April Seeds Dreaming Of Sky

David Hassler
Wick Poetry Center
Satterfield Hall
Kent State University


Dear Mr. Hassler,

I arrived on campus this morning to find reminders of two great literary influences from my childhood. First, I saw signage for a Virginia Hamilton conference at the student center. Ms. Hamilton was a driving force of creativity in my hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio, until the time of her death. Climbing the stairs by KIVA, I smiled. I like to see Virginia honored as she certainly deserves to be.

Then I picked up a copy of the Daily Kent Stater. Who should I find on the cover but David Hassler, the first poet I ever recognized as such and another literary influence on me! I excitedly read the story about Maggie Anderson and learned that you work here at Kent State, and in the Wick Poetry Center (to which I submitted a poem for scholasrship consideration this past winter).

Please, allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Elizabeth Brown, and I was a second grade student at Mills Lawn School in 1996 when you acted as Poet in Residence. Oh, how I admired you! Your residency was my foray into the poetic world.

I remember being particularly influenced by a poem from your Sabishi book. The poem is about soba noodles. I had never tasted soba noodles. I walked home from school that day and annunced to my parents that we must try them, so vivid had I found the picture you painted in my mind.

Though I was unaware that I was learning the poetic devices that would eventually frequent my writing, it was you who first taught me how to use a metaphor or a simile. Yours was the first non-rhyming poetry I had heard (Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss had covered that department). Even without that sing-song quality that is rhyme, you showed us how to make our words effective.

I heard that you recently completed a second residency at Mills Lawn. No doubt those youths were as inspired as I, and someday may experience the same joy that I experience now in having rediscovered your presence.

Since second grade, I have been an avid reader and writer, particularly of poetry. I've been published in a few anthologies and try to write as often as I can, though a college student's schedule is hardly leisurely enough to allow much). My passion for writing of all sorts has only swelled since my elementary school days. I am a sophomore magazine journalism and French major here at Kent State, a recent transfer student from DePaul University in Chicago. As a new student here this semester, I have ached to find familiar and welcoming faces on campus. The Daily Kent Stater caught you at such an angle that I could not see your face, but your name was enough to bring a grin to my face and that cliché to mind: It's a small world, after all.


Sincerely,
Elizabeth Brown