Poet David Baker spent the day with Rachel Gayer’s Form II English students, sharing his insights into the reading and writing of poetry.

“Poems are made of images. They don’t explain anything. They don’t say, ‘This is about …’ They represent that stuff in specifics,” said Baker. “Narrative fiction thinks in plot, essays think in terms of argument. Scientific writing thinks in terms of evidence, facts, hard data,” shared Baker. “Poetry thinks in images.” And these images, according to Baker, are concrete details that allow the reader to understand the world “by feeling it, like a song.” 

Baker, the long-time poetry editor for the Kenyon Review and the former Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing at Denison University, led the students in an exploration of the concrete imagery of several contemporary American writers, including Jamaal May, Mary Ruefle, Solmaz Sharif, and Baker himself, who has written thirteen books of poetry, most recently Whale Fall (2022) and Swift (2019).
 

Noted Lower School Head Fred Chandler, who invited Baker to campus: “In my experience in reading David Baker’s poetry, I find that many of his poems don’t end for me. I continue reading them, finding something new with each visit. I suggest that any poem–or song or movie–that speaks to us and brings us back to it doesn’t actually end.”

After reading to Form II a short poem by Herbert Scott about a grocery store worker (“Bag Boy whips/the sacks open/with one flick of his wrist/moving his body like a matador/…”), Baker asked the students to jot down a few sentences about someone who does something well and encouraged them to use these words to begin a poem. “The most important thing is to start,” said Baker. “The scariest thing in the world is a blank page.”

The students English teacher, Rachel Gayer observed: “As each class warmed up, students shared their responses to the poems Mr. Baker shared and experimented with writing their own poetry. As one student put it, ‘He got us over the fear of a blank piece of paper.’ Other students appreciated Baker's point that poets create images by using nouns and verbs instead of a lot of adjectives. As the day went on, it was clear that the Form II boys are poets, too.”

Thank you to the Parents’ Association for the faculty grant that supported David Baker’s visit to the Lower School.