State poet Rick Benjamin shares how poetry teaches us about citizenship as part of the Mary Tefft White Cultural Center: Talking in the Library Series

Rodrigues, Jill

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Better Citizens through Poetry

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Roger Williams UniversityDOCS@RWUFeatured News Story The Week at Roger9-17-2013Better Citizens through PoetryJill RodriguesRoger Williams UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_newsPart of the Higher Education CommonsThis News Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Week at Roger at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in FeaturedNews Story by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact mwu@rwu.edu.Recommended CitationRodrigues, Jill, "Better Citizens through Poetry" (2013). Featured News Story. 152.https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_news/152Home News News Archive Better Citizens through PoetryBetter Citizens through PoetryState poet Rick Benjamin shares how poetry teaches us aboutcitizenship as part of the Mary Te t White Cultural Center:Talking in the Library SeriesSeptember 17, 2013 Jill Rodrigues ’05BRISTOL, R.I. – As a catalyst to instill a sense of obligation to community and the environment, poetry is not the  rstmedium that comes to mind – but Rhode Island state poet Rick Benjamin is on a mission to change that perception.His appointment as state poet in 2012 by Governor Lincoln Chafee has imparted in him a duty to elucidate RhodeIsland’s history through the lens of poetry, said Benjamin, author of “Passing Love: Poems” and “Floating World:Poems,” and an educator in the arts, humanities and environmental studies at universities around New England.“[Poetry] teaches us about the obligations of citizenship in a small state, and not just any small state – a state that hasalways set a very high bar for tolerance, freedom, di erence,” Benjamin told an over owing audience at RWU’s MaryTe t White Cultural Center: Talking in the Library Series on September 10.As Rhode Island celebrates the 350th anniversary of its 1663 Colonial Charter, which established Rhode Island as the rst state to permit true religious freedom and the separation of religion from citizenship, “we must live up to thesestandards and not just pay lip service to them,” Benjamin said:“And I’m taking seriously my charge [as state poet] to talk about poetry as a medium which instructs us always how to bebetter citizens to each other, to the places where we  nd ourselves and also among other sentient life on the planet.”Benjamin cited as an example the targeting of a Sikh man as a “suspected terrorist” by Providence police on the dayfollowing the September 11, 2001, attacks. Sher J.B. Singh was among four men removed from an Amtrak train inProvidence because of racial pro ling and the hysteria that many parts of the country experienced following the worstterrorist attack in history on American soil, Benjamin said.While watching on television as onlookers at the train station hurled at Singh “hateful things based on ethnicity,” it was aNaomi Shihab Nye poem that reminded him of “how we should treat each other.” From memory (as he did with all ofthe poems in his lecture), he recited “Red Brocade”:The Arabs used to say,When a stranger appears at your door,feed him for three daysbefore asking who he is,where he's come from,where he's headed.That way, he’ll have strengthenough to answer.Or, by then, you’ll besuch good friendsyou don’t care.Raised in diverse – and sometimes unsafe – Los Angeles apartment complexes, Benjamin learned from his grandparents’example not to treat others as strangers, contrary to his parents’ missives. His grandmother, a nurse, would attend to thechild of a concerned parent at any time of the night, while his grandfather lent his mechanic skills for free to a neighbor’sbusted vehicle. The idea that di erence in people should be feared “didn’t serve me,” he said. Instead, “the idea thatyou should always reach out to strangers, and that you have an obligation to do so, really held true” – a generosity ofspirit taught to him by his grandparents that he hopes he passed on to his children.Benjamin also emphasized the importance of cultivating a sense of stewardship for nature and the environment in whichwe live. For nearly a decade, he directed the Rhode Island River of Words, an ecological program that educated publicschoolchildren about their place through poetry. During the program, a high school boy shared his view that theWoonasquatucket River is “a dump.” The mission of the program shi ed to helping the students consider the OceanState’s most-regarded resource vis-à-vis Rhode Island’s numerous rivers, with the intent that fostering pride of place inthe youth would mobilize a generation to begin “taking back their neighborhoods.”“You have to reverse your own thinking, you have to return to a di erent sense of place, which is both restorative andlife-a rming,” said Benjamin. “And when you start to do that, you really start to care about where you live.”Expanding on his idea that poetry illustrates every citizen’s responsibility to each other and the world, Benjamin said, “Ibelieve in poetry as a wisdom medium … Ideally, poetry is circulating instructions all the time, and we would be wise tolisten up.”To demonstrate his point, he shared Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods,” in which she o ers three insights into life:Look, the treesare turningtheir own bodiesinto pillars of light,are giving o  the richfragrance of cinnamonand ful llment, the long tapersof cattailsare bursting and  oating away overthe blue shoulders of the ponds,and every pond,no matter what itsname is, is nameless now.Every yeareverythingI have ever learned in my lifetimeleads back to this: the  resand the black river of losswhose other side is salvation,whose meaningnone of us will ever know.To live in this world you must be ableto do three things:to love what is mortal;to hold it against your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go.The Talking in the Library series at the Mary Te t White Cultural Center is part of an annual lecture series that brings local,national and international thought-leaders to Roger Williams University for the vibrant exchange of thoughts and ideas. 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Better Citizens through Poetry

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