Norris

We decided on "Norris" as Malachi's middle name because of a poetry and literature professor I had at BYU, Leslie Norris. (I posted about him one other time, here.) He was one of the best men I've ever known. I think the impression he made on me was probably experienced by nearly every student of his, since I've heard lots of others refer to him as their "poetry mentor" as well.

Leslie Norris was one of the few truly "famous" people I've known. He was from Wales, with a beautiful, resonant voice and a lilting Welsh accent. I could have listened to that voice just reciting gibberish and been happy for hours on end. He was Poet Laureate of Wales, and also received countless other poetry honors which he never talked about or even referred to. He had a sense of humor about it, though. He used to say when he handed back our papers, "Normally I try to write on everybody's paper, since they're worth more to historians that way." He read poetry at the ceremony where they unveiled Dylan Thomas's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey. When he died, his obituary was in the New Tork Times.

Beyond that, Leslie Norris was fascinating. He was brilliant, of course, always finding exactly the right words to draw you into whatever he was saying. But he was such a deep thinker that everything became interesting to him--and, when he told it, to you too. He could converse well on any subject, but the way he spoke, so clearly and without pretension, made you feel that you were knowledgeable on the subject as well. He said once, "You can find a poem or story in any tiny thing. The more unimportant it is, the better your poem is likely to be."

He was very down-to-earth in lots of ways, not vague and artsy like you might imagine a great poet to be. His poems are mostly nature poems, full of concrete things, strong verbs, and nouns. He had so much mundane, practical knowledge--about birds, wildflowers, any number of things--that it always amazed me to see the fragile and unexpected ways he put those things together in his poems. He found humor in many things, and helped his students find it too. He said about the final exam in one class, "It's not an attempt to find out what you don't know (that would be quite easy, actually)--it's an attempt to find out what you like to write about. Don't worry about it. It doesn't matter. Some people will reel out after 25 minutes, staggering and pale . . . others will write on to the very death, their wrists broken and limp. . . . Now, let's have a look at the 'Ode on Melancholy', and then we can probably all just fade away." He was always very funny. I remember often having to lean back in my desk and catch my breath from laughing so hard.

But the main reason we wanted Malachi to have his name was because of the kind of person Leslie Norris was. Another teacher I had described him as "the kind of true gentleman you think could only exist in fiction"--and he was; always polite, always considerate, always thoughtful. It seems incredible that as brilliant and as famous as he was, he was able to make his students feel that they were the important ones. I remember passing our poems around to each other in one of the poetry courses I took from him, and reading some of the other students' work, and thinking (arrogantly--I'm not proud of it), "This isn't good at all! In fact, it's so bad, I can't even think of any constructive criticism of it." Then Leslie would read it, and even though he was SO much more "above" the work than I was, he could always find some kernel of truth or goodness in it to expand on. It wasn't that he didn't criticize--he did, and some of the most insightful comments he gave me were also the bluntest--but he criticized the right thing, the crucial thing, to show you where your poem could go and what it could be. He was so kind and complimentary and believing, even of work that was so lacking in genius, that by the time he was finished giving comments on something, everyone else could appreciate it as well.

More than that, Leslie brought that same kindness and open-mindedness to his dealings with people. He wasn't open-minded in the weak, unable-to-take-a-stand, everyone-is-special way that you sometimes think of. Instead, he really believed that everyone had goodness and worth, and because he looked for that in people, he found it. All kinds of people liked him and trusted him because of his total lack of pretense, his humility even in the midst of the quiet confidence which came from knowing so precisely who he was. I think his writing is where he got his great clarity, and because he examined himself so completely and fearlessly, he was able to see others clearly as well.

At Leslie Norris' funeral last year, someone read his poem "The Pit Ponies." Pit ponies were the ponies that worked down in the coal mines, and they lived down there in the total darkness their whole lives. When they were too old to work, they were brought up above ground again, which is what this poem is about. The person reading the poem at the funeral talked about how the dark mines could be a metaphor for the confusion of mortality, and how when we move on past this life and can finally see clearly again, we may, like the ponies, not even be able to comprehend the sunlight at first.

I think the metaphor also describes our own, self-imposed blindnesses, the things that keep us from progressing and fully enjoying life. When we are able to break free of selfishness, of the insecurities that make us want to be critical of others, of our reluctance to look at our own weaknesses honestly, then we will be taking the first, halting, wobbly steps into the sunshine of a better world, where we can see both others and ourselves more clearly. I think Leslie Norris had learned to be comfortable in that world.

What I admire most about Leslie Norris is the ability he had to seize upon the best part of a person (or a poem), and let that be the part he spoke to. He saw the good in others, not because he was more naive than the rest of us, but because he was more perceptive. That is the quality that I hope Malachi can cultivate, and that I hope he will think of when he remembers his middle name.

The Pit Ponies

by Leslie Norris

They come like the ghosts of horses, shyly,
To this summer field, this fresh green,
Which scares them.

They have been too long in the blind mine,
Their hooves have trodden only stones
And the soft, thick dust of fine coal,

And they do not understand the grass.
For over two years their sun
Has shone from an electric bulb

That has never set, and their walking
Has been along the one, monotonous
Track of pulled coal-trucks.

They have bunched their muscles against
The harnass and pulled, and hauled.
But now they have come out of the underworld

And are set down in the sun and real air,
Which are strange to them. They are humble
And modest, their heads are downcast, they

Do not expect to see very far. But one
Is attempting a clumsy gallop. It is
Something he could do when he was very young,

When he was a little foal a long time ago
And he could run fleetly on his long foal's legs,
And almost he can remember this. And look,

One rolls on her back with joy in the clean grass!
And they all, awkwardly and hesitantly, like
Clumsy old men, begin to run, and the field

Is full of happy thunder. They toss their heads,
Their manes fly, they are galloping in freedom.
The ponies have come above ground, they are galloping!