U R a Poet

At times, assignments take on a life of their own, evolving into much more than classroom tasks. Katrina, an unusually quite and bookish student who had always achieved well, but never rose to brilliance on essay assignments, suddenly found a voice. It’s a mysterious moment that is unpredictable and unreproducible. It is a poetic moment in education. They have yet to be measured on any standardized assessment or accountability gauge. And usually, they remain hidden and unacknowledged. I’ll provide the assignment directions, and then let Katrina speak for herself. This is an excerpt of the total work. It’s a treasure. It’s addictive. It's why I teach.

Directions: For this assignment there are several fairly open-ended requirements. Its form should reflect the style of Robert Penn Warren that we have been studying. Your poem must be based on the Panama Canal experience; it must use free verse; it must make extensive use of alliteration; it must be interspersed at appropriate points with quotations from primary documents; it must be based on historical fact, although may fictionalize details which are fairly irrelevant to the story; it must be at least 100 lines long.

Building the Canal

At last, here we land, with vision for this ten-mile span of frontier,
Panama, and gold, though for once the only metal pioneers expect to see around is steel. But gold nonetheless, for the United States of America,
this is our project, we will see it through to the end.

The sun shining today, I see it from my room,
the riotous room where I work, where I slave away for the United States, though slavery was abolished thirty-nine years ago.
Nonetheless, I slave at my desk,
engineering erection of edifices in faraway lands,
building the canal in Panama.

1904 and we are just under-way,
for some reason I sense a mountain of meaning in the mountain of mud we are just now building.
We West Indian workers expected to construct a canal, but all we produce now is sweat;
lllllllllllllllland that mountain,
"But what we do now will be of consequence centuries hence,
and we must be sure we are taking the right step before we act."
llllllllllllllll—President Theodore Roosevelt
We men follow orders and that is right enough for us.

1904 and the office erupts in ecstasy and energy, energy we will need in the long years ahead
long years of brutal, back-breaking labor,
labor to manufacture the long-sought-after waterway straight to the East from Europe.
Our work actually began long ago, well, two years ago,
when the fine Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla proposed the purchase of Panama land for a
llllllllllllllllcanal.
This was not any new idea, but it took rounds of research and the like to even design a deal the
llllllllllllllllfirst time,
not to mention the second set of paperwork to assemble an agreement with independent Panama.
"The United States of America and the Republic of Panama
being desirous to insure the construction of a ship-canal across the isthmus of Panama
to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans "
llllllllllllllll—Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty
It is fortunate we were so "desirous."

This is noble.
So we say. We say it to believe it, though many of us die with these words on our lips.
This is noble, not because we believe in it, but because we are paid for it.
We send money home to our families, more money than we could earn there, near them

Still, we are dying,
"And if you talk with these men who are fighting disease-
the engineer, who with transit and chain is laying out drainage ditches;
the man who has the responsibility of guarding the purity of the drinking water;
the rat-catcher, who strolls about with a Flobert rifle and a pocket full of poison;
the red-headed young doctor who vaccinates you at Colon;
or even the bacteriologist who finds his interesting researches 'disturbed' -
they will speak of themselves as 'ditch-diggers.'"
llllllllllllllll—Albert Edwards, journalist
We wage war against the smallest of bugs, the mosquito, with the greatest of battle-plans,
elimination,
and we will not regret our raging reaction to this threat of yellow fever
when it is all done.
We remain as men, and would much like to remain.

I heard some babble early this morning,
and I know not whether it is true, but I know it sure woke me up.
46,000,000 cubic yards of earth "moved to date."
And what is the date? 1906, and that is all I know.
"A cut or canal for the purpose of navigation somewhere through the isthmus that connects the new Americas, to unite the Pacific and Atlantic oceans …"
llllllllllllllll—US Secretary of State Henry Clay, 1826
Perhaps back in Henry Clay's day terminology was different,
but in my day, 46,000,000 cubic yards of earth is more than a "cut."
. . .

The figures are in for 1906. 46,000,000 cubic yards of earth "moved to date," I am fond of that phrase, I crafted it myself
What is more, four hundred thirty-seven million dollars spent "to date"
on our entire canal endeavor.
I hope these figures provoke proper awe in the president, along with all others who view them. This is progress, plain and pure;
I am sure the world is watching what is happening in Panama.
. . .

"The Land Divided, The World United!"
This is the first time I have heard the phrase, but it appeals to me instantly.
I watch the S. S. Ancon sail through the canal,
proudly bearing the American flag,
proudly proclaiming to the world the success of the Panama Canal.
The craft cruises out of sight now, and I turn my back,
only to turn back again, to the beauty of this place, a beauty that completely escapes the loaded
lllllllllllllllllaborer, exhaustedly excavating earth from pits much taller than himself
This is a beauty I never saw before, and one I will never forget.
It is the beauty of success, on a large scale,
the beauty of well over four hundred million dollars,
the beauty of the work of over 43,400 individuals,
for One Cause.
My heart and soul swells with the idea of what this canal means, even if its appearance were not
llllllllllllllllso satisfying;
this canal, this "cut," means unity, both of past labor and of future trade and transportation.
I am returning home now, but this place I will always remember.
I will remember my fellow workers, both those I saw and did not see,
for in viewing the enormity of this structure, this canal we have built,
I realize that more than digging made it.
I know that it was an enormous effort.
We built the canal.
"'It seems to me as if we had together made something great.'"
llllllllllllllll-Philippe Bunau-Varilla, upon signing the canal treaty
May it last forever.

Now that's history.