys themselves,

   who grew up and dispersed

as soldiers, fathers, husbands, now are dust.

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Mary Jo Salter is the author of eight books of poems, most recently The Surveyors (2017) and Nothing by Design (2013). Her new collection, Zoom Rooms, will appear in 2022. She has also been a co-editor of three editions of The Norton Anthology of Poetry.  She is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.(Click here for more poems by and information on Mary Jo Salter.)

[“Erasures” copyright Mary Jo Salter; from Open Shutters, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003]  

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Comments

[George J. Searles]

WOW!

[David Lehman]

"Poor sinners, who had made a joyful noise": a beautiful phrase in a beautiful poem.

[Maureen Owen]

Ah, brings back memories of those Catholic school days and sweet symphony of those erasers.
Beautiful photo quartet of erasers on their doily too!

[Grace Cavalieri]

Mary Jo. I'm so glad to read this! Wonderful. Having known and adored 'the father' in this poem --makes it all the better--a privileged read--And I will catch up with you again. It is my wish. Maybe over your forthcoming book.

I remember your poem about the Grandfather clock and so many more.

[Elaine Equi]

“a snow of vanished alphabets and numbers” — beautiful image!

[clarinda harriss]

OMG. What a magical poem. Funny thing: at the public elementary school I attended in mid-city Baltimore, beating erasers was considered an honor. And it was, for exactly the reasons the great Mary Jo S. details here. As for the boys now being, themselves, dust, I am dazzled and stunned at this thought which I will think about constantly from now on. (Naughty Catholic school boys who used to "ride me" on their handlebars around the 'hood--Phil, Ronnie, et al--are you dust yet? You were older men when I was 10 and you were 13. . . .

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

Among the questions simmering in Mary Jo Salter’s skillfully constructed poem is this: What gets erased in the formation of character by inculcating and then enforcing acquiescence in adolescents? Salter shakes off the dusty notion of rote compliance and imposed silence as conducive to learning. The noisy boys turn affliction into fun, thus temporarily thwarting their martinet nun’s discipline by speaking and behaving as the boys they are. Brava to Salter for this bravura verse lending voice to these “unrecorded voices,” including her father’s.

[Eileen]

A wonderful poem and a step back in time to a different place.

[Daniel Tobin]

"Word-clouds where unrecorded voices / gladly forgot themselves"--just terrific!

[Peter Kearney]

There's an enjoyable playfulness in several of the author's images: Sister's chalk baton that leads to the symphony of padded cymbals; the varied imagery of black and white; and the end-of-line rhymes that suggest school days. But then there is the sequence of snow and powder and cloud, all pulled together by the last word of the poem, which leaves you stunned.

[Eamon Grennan]

That'a. memorial beauty, true and moving, Mary Jo. Bravo.

[Marissa Despain]

Marvelous. I love everything about this poem.