[ Silence ]
John Cole: Well, good afternoon and welcome to the Library of Congress.
I'm John Cole.
I'm the Director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress,
and I'm pleased to have you here at the Library and we're delighted
that we're going to be together
for what each year is a wonderful ceremony
and a wonderful stimulating time together.
The Center for the Book was created in 1977 to help the Library
of Congress stimulate public interest in books, in reading,
in literacy and in libraries.
And we do so through a network of state Centers for the Book,
including one in California, and national reading promotion partners.
And we work together to promote books and reading and River
of Words is a wonderful project
with which we are very pleased to be associated.
River of Words, as you will hear from our cofounders,
is a project that has been developed through Robert Hass
and his colleague, Pamela Michael,
through a special association with the Library.
But River of Words also is an example of a project
that has been supported by people from all parts of this country
and all different kinds of walks of life.
And I'm pleased to start us off by introducing Jane Rogers,
who is the River of Words Cochair of the Board,
but she's a special person in the eyes of the Library of Congress
as well because her father, for many years, George Pughe was
at the Library of Congress.
I have been at the Library of Congress long enough
to have known Jane's father and to know how much he cared
about children and about reading and about the kinds of activities
that are here with River of Words.
And I'm very pleased to turn the program over to Jane.
Jane.   [ Applause ]

Jane Rogers: Thank you, John.
Of course, it's obvious that John was a mere child when he was here
at the same time that my father was.
And I want to begin to thanking John and the Center for the Book
for the wonderful continuing affiliation between our program,
River of Words, and the Center for the Book's larger mission
about promoting literacy and reading in America.
And I also want to particularly thank Ann Bonnie.
Ann, where are you?   Are you still here?

Where? Right back there.
Ann is on the staff of the Center For the Book and she's the one
who is our primary liaison for putting this program together here
and arranged the lunch for you and our beautiful setting here.
And thank you, Ann, we really appreciate the continuing
partnership with you.   [ Applause ]

River of Words is a nonprofit organization.
We're a little independent group of people led by our two founders,
whom I will introduce to you, who really believe in the value of art
and poetry in relation to understanding the natural world
and our place in it, and in the power of art and poetry,
to speak deeply to people.
At the luncheon before the ceremony, Bob Hass asked each of our awardees
to stand up and say where he or she was from
and to say something special about --
something that is special about that home place.
And I just can't resist taking the opportunity to say something to you
about what's special about my home place, Washington,
D.C. and the Library of Congress.
My dad worked here his entire career, and I can remember
from the time that I was the age
of these beautiful young ladies sitting right here in the first row,
following my dad down the halls of the Jefferson Building,
which you have just done with Don Cole -- John Cole trying to keep up.
And my strongest impression from that was the combination of trying
to keep up, seeing my father's feet and seeing the floors.
You know, there's all kinds of decoration
in the beautiful Jefferson Building, but the patterns
on the marble floors were the things that were closest
to my eyes when I was that height.
So that was one very strong impression of the Library
of Congress as my home place.
Another later, as I was beginning to grow up and to become more social
and a little bit more poised and was really interested
in the amazing people with whom my father worked who spoke dozens
of languages, was that every year they had a holiday party,
and they were from many different countries and people would cook
for a week before this party and bring all
of their wonderful national specialties to it.
And I would eat everything in sight and enjoy sort of being fussed
over by all of these wonderful, fascinating adults
from many countries throughout Europe and Asia.
And then the last, now I'm speaking more
to the high school age students here as you grow into the age of romance.
When I met my husband and I introduced him to my father,
my father offered his special behind the scenes tour
of the Library of Congress.
And even though he had already retired,
he still had good connections here, so we got into the rare book room.
And the rare book librarian took us into the stacks
and he plucked a volume of Voltaire off of the shelf and he opened it up
and here was Benjamin Franklin's copy with his personal notations,
which he had then passed on to Thomas Jefferson who had read it
and put his personal notations in it.
And that's how I knew that Daddy liked Michael.
And that's how the Library of Congress came to be is
that our third President, Thomas Jefferson, left his personal library
to the people of the United States in his will.
And that was the initial kernel
of what is now the magnificent Library of Congress.
So that's my story of my special place.
I want to introduce you to the people
who are here from River of Words.
In addition to Pamela and Bob, whom I will introduce in just a moment,
another of our board members, Stanley Young is here.
[ Applause ]
And both of our other staff members, Nora Ericson, with the camera.
[ Applause ]   And Laura Paradise.

Where's Laura?
I bet she's -- is she back near the entrance?
Pamela Michael:   [ unintelligible ]

just coming in, I think.
Jane Rogers: Yeah, she's assisting latecomers to come
in and find a place to sit.
These are the people who are the little engine that could.
You may have some inkling
that poetry is not the biggest economic generator
in the American culture, and it is a real effort
to keep this program going from year to year.
We have no government support, we have to raise every penny
that it costs to make this curriculum available
through state coordinators, to teachers who expose their children
to it and encourage them to enter the contest.
And this year we had somewhere between 18 and 20,000 participants
in the contest, which is just one indicator of the thousands
and thousands of children all over America and the world
who are now participating in River of Words.
And none of that would be happening were it not
for two extraordinary talented and inspirational people, Robert Hass,
the former Poet Laureate of the United States, and Pamela Michael,
the cofounder of River of Words.
When Bob became Poet Laureate and moved here to the Library
of Congress in 1995, Pamela came to him with a great idea.
And they talked it over and they refined it
and it became the River of Words program.
And without them, none of us would be here
and this program would not have the unique quality that it has.
I mean it makes a real difference
to have a poet laureate judging the poetry.
And Pamela herself is a published and professional writer.
She has edited and published a number of things, and she belongs
to a group called Wild Writing Women.
So you can imagine the kind of fun they have.
And so that we can all begin the fun of seeing our wonderful finalists
and grand prizewinners, I'm going to turn the program
over to our two fabulous cofounders, Pamela Michael and Robert Hass.
[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: Thank you all for coming.
I think this might be the biggest crowd we have ever had
for a ceremony here.   This is wonderful.

We did this two weeks ago in California
at the San Francisco Public Library,
so we're getting pretty good at it, I guess.
Welcome families, winners, friends.
I'm not going to talk very long but I just want
to share one experience I've had since being here that I realized,
thinking about it afterwards, kind of exemplifies why you kids have
so much to teach us adults.   Excuse me a second.

I was on the subway platform of the metro here a couple of days ago
and it was rush hour and it was mostly adults,
people coming from work and everybody was really tired
and people were in their own little bubbles kind of.
Nobody was really aware of anybody around them or...
And a train pulled up and there was a toddler, a little girl, maybe two,
in her dad's arms and she was looking out the window of the train.
And she started smiling and waving like mad trying to get somebody
to respond on the platform, and everybody was kind of just oblivious
and then one man saw her.
He started waving, I started waving and then the whole platform waved,
who was, of course, delighted that she got this whole platform
of people to wave back and smile.
And the train pulled away with her going like this and all of us going
like that, and we were totally transformed.
All the people on that platform who had been touched
by that child's exuberance and reaching out,
we recognized each other and a lot more about the world
around us in that little moment.
So that's what all of you are doing with your art and your poetry,
and the wonderful teachers who are here are helping you do
that and so are your parents.
So we're really happy to have all of you here,
and we're thrilled to honor you.
So now I want to turn it over to Robert Hass and we're going
to start giving away some awards.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Thank you, Pam.


Well, I also want to welcome you all.
It's thrilling every year to be here and it's very exciting
to meet you kids after we see your work.
In the River of Words office thousands of poems and drawings
and paintings and photographs come in.
And many of them are wonderful and it takes a good deal of sorting
through to get down to everyone's favorites, and when we get
down to favorites we know that we're dealing
with very talented young people.
And then it's hard to -- sometimes it's not.
Sometimes one thing just knocks you out, but mostly, it's very hard
to get down to the final ones.   And by the time we do,

we have pretty much fallen in love with the work.
And so to get to meet you
after seeing what you've done is really a great pleasure.
We started this program ten years ago now because we felt
that it was important to find a way to help teachers and families
to encourage kids who spend part of their day outside all the time
in the natural world, to remind the rest of us of our own early delight
in the natural world and being outdoors.
There's a reason for this, which is that in your century,
in this 21st century that we're in, you guys are going to be responsible
when you grow up for a very complicated world.
In some ways you're going to be responsible
for things we didn't understand
about the way we have been treating the world up until now.
River of Words is called River of Words because water is one
of the two things that make life possible.
The other one is the sun, of course.
You know, the basic story is plants eat sunlight and grow.
As you'll hear in one of the poems, life comes from the sun.
And then the other thing is that plants need water.
Then animals can eat the plants and animals can eat each other,
and the cycle of energy gets started.
Without water, it doesn't happen.
And water is, as they say, the expression is, a finite resource.
Avery, do you know what a finite resource is?
Finite means limited.   Resource is something that we need.

It's a source of life and it's a resource because we keep using it.
So you guys are going to be responsible
for the way we think about, feel about
and behave toward the whole world when you're grownups.
And at the core of it is the life of water and water flows
through every community and it makes the culture of those communities.
Deserts, people dress and live in a certain way
because of their relationship to water.
Seacoasts, people dress and live and make their living in a certain way
because of their relationship to water.
Same thing with lake ports, rivers.
Same thing with small farming towns in the west that don't get
as much rain as they want or are always worried about drought.
Everywhere the life of water is important to us.
And so we thought a way to do this, to help the teachers
in the schools is to encourage and honor and publicize the art
and poetry of children dealing with the natural environment.
It also meant if you're going to write about it and look at it,
then this will give the teachers an excuse to get the students
out of doors, seeing their actual world.
Sometimes in some parts of the country the teachers want to do it,
but they can't because the school district thinks it's too
complicated, you need insurance, how are we going to do that?
And we got to push and push and push to make sure
that teachers are able to get kids outdoors.
One of the great experiences of River of Words has been, for me,
has been meeting the teachers.
There are so many dedicated teachers all over this country working
in such imaginative ways on giving kids this knowledge that we need.
You know, if nature means the world untouched by human beings,
the world not affected by human beings,
cities are not nature, the country is nature.
There is no place that's nature anymore if that's what nature means.
Because between global warming and acid rain, between the interchange
of life among species, come off ships, come off airplanes,
all life affects all other life,
and human activity affects every single biosystem, every single kind
of natural place on the earth.   It's not escapable anymore.

The entire world is a garden from now on,
and you guys are going to be the gardeners.
Water -- can you kids make this shape with your hands?
That's the shape of a boat, among other things.
You know the story of Noah's ark?
When there was a great flood and Noah had to put two of every animal
on it or the animals weren't going to survive?
The earth has become Noah's ark.
This is also the gesture of people to receive water
if there's no other container.
You got to hold this world, this ark of a world
in your hands from now on.
We all do, which means you guys have to get an education,
which will help you to be able to do that with intelligence and love
for the world and for life itself.
And a way to inspire that in people, we've already discovered,
is to show them the work you do.
Some of the art of the children from the River
of Words program already is doing that work.
One year the Environmental Protection Agency,
which is the department of government
in Washington that's responsible for overseeing the environment,
every two years they have to give a report to Congress of the state
of the health of American rivers,
American forests, our air, our ecosystems.
And one year in the report, to decorate it,
they put the artwork of all the children.
It may happen again for you artists.
They didn't put poems in, I don't think, did they that time?
It may help -- you artists might find your drawings in the hands
of every senator and Congressman in the country.
They get republished.
We're trying to publish them in books as much as possible.
We get letters from all over the country talking about that work.
Sometimes the work gets published in airline magazines
and in other popular magazines so that people can see your vivid work.
And as Pam says, that's you waving
and getting everybody else to wave back.
So this is to -- today is to celebrate the,
the gift of what you have given us with your artwork.
And the program will be to hear the poets and then to look at the art
of the artists and then to honor one special teacher.
Each year we try to do that.
And that will be the order of things.
And from now, that might take about an hour, is that right?
So we begin with the poets.
And the first thing we're going to do is have some
of the very talented finalists in poetry come and read their poems
and then the Grand Prize winners.
Then we have a special message for you and then we'll do the same
with the art finalists and the art winners in the United States.
And then the Grand Prize winners, both in art, as it happens,
from the International Prize because we give one prize every year
for River of Words programs around the world, and the program has grown
so that we get work from children all over the world.
So we begin with the poetry finalists.
And the first poetry finalist I'm going
to introduce is Jack Conlon from Palmetto, Florida.
Jack, would you come on up?   [ Applause ]

Jack Conlon: Can I start any time?   Pamela Michael: Yes, you start.

Jack Conlon: You dart and weave flashing your jeweled body.
Are you a pixie or a fairy?
Do you paint the flowers and grow the trees?
You fly through the meadows and skim the ponds.
Dragonfly, dragonfly, iridescent poet of the sky.
[ Applause ]
Robert Hass: I think sometimes with poems it's really good
to hear them a couple of times
because the good ones are amazingly rich echo chambers.
This poem, as you'll see if you go look at it,
goes down the page a few lines at a time.
There are some wonderful things in it.
One, the flashing your jeweled body is a phrase
that just gets the dragonfly.
The questioning itself is like the quick flitting, and then it ends
with this wonderful, sweet, subtle rhyme.
It's an amazing little poem.   Would you read again, Jack?

Jack Conlon: Sure.
You dart and weave, flashing your jeweled body.
Are you a pixie or a fairy?
Do you paint the flowers and grow the trees?
You fly through the meadows and skim the ponds.
Dragonfly, dragonfly, iridescent poet of the sky.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Congratulations.

Thank you, Jack, very much.
Iridescent poet of the sky is a wonderful phrase.
There's a poem called "Teaching the Ape to Write Poetry," written by --
that goes -- I forget exactly how it goes but the idea is
if you tie a pen into the ape's hand and sit him down at a desk
and whisper in his ear, "You look like a God sitting there,
you should write poems," that's how you would teach the ape
to write poems.
But I think maybe if we whispered iridescent poet of the skies
in people's ears it would do the same trick.
Our next reader from Houston, Texas is Evan Shegog.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Page 51, Evan.


Pamela Michael: Evan,   [ unintelligible ]

Evan Shegog: "Fear."
It creeps over you slowly, steadily, ready to strike.
Swift like a shooting star, its teeth sharp and ready.
It licks its lips.
Creeping into the heart, it swallows the mind.
Pricking the skin, it pops the lungs.


[ Applause ]
Robert Hass: I don't think this requires much commentary.
One of the powers of poetry is emotional honesty and directness.
And you'll hear this again with another poem before we're through,
but this poem immediately went
around our office, as you can imagine.
It's a gift.
It's a gift to share powerful feelings and let other people know,
oh, yeah, I felt that, too, and a gift to be able to convey it.
Evan Shegog: "Fear."
It creeps over you slowly, steadily, ready to strike,
swift like a shooting star.   Its teeth sharp and ready.

It licks its lips.
Creeping into the heart, it swallows the mind.
Pricking the skin it pops in the lungs.
And worse, it multiplies.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Congratulations.   Are you nine.

Evan Shegog: I'm nine.   Robert Hass: Nine.

So there's this and there's that.   Evan is nine.


And I mean, this is so smart.   Psychologically it's so smart.

"Creeping into the heart it swallows the mind."

It reminds me, you know, our two greatest poets are the grandmother
and grandfather poets of American poetry are Walt Whitman
and Emily Dickinson, and Emily Dickinson is the poet of feelings
and she's a brilliant psychologist, too.
Her famous line is "after great pain a formal feeling comes."
Everybody goes, yes.
"Creeping into the heart it swallows the mind."
That's what I mean about gifts that these kids can give us.
Our next reader is Sisi Reid from Silver Springs, Maryland.
Sisi.   [ Applause ]

Pamela Michael: Sisi.
Sisi. Robert Hass: I've got you here on page 48.
I said Sissy.   It's Sisi.

I apologize.
Sisi Reid: Should I stand up on this?
Robert Hass: Yeah.   Sisi Reid: "Mother Earth."

The night sky masks her.   The rain washes her fears away.

The trees protect her.   The grass gives her warmth.

The oceans soothe her.   The stars guide her.

And the sun keeps her alive.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: It's wonderful work.
And there are three -- I thought about three things about it.
One, is it's enormously delicate.
Two, it has this litany quality with her, her, her, this of her
and then her alive at the end, so the last word in the poem is alive.
It's scientifically smart and accurate with the alive at the end.
But the gift of it, I thought, Sisi, was the just gentleness of touch.
I think you're a real writer in the way that you do this.
Let's hear this again.   Sisi Reid: "Mother Earth."

The night sky masks her.   The rain washes her fears away.

The trees protect her.   The grass gives her warmth.

The oceans soothe her.
The stars guide her.   The sun keeps her alive.


[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: It's just amazing.

Thank you so much.   There you are.

Pamela Michael: Thank you.   Congratulations.

Robert Hass: And now we come to the Grand Prize winners.
The awards are given every year in, in particular categories.
That is, kindergarten, first, second grade children,
late secondary school, middle school and later
in junior high and high school.
So the first Grand Prize winner for 2006 in the poetry category
in Category 1, which is K- 2 grade, is Avery Forsythe
from Crested Butte, Colorado.   Come on up, Avery.

Pamela Michael: Avery.
Robert Hass: Slate River School and her teacher there is Sue Wilson.

Avery Forsythe: "I Love My Dog."
The summer sun danced off the water while I played
in the S-shaped bend in the East River.
I stomped in the water with my puddle boots
and I watched my dog Taylor flop
down like a child flops down on her bed.
She looked like a lump of angel rock protecting me as I plomp, plomp,
plomped in the shallow edge of the river.
I was always the happiest kid in the world playing with my dog in the sun
at the S-shaped bend in the East River.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: That is so wonderful.

[ Inaudible ]
Well, you hear the flow of it, the way it descends, but the phrase --
I just went like that was when "she looked like a lump of angel rock."
I thought, you know, I can get very jealous of lines like that
and think, oh, well, it's beginner's luck, you know --
[ laughter ]   -- but it's very wonderful.

Also, what else is there?   "Like a child flops down on her bed.

A dog into the river like a child" --
oh, anyway, this is so wonderfully observed and imagined.
Would you read it again for us, Avery?
Avery Forsythe: "I Love My Dog."
The summer sun danced off the water while I played
in the S-shaped bend in the East River.
I stomped in the water with my puddle boots
and I watched my dog Taylor flop
down like a child flops down on her bed.
She looked like a lump of angel rock protecting me as I plomp, plomp,
plomped in the shallow edge of the river.
I was always the happiest kid in the world playing with my dog in the sun
at the S-shaped bend in the East River.
[ Applause ]
Robert Hass: That's just beautifully done, my dear.

Thank you very much.   Pamela Michael: There you go.

And wait. Oh, here.   This is your certificate.

Robert Hass: There's your certificate.
Great. Oh, it's heavy to carry.
In Category 2 the Grand Prize winner for this year is Devin Felter.
Devin is 12.
He comes from New Windsor, New York from Vails Gate High School.
And his teacher, who we we'll be introducing to you
in a few minutes, is Barbara Oliver.
Devin Felter: "My Trip to the Hudson River."
Robert Hass: Stand up there, get closer.
Devin Felter: "My Trip to the Hudson River."
Footprints all around.
Rabbit, deer, dog, coyote, squirrel, wild turkey.
Eyes watching all around.   Fog in the distance.

Rocks on the shore.   Sounds of crows in the background.

Smell of snow in the air.   Water sits calm and quiet.

Fog disappearing slowly.   Buds in the tulip trees.

Sound of footsteps in the snow.   Shadows of the trees in the water.

[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Thanks so much.

That was just terrific.
We had a conversation about nervousness
and reading fast beforehand, and he was -- you were right on the mark.
And we were saying this poem is a list, really.
And there's a list that makes a picture.
And it requires, one, accuracy of observation and a kind
of delicacy as it moves down.   And then how do you end?

You know, lists don't have, necessarily have an ending.
And you can sort of have a moral as an ending of a poem,
but he just stays with the picture in the clearest way with shadows
on the water at the very end of the poem.
It's very accomplished.   Devin Felter: Read it again?

Robert Hass: Yeah, again.
Devin Felter: "My Trip to the Hudson River."
Footprints all around.
Rabbit, deer, dog, coyote, squirrel, wild turkey.
Eyes watching all around.   Fog in the distance.

Rocks on the shore.   Sounds of crows in the background.

Smell of snow in the air.   Water sits calm and quiet.

Fog disappearing slowly.   Buds in the tulip trees.

Sound of footsteps in the snow.   Shadows of the trees in the water.

[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: That's wonderful.

Thank you.   You did a great job of reading.

Good job with the reading, Mom.   Didn't he do, didn't he do well?

You know, almost every river
in North America has some local community volunteer organization
paying attention to it, trying to do something to save it.
To make sure that it flows, that the biological life that a lot
of the treatment of our rivers in the 20th century have caused
to retreat are coming back into it.
Here in Washington it's the Friends of the Anacostia River.
President is -- which is Robert Boone who's --
Pamela Michael: He's here.   Robert Hass: Is he here?

Pamela Michael: Yeah.   Robert Hass: Robert, are you here?

He's one of the heroes,
environmental heroes of this country.
[ Applause ]
Robert Hass: Distantly related to Daniel Boone,
so that spirit is still keeping our rivers alive.
In the case of the Hudson River,
it's the Hudson River Institute that's doing that kind of work.
And if any of you in your home towns are not aware of who is doing
that river work in the place where you are, that's --
it's a great connection, the connection between schools
and the keepers of the river.   Our next contestant.

Contestant?   Pamela Michael: Winner.

Robert Hass: Winner, Grand Prize winner in Category 3,
grade seven through nine for 2006 is Audrey Larkin.
Audrey is 12.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: She is in the Poetry Inside Out program in San Francisco,
California, and her teachers are John Simon and Anita Sagastegui.
Did I pronounce her name right?   [ laughter ]

Audrey Larkin: Yeah.
Pamela Michael: Let me just say, Audrey read in San Francisco
and got her ribbon there and we don't -- she doesn't have it so.
She has it, but not with her, right?   Audrey Larkin: "Tides."

My secret is like the tide, thundering and roaring in my ear.
How could you?   Why did you?

The regret fills my mind like a blanket of fog.
Cold, damp, endless, obscuring all thought.
My secret is like a wave, gigantic, powerful, terrible.
But then it slinks back with the tide into a dark, deep,
frozen place where it dwells
until it is once again pulled out into open water.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass:

[ Inaudible ]   Let me say a word and then I'll --

that's what I was saying
about emotional honesty and the power of poetry.
You know, a small anecdote.
We were worried at the beginning of this program
that while we wanted kids to write about the natural world,
we did not want to propagandize.
You know, we didn't want to say go out
and have our positive attitude toward nature.
Nature is more complicated than that.
Beings eat each other.   It causes floods.

We wanted the whole truth of the power of the natural world.
I think the first poem we got when the first contest starting to come
in was from a child in Washington, D.C. who had a poem that said,
"If I were a raindrop I would not like to fall on the back
of the big black dog because it could turn around
and eat you with its red tongue.
And if it fell on a fence, you could fall off and break your right leg.
And if you fell off the other side you could break your left leg.
I would like to flow into the curb and go flowing right home."
That was -- and we thought right away, there's not going
to be a problem with emotional truthfulness in these.
But emotional truthfulness in art is a very rare gift.
It's not easily won.
This poem is not about environments exactly,
but it's about watery metaphors
for the inescapable force of what's inside us.
And you just do it dazzlingly.   Let's hear it again.

Audrey Larkin: "Tides."
My secret is like the tide, thundering and roaring in my ear.
How could you?   Why did you?

The regret fills my mind like a blanket of fog, cold, damp,
endless, obscuring all thought.
My secret is like a wave, gigantic, powerful, terrible.
But then it slinks back with the tide into a dark, deep,
frozen place where it dwells
until it is once again pulled out into open water.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Thank you so much.

As I said, Audrey is 12.
The Library of Congress, not this building but the Jefferson Building
across the street is where the office of poetry
and the Poet Laureate's office is,
so this place where you kids are reading your poems is the place
where Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Bishop,
Marianne Moore, many of the wonderful poets
in this country, William Carlos Williams.
William Carlos Williams got the job of being Poet Laureate
and then they read in the newspaper
that he thought the first thing he would do is break of bunch
of windows in Congress, and I think he got disinvited
after about three weeks of being here.
So our Grand Prize winner in Category 4,
grades 10- 12 is Diana Chien.   Diana is 17.

She's from Holmdel, New Jersey, Holmdel High School.
Her teacher is Sandra Whitten.   [ Applause ]

[ Pause ]
Diana Chien: "Fire in Winter" The hoof prints of the deer
in the snow are broken hearts, bowed raindrops,
birds' eyes painted with a bamboo brush.
The rough-furred, coal-tipped legs mince.
Matchstick pistons, they strike sparks from iced boulders,
strike a wintry rhythm to the tick and whisper
of the creeping hoarfrost.
The pliant ice sheathing river stones' flanks.
The scent of resin and musk is in those wide nostrils,
the leaf-shaped ears flick to catch a memory
of soft rain in summer greenery.
Now, a pine bough splits in the distance,
graced with snow's heavy embrace.   There is a sound of my heart.

There is a sound of the explosion as a deer bounds up and out,
heels kicking a spray of diamond-colored fire.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: That's an amazing poem.

[ Inaudible ]
Well, you don't have to read very far into the poem.
"The hoof prints of the deer in the snow are broken hearts" is
about as far as you have to go.
But if you listen again, almost every detail
in this poem is remarkable in its power
of observation or something else.
Not just things like the "pliant ice sheathing river stones' flanks."
This is, you know, skill in language that's ready
for the world at this point.
And juxtapositions are just setting one thing next to one another.
"There is the sound of my heart.
There is the sound of explosion as the deer bounds up and out."
You know, how that leap of a deer can make your heart leap
in that way and it gets it exactly.
Anyway, some remarkable piece of work.
Diana, again, please.
Diana Chien: "Fire in Winter" The hoof prints of the deer
in the snow are broken hearts, bowed raindrops,
birds' eyes painted with a bamboo brush.
The rough-furred, coal-tipped legs mince.
Matchstick pistons, they strike sparks from iced boulders,
strike a wintry rhythm to the tick and whisper
of the creeping hoarfrost.
The pliant ice sheathing river stones' flanks.
The scent of resin and musk is in those wide nostrils.
The leaf-shaped ears flick to catch a memory
of soft rain and summer greenery.
Now a pine bough splits in the distance,
graced with snow's heavy embrace.   There is a sound of my heart.

There is a sound of explosion as a deer bounds up and out,
heels kicking a spray of diamond-colored fire.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: That was good.

[ Inaudible ]   . Be sure

[ inaudible ]   there you go, that's wonderful work.

So work like this, Diana, I want to go back and quote every single line
in here, but I won't do it.
Not only the "scent of resin and musk is in those wide nostrils,"
as a perception, but where is it?
"The rough-furred coal-tipped legs mince."
Over and over there's that -- you remind us of the power of language
and the power of expression.
It also reminds me of the power of teachers.
That these gifts have to be, they have to be cultivated, recognized
and cultivated by someone that though the love of language
and the love of art and the love of ideas and of the power
of action art is innate, it doesn't always turn itself on by itself.
It needs teachers to do it.
And some of the teachers are here today,
and we would like to introduce them to you.
Jack Conlon's teacher, Joanna Hapner is her.
Joanna, are you here?
Would you please come up for a moment?
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Congratulations.

We're thrilled.   We have a present for you.

Joanna Hapner: Thank you very much.
Robert Hass: A book of poems that we hope you will -- thank you.
Did you want to say a word about teaching?
Pamela Michael: Do you want to say something?
Joanna Hapner: I adore my job.
I have the best job in the world, and that is the job of allowing kids
to explore the world through words.
I am blessed to have my students for three years in a row and in
that amount of time, we explore the world of words,
the world around us and the world within us.
And we're blessed to have opportunities like this
to share our love, not only the world within us
but at an international level as well.
And when you see kids coming together of all ages,
I am just blown away by what I'm hearing here today.
And, you know, we're just all so lucky to be exposed to this,
and I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity.
Thank you.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Thank you.
And as I mentioned to you, Devin Felter's teacher,
Barbara Oliver, is also here.   Barbara, please come up.

[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Thank you.

We have a book of poems for you.   Barbara Oliver: Thank you.

How nice. Robert Hass: Would you like to say a word?
Pamela Michael: Would you like to say something?
Barbara Oliver: Well, this is such a nice opportunity for all of us
and I'm thrilled on behalf of Devin and my other students
to have this opportunity.
I'm very thankful to the River of Words organization
for providing the kind of venue that teachers can use
to have their students' work acknowledged and even published.
I think that's just such a wonderful opportunity for our children.
And thank you very much for the work that you do.
Pamela Michael: And you.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass:   [ Inaudible ]

And one of the teachers of our art finalists is also here
and we want to honor her.
Elisa Slee, could you come up for a moment?
[ Applause ]   Thank you so much for being here.

I don't know if you have that book.   Elisa Slee: I do.

Thank you.   Robert Hass: Okay.

Elisa Slee: I'm happy to be here thanks to the Tilley family,
and last year I had a poetry finalist, a little first grader,
and I think that when we presented the award
to the school it inspired everybody else
and so this year we had four classes enter, and we were delighted
that Shannon was an art finalist.
And all the poems that we heard today were very inspiring,
and I have been taking pictures and filming and I know
that your work will inspire more students to enter next year.
So thank you.
Robert Hass: Thank you.   Thank you so much.


[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: Would all the teachers in the room just stand
up so we can honor you all as a group.
I know there are some other teachers here, too.
Robert Hass: Teachers.   Pamela Michael: Teachers.

[ Applause ]   Thank you.

Robert Hass: I want to share one more poem with you.
Each year we give one -- and one of my passions is
for the Japanese haiku and I've done a book
of translations of those poems.
I particularly love them and we give --
and the most famous book of haiku is by a Japanese poet named Basho,
and that book is called The Monkey's Raincoat.
And I think the poem is, a great big leaf is the monkey's raincoat.
So our, our Monkey's Raincoat Prize this year went to Clay McMullen.
He's 11 years old.
He's from Chesterland, Ohio, West Geauga Middle School.
His teacher is Michelle Gebram.   And his poem is called "Lucky."

And it goes, "Osprey swoops down, brook trout leaps skyward, airborne.
Lucky day for one."   [ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: We're going to introduce you to another
of our board members who is going to read a letter
from our California Senator, Dianne Feinstein,
who sent a letter recognizing our California winners and finalists.
This is Stanley Young, one of the River of Words board members
who came all the way from California to be here.
So thank you, Stanley.   [ Applause ]

Stanley Young: Thank you.
If those drapes were open we'd be able to look out on the Capitol.
And in the Capitol there are the representatives who are elected
by the people of the United States.
And among them are 100 individuals known as Senators,
two for each state, as you probably know.
And two for California as well as two for Wyoming and two for Alaska.
I'm not sure it's entirely fair.
But the two -- Pamela Michael: None for Washington.
Stanley Young: We have two Senators in California, they each represent
about 17-and-a-half million people.
And one of them took an interest in the River of Words
and was kind enough to deliver this message.
It is Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Senior Senator of California.
And she says, "Dear friends, I am sorry I could not be with you
on this Earth Day, but I am pleased
to offer my heartfelt congratulations and encouragement
to the award recipients and all those
who made today's event possible.
The River of Words celebrates humanity's commitment
to educating our youth about the environment
and honor students whose art and poetry inspire us
and connect us more deeply with our natural world.
"Our environment faces many challenges today
from the proliferation of greenhouse gasses
to the ever growing number of endangered species.
It is obvious to many that our world's health is at a crossroads.
I am sure I echo the sentiments of all those in attendance when I say
that I am proud of all the award nominees.
"As a Senator from the State of California,
I would also like to extend my special congratulations
to the three California Grand Prize winners, Audrey Larkin,
Keeley Christiansen and John Dixon, as well as Shannon Tilley
and the 25 other California finalists.
Your work is an inspiration to all of us concerned
about the future of our environment.
You give us all great hope that efforts to preserve, protect
and beautify our planet will continue for many years to come.
"With warmest personal regards, Dianne Feinstein."
[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: We're going to award the art prizes now
and I have to ask John a question.
John Reagan, do I push the center thing to advance?
John Reagan: No, the right arrow.
Pamela Michael: The right arrow, okay.
Great. Can all of you see a screen because we're going to show all
of the wonderful art and when the art of the people who are here,
the Grand Prize winners, and we have a couple of finalists here, too,
are on the screen, they're going to come up.
So here goes.
Dada! This is our Category 1 Grand Prize
by Keeley Christiansen from Watsonville.
And you might not be able to read the poem
that she wrote on her painting.
It says "Sad owl fell, happy egret helps on a sunny winter day."
And we really love this painting because the birds are kind
of strutting and they're just -- they're so animated.
Keeley, do you want to come up and receive your award?
Where are you?   [ Applause ]

There she is.   Here's your certificate.

Here do you want to stand over here so your mom can see?
You probably don't want to say anything, do you?
Do you want to say something about your painting?
No? Keeley went through this in San Francisco two weeks ago so --
[ Laughter ]   We have some more prizes for you.

Your painting is really nice.   Robert Hass: It's very wonderful.

It's also a collage, a cutout among other things.
There are a couple of things to notice about it.
When the ceremony is over, Keeley,
I want them to particularly notice the way that you did that sun.
Here it just looks like a yellow -- a round yellow spot,
but it's actually textured in a wonderful geometric way.
And the bird figures are cutouts and there's something that is delicate
and humorous and just alive at the same time
in the way their bodies move.
Our judge for children's art is a man named Thacher Hurd,
who is from Northern California.
He's a very well known children's artist and illustrator.
He's the son of Clement Hurd, the author of Goodnight Moon,
which is probably the single most popular illustrated children's book
of all time.
And Thacher is -- it's Thacher's eye that spots wonderful things
like Keeley's drawing, cutout painting and drawing.
She's from Watsonville, California, by the way.
She's six.   Linscott Charter School.

And her teachers are Manjula Stokes   [ spelled phonetically ]

and Linda Cover.   Keeley, congratulations.

[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: I want to add a note about Linda Cover,
one of the teachers who taught Keeley.
She's been teaching -- she's a parent at Linscott,
as I understand, is that right?   Yeah, she was.

And she has been -- we have had so many winners
and finalists from her students.
She's just an absolutely gifted art teacher.
And she has kids down on the river.
They live near the Pajaro River, which was just named this week
by American rivers as the most endangered river
in the United States.
So a lot of work to be done in Watsonville.
This is Category 2 Grand Prize.   This is Kieran McElvaney.

He's nine.   He's from Marietta, Georgia.

This is the "Kingfisher."
He goes to High Meadows School and his teacher is Brenda Major.
Kieran, you want to come up and get your prize.
[ Applause ]   Robert Hass: Congratulations.

What's the medium?   Kieran McElvaney: Pastels.

Pamela Michael: You want to talk about it?
Robert Hass: Do you want to say it?
Kieran McElvaney: My art piece is made with pastels and it's --
as you can see, it's a Kingfisher at night
with the moon in the background.
Pamela Michael: And you talked about where you saw the --
do you want to talk about -- Kieran McElvaney: Yes.
Pamela Michael: Go to the mic and you can tell them where you saw it.
Kieran McElvaney: I saw the Kingfisher on a canoe trip
on the Chattahoochee River and I really liked the coloring
on it so that's why I drew it.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Congratulations, Kieran.
Again, you want to go look at the original.
I was standing there, Kieran, before the ceremony looking at this
and another man was standing next to me, and he said, "It's like a myth."
And it's true.
I was thinking a similar and different thought.
There's something in the way he uses the pastels
to get the feeling of night.
Large moon, smart hunter bird, dark coming on.
Felt to me like there ought to be a --
there ought to be a haiku that goes full moon, bright Kingfisher,
sound of water or something like that
that you can almost sense the predator alertness in the,
in the Kingfisher's movement and you get the shape of the beak
and the head of the Kingfisher and the color, so amazingly.
It's this thing I mean
about transferring the gift of life to other people.
It's just a wonderful piece of work.   [ Applause ]

Pamela Michael: And this is "Rainy Day" by You Na Park.
She's 15 from Lorton, Virginia.
She goes to the J Art Studio and her teacher is Ju Yun.
You Na, are you here?   There you are, hi.

[ Applause ]   Pamela Michael: Congratulations.

You Na Park: Thank you.   Robert Hass: Congratulations.

It was just wonderful work.
We'll get a chance to talk for a minute afterwards.
Are you comfortable talking a little bit about the technique of this?
Pamela Michael: Yeah?
You want to talk about your painting?
Robert Hass: Can you say a word?   You don't have to.

You Na Park:   [ Unintelligible ]

Robert Hass: Okay.   Thank you.

You Na Park: Thank you to people who helped me to win this grand prize.
[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: You Na, is your teacher here?
You Na: No.   Robert Hass: But here, wait, wait.

There's this.   Pamela Michael: Thank you.

Robert Hass: Thank you very much.   I was asking her --

[ Applause ]
I was asking her if she felt comfortable talking
about the technique of the thing, and she said,
I would just like to thank you.
In general, it seems like, for the most part, the poets seem
to really love to talk about their --
what they're doing and the painters would
like to let their work speak for itself.
I think it belongs to the trade.
But again, you need to look at this close up.
It's patterned geometrically but in irregular strips.
Parts of it are rectangles and parts of it are squares.
It's a technique associated with Mondrian
and with early 20th century kind of geometrical design painting.
And then up against the geometry is this kind
of floating white stuff that's, I guess, cloud or steam
from a summer rain or something like that, but there's the kind
of organic stuff that breaks up the white and then with the blues
and the greens and the yellows there is the exhilaration
of these two children that kind of plays against the orderliness
of the rest of the painting.
And something about the combination of the color and the way you got --
I don't know if you worked from a photograph doing those kids,
but the sense that -- the proportion of the bodies,
the sense of exhilaration in the bodies is quite wonderful.
It's just a terrific piece of work, and we admired it in its spirit
and we also admired it technically.   We think you are a real artist.

So thanks very much.   You may

[ unintelligible ]   [ Applause ]

Pamela Michael: This is our Category 4 Grand Prize winner
from John Dixon.
He is the -- are you the fifth or what?
We have this dynasty at San Benito High
with an art teacher named John Robrock.
Last year's winner and we've had a number of finalists,
so he's carrying on the tradition of art winners from this school.
Congratulations, John.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass:   [ Unintelligible ]

Pamela Michael: Do you want to talk, John?
John Dixon: No.
He kind of took my word with let the art speak for itself.
[ Laughter ]
Pamela Michael: Your certificate is in --
Robert Hass: I think the certificate is in there
so let me give that to you separately.
How did you happen to settle on this subject matter?
John Dixon: I knew I wanted to draw a frog for quite a long time
because I'm in studio art AP and we assemble a portfolio for that,
and I had been looking for the right picture and then one happened
to be the right thing for this contest, too.
Robert Hass: Uh-huh.   And the material?

The medium you're working with?   John Dixon: It's new pastel.

Robert Hass: It looks like -- what's new pastel?
John Dixon: It's just a form of pastel.
Pamela Michael: Is it better than old pastel?
[ Laughter ]   Robert Hass: Thank you.

John Dixon: And you.
Robert Hass: So I don't know if you could hear,
the medium is new pastel.
I wondered if he had worked from a photograph and he said, yes, he had,
that he wanted to draw the frog for a long time.
Again, there's the business of myth here, John,
that looking at these two bold clearly delineated objects here.
One of the things, Avery, about frogs is that they're hunters
or fishermen, only their fishing line is their tongues.
And what they need to see, to survive, is those big eyes.
Eyes and patience in that tongue, and there they are.
And the lotus, sitting right next to it.
It's kind of a portrait of beauty and the beast in a way.
And what the lotus, we were saying, feeds off sunlight
but it needs pollination.
And so like the frog needs a tongue, the lotus needs
to have those anthers sticking up from the center in order
to attract insects to take its pollen from flower to flower,
and both of them are reflected in the water.
So you get beauty and the beast, two styles of life adapting itself
to life, force and power of life itself.
The way it's reflected in the water rendered
with this scrupulous accuracy and the qualities
of color that pastel can give.
It's just another work of art, John, that's a great gift to us.
Thanks, very much.   John Dixon: Thank you.

[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: And this is our 2006 International Prize.
This year the winner, as was last year, in fact, is from Hong Kong.
Leung Man Wai, she's 11.
She has a teacher named Stephanie Yip
who has sent us another finalists as well.
So she also goes by the nickname Ada.
Ada, would you like to come up.   I don't have my glasses.

There you are.   Come on up.

[ Applause ]   Boy, you're going to be colorful.

Congratulations.
Would you like to say something in the microphone?
Leung Man Wai: Yeah.   Pamela Michael: Step up on there.

Leung Man Wai: I was very surprised to read this part.
[ Laughter ]   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Congratulations.   That's just wonderful.

[ Unintelligible ]
Pamela Michael: Now you'll be even more colorful.
Robert Hass: You've got more colorful stuff to carry.
Pamela Michael: Thank you very much.   Congratulations.

Robert Hass: Thank you very much, and congratulations.
[ Applause ]   Ada, there are a couple of things

about your piece that were very striking.
One is that for someone who lives in a big city,
the way that you got the wateriness of Hong Kong as a port city.
The way you got the built environment.
Not only the skyline of the city and the design thing that happens,
those wonderful search lights on the top of the buildings,
but also the reflection of a thin sliver of moon in the water
for the natural world of the sky beyond the city lights
that can't be seen.
And how you decided to have that bridge going off into nowhere
down at the bottom is completely cool.
I don't understand enough art to know how you do that.
And another thing, we made the little Noah's ark of the boat,
and there is the boat of Hong Kong and it's filled with people.
That's another thing that I have noticed about -- oops, I just --
Pamela Michael: That's all right.
Robert Hass: How do I push this -- there.
And a thing that I noticed about that it's more typical actually
of Asian kids sensibilities than of American ones is the way
that there's the inclusion of a whole community of people.
There are a lot of people in that boat of different ages.
There's a -- so there's the quality of the family
of human beings inside the boat against the background of the city.
And they're all being tugged forward
by these wonderfully imaginatively rendered,
even kind of silly flying fish.   It makes a gorgeous thing.

It's practically a story of our relationship
to both the natural world and the made world.
And we were completely charmed by it.
So I want to thank you very much, and your teacher, Stephanie Yip.
[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: And now our finalists and we have two,
three of them here with us today.
So when your piece comes up, I'll call you up.
I'm going to go through the others fairly quickly.
These are all, actually, they will be soon.
Some of them are on our website, but we're a staff
of essentially two people and we have a two-day a week person who --
Laura Paradise who is here who helps us
with fund raising and development.
But Nora and I are here so we can't put these back
up on the Web site until we get back home.
So look toward the end of the month, beginning of May?
Beginning of May and you can see all of them on our Web site.
Here's another one of Linda Cover's students from Watsonville.
Do you want to talk about any of these, Bob?
Robert Hass: No, just go over with the local ones.
Pamela Michael: Okay.   Sure. Another one of Linda Cover's.

These are all collaged with painted things and tissue paper


Pretty funny, huh?
Robert Hass: If you're not the snail, it is funny.
[ Laughter ]   Pamela Michael: We had a lot

of wonderful entries this year from Montana as well.
And a lot of birds.   This was definitely the bird year

in the art department at River of Words.
We accept photographs as well as paintings and drawings.
Oh, now this -- these next four, this is a River
of Words dynasty, the Darhams.
Two of the children have been Grand Prize winners.
Last year Mira was a Grand Prize winner, and she was a babe in arms
when her sister Ella one the prize years before
and she wore the same dress her sister wore years earlier.
Both of their brothers have been finalists as well.
This year they had a grand slam.
All four children, who are home schooled in Montana, were finalists.
So wait, you'll see why.   This is by Ella.

Jackson, her twin brother.
Max. And this is by little Mira, these little buffalo clouds.
They're a wonderful family.   Here's some more Bozeman kids.


Baton Rouge.
From Glasgow Middle School teacher, Geeta Dave.

This one, Thacher really loved this one because he thought it was
such an astute nature study.
It's really a very detailed and accurate and loving look at a fox.
From McAllen, Texas.   Another Bozeman.

Van Gillette.   Sarah Hartley, age five.

This is one of our photos.
The eye of this horse is just haunting to me.
I don't know whether you can see it on the screen or not,




And this is one of -- you're going to meet Hayatullah later,
but we have had an ongoing relationship with children
in Quetta, Pakistan for about five years now
who are refugees from Afghanistan.
And we've had finalists and Hayat was our Grand Prize winner in 2004.
Every year, ever since they discovered an old magazine
in the refugee camp, they found a four-year old copy of Ranger Rick
that had a mention of River of Words and our contest,
and one of the boys got online and e-mailed and asked
if the contest was still happening and I said, yes, yes.
And we received this package that was stitched in muslin and bound
with cord and sealing wax, just this magical package that had entries.
And two boys were finalists the first year and we sent ribbons
and prizes and I guess word spread because the next year we got
about 200 entries, and every year it's just --
we have a remarkable collection of work by these children.
And there's a special section of our Web site of the work
of the Afghan children and I really encourage you to go look at it.
This is a photograph that Peter Johnson did some special things
with, I guess, in Photoshop or one of the new tools
that they have for playing with images.
Another moose.
This painting is just -- it has much mystery to it.
Is Myongsook -- Robert Hass:   [ Unintelligible ]

Pamela Michael: Is she here?   Robert Hass: Yeah.


Pamela Michael: Where is she?   Robert Hass: No?

Pamela Michael: No?   No, she's not here.

She's another student at the J Arts Studio here locally in Virginia.
And I talked to her teacher and she told me
that she worked a month on this painting.
We have the original here, we thought she was going to be here.
You should take a look at it.   Robert Hass: Take a look --

do take a look at the textures of the handling of the skin.
The mix of flesh tones in white, and the kind of almost flame like way
that skin is treated is one very striking thing about it.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's going on,
particularly what the head above the smaller head is.
This almost looks like the face reflected in a drop of water.
So if any of you kids can come up with an interpretation of it
to tell me later, I would appreciate it.
Pamela Michael: This is a pencil drawing,
"Hummingbirds Playing Hide and Seek in Fantasy."
Is Aimei here?   She's local, too.

We invited her, but I think she's not coming, right?
This is a kind of funny one, huh?   Another Hong Kong.

Another student of Stephanie Yip.
And this is -- it's very rectilinear.
A lot of cutouts and there are the pink river dolphins,
the Yangtze River dolphins that are so emblematic
of that part of the world.
This is, of course, an interpretation
of an Escher print called "Tree Rind."
It's really nice.
Another Watsonville winner, another bird.
We've had lots of entries over the years from Azerbaijan.
This is one of them.
And a particularly gifted teacher there, Tatyana Kesar.
This is Fidan Magerramova.   Robert Hass: Seven years old.

Pamela Michael: Seven years old, yeah.

Magerramova.
Wonderful turtle, Gloria Mao, age eight.
Cute one from Rita Medina.   Another Azerbaijani one.


Another Azerbaijani one.   This wonderful beaver.

This teacher, the school district hired an artist in residence to work
with several schools in this area, and boy,
do you really see the affect of quality teaching
on the submissions of the students.
This boy, Justin Ni, he was a finalist last year.
He's seven.
And his entry last year when he was six was one
of the most amazing paintings we have ever received.
It was a bear in the, in the act of catching a salmon
with water flying everywhere and just this amazing piece.
And when we looked at his age, Thacher, the art judge and I kind
of looked at each other and said, oh, I don't know.
So we called the teacher and I said,
"Tell me a little bit about Justin Ni."
And she said that he was the most gifted student she had ever had.
That his mother drives him an hour each way every Saturday
for art lessons.
That he came in one Saturday and said he wanted to learn how
to draw fur, so they spent the day doing fur.
And then he came back the next week and drew this amazing painting
that is also on our Web site.
And this year he's moved on to wolves from bears but...
This year for the first time we had entries from Serbia and Montenegro
and they're really -- it's so remarkable the way culture comes
through in the artwork even of very young children.
It's amazingly embedded in us, isn't it?


Martinez, Georgia by Zach Pitcher.   Another photograph.

This is a weirdly collaged and mysterious one as well.


Another photograph with remarkable energy and movement.
Shannon Tilley.   She's here.

This is "Cats" by Shannon Tilley, age seven, from Laguna Niguel,
and she goes to John Malcolm School
and her teacher, Elisa Slee is also here.
Would you like to come up.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Congratulations.   Pamela Michael: Congratulations.


Robert Hass: What a wonderful   [ unintelligible ]

. Pamela Michael: Do you want to talk about it?
Yeah? No? Okay.
Wait right here, we have got to get your stuff.

Let me see.
Robert Hass: I can tell you're an artist
from the way the colorful hair ribbons match.
It's all   [ inaudible ]

Pamela Michael: Congratulations.   Shannon Tilley: Thank you.

Robert Hass: Thank you.   And our

[ inaudible ]   badly.


[ Applause ]
Robert Hass: I was just saying I could tell
that Shannon was an artist because of the way the colors
of her hair ribbons go with the color of her dress.
And now the bag doesn't go badly.   These two cats are so adorable.

We immediately put you up on the wall so we could look at them.
They cheered us right up.   [ Applause ]

Pamela Michael: This is another Hong Kong.
See these ears here, these mouse ears?
Is there, is there a Disney in Hong Kong now?
Is there a Disneyland in Hong Kong?
Because a lot of the entries had mouse ears in them.
We're going to go through faster now.


Until we get to Mary Van Wert.
Mary Van Wert came up, driving with her dad
from Peachtree City, Georgia today.
This is a painting called "Flowing Affection."
Come on up.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Here you are, my dear.   Congratulations.

Pamela Michael: Do you want to say something about your piece?
We were kind of curious about what was going on.
Go to the mic, okay?   Let me get this on you.

Mary Van Wert: Well, this was actually a project
for my gifted English class.
We had the option of doing this contest for either the poetry
or the art or another agricultural essay.
But I chose the art.   [ Laughter ]

Mary Van Wert: And you can't really see it on this computer screen,
but the symbolism in this picture is that, for my best friend,
who has been my best friend since we were one-and-a-half.
She saw this movie and said, "I want to be proposed to like that."
There was a butterfly flying out of the guy's hand
and there was a wedding ring inside of it.
And there's -- if you look at it closely, it's over there,
but when the butterfly is flying out of his hand there's a little sparkle
in there, and it's -- I did it in honor of my best friend.
[ Applause ]
Robert Hass: That's a great story, my dear.
Thank you so much.   Pamela Michael: Thank you.

Robert Hass: And congratulations.   [ Unintelligible ]

making art.   Pamela Michael: I think we're --

I think Mark Whipple is the end.
The end. So now we have two final things.
One is to honor -- let me get to the mic --
to honor a winner who we have been trying to honor for two years.
He was the winner in 2004, as I said earlier.
And because he moved around a lot and because it's more difficult
to get a visa to the United States these days,
it took us a while to get him here.
But he's here and we are so happy to finally meet him and to honor him.
And he's going to speak a little bit.
Also, he's here -- he's originally from Afghanistan.
Because of all the troubles there he and his family fled to Pakistan
and lived in the camps there for a number of years.
He can tell you.
And then they finally immigrated to Wagga Wagga, Australia,
which I found out online last night means crow
in the Aboriginal language there.   A town of 57,000 people.

And we have some representatives from the Afghan Embassy, as well,
to give you a little background on Hayat and maybe --
why don't we bring you up first actually, Omar,
and you can introduce yourself
and give us a little background on his situation.
Omar Goforzai   [ spelled phonetically ]

: Good afternoon members of the River of Words organization,
Pamela Michael, Robert Hass,
ladies and gentlemen, talented boys and girls.
I am Omar Goforzai and I am with the embassy of Afghanistan here
in Washington, D.C. It is my pleasure to be here with you all,
along with my colleague, Mr. Fasu Fasu
[ spelled phonetically ]
, the political counsel here at the Afghan embassy.
We want to firstly congratulate all of you
who have won the International poetry and art awards.
We are privileged to be here to witness the presentation
of the River of Words International Art Award to Hayatullah Haidari,
a 16-year-old talented young Afghan boy.
I want to basically introduce to all of you
that Hayatullah's story is an amazing one.
After fleeing his country of Afghanistan due to fighting,
devastation, Hayat spent four years in a refugee camp
and spent a lot of time drawing.
Under extremely difficult circumstances Hayat was encouraged
to enter the River of Words International Art Competition
and his drawing, "Sadness," which depicts the state of mind
that hundreds and thousands of Afghan orphans were in while
in refugee camps was picked from tens of thousands
of entries for the top prize.
When Hayat won the top prize the River of Words tried
to get him the visa to attend the awards ceremony in 2005.
However, after many attempts and a lot of efforts by Pamela and Robert
and members of the organization, he was unable to get the visa in time
to meet the award presentation ceremony.
This time, finally, with continuous support from Pamela Michael
and Robert Hass, which we are greatly appreciative of,
Hayat and his father finally received their visas and made it
to today's awards ceremony.
Hayat is from a very special country, Afghanistan.
Let me just provide a little background information
on Afghanistan.
It's very different and very touching.
Afghanistan had been devastated after 24 years of continued war,
civil strife and fighting and foreign interference.
In 1979 the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
in which 1.7 million Afghans were either killed or maimed.
The war lasted for 14 long years and left drastic circumstances
and consequences on the Afghan population.
To make it even worse, in 1996, the Taliban emerged
and implemented a tyrannical rule where boys
and girls were not allowed to go to school
or even play very general sports such as soccer or kite flying.
Now Afghanistan sees hope for a brighter future and better tomorrow.
During the past four years, with the continued assistance
of the United States of America and our international friends,
we have witnessed major achievements
in establishing a Democratic and civil society.
Since 2001, 5.4 million boys and girls are back in school.
We have an elected president, ratified constitution,
an elected parliament and a society where Afghan women are part
of the political process.
Freedom of press has been established
and we have received astounding economic growth during the past
four years.
And furthermore, as part of the other general achievements,
major highways have been built linking the country together.
However, of course, we still do have a long way to go.
There's a lot of issues that we have to tackle and we are continued --
determined to work together with our international friends,
and in particular, the United States of America to see
that we achieve all our goals that we have
in the long term future for Afghanistan.
It is from this kind of country that Hayat is from.
That's why I just wanted to provide a little background information
on the circumstances that he grew up in and the circumstances
that he was able to basically find out about this award
and send his picture, like Pamela indicated before.
So now it is my pleasure to introduce
to you all Hayatullah Haidari, who traveled all the way from Australia,
arrived last night with his father to make this award today.
Thank you very much for all your support.
[ Applause ]   Pamela Michael: Thank you.

We have your ribbon from last year but I don't have it
[ unintelligible ]   . Would you like to talk?

Get closer to the mic.   Hayatullah Haidari: Thank you all.

First of all, on behalf of my father and from my side, thanks very much.
The organization really supported us to come here and get my prize.
I'm very happy and it's really great to be here.
So I want   [ unintelligible ]

. The drawing that I have done, the title is "Sadness."
I made that in my mind that how the people live
and how they looks and what they feel.
Then I draw it in a soft pencil color.
It looks simple, that's what I'm aiming for.
It shows the life of the people in Afghanistan, the offense.
There's a   [ unintelligible ]

families in that country.
So today it is really great for me to be here and get my prize.
Thank you very much.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass:
[ Inaudible ]   drawing that you did


Pamela Michael: Yeah.
Probably most of you have had -- we don't have it on the slide show
because we didn't know until the last minute that this was going
to happen, that he was finally going to make it this year.
But please do take a look at the -- it's actually a drawing.
You didn't see it.
It looks a little like a self-portrait to me.
It is, huh?
Yes. I didn't know what Hayat looked like, although I suspected
when we received it that it was a self-portrait,
until his teacher sent a newspaper article
when he couldn't make it last year, and it was really down to the wire.
We had tickets waiting at the airport in Sydney,
and we had a translator, Hayat.   We had Tameem Onsari

[ spelled phonetically ]
a wonderful Afghan-American journalist who was waiting
at the ceremony to welcome you and translate if you needed it.
We were hoping you would be there,
but the visas didn't come through in time.
But we overnighted Hayat's ribbon and prizes to Australia
and his school made a big celebration for him
on World Refugee Day and awarded him there,
and he was on Australian television
and there were some newspaper articles.
So I finally saw what you looked like when I got the article.
And indeed, it's the boy in the drawing, "Sadness."
It's very, very, very beautifully rendered.
So we're thrilled you're here.   Thank you.

And thank you to your father, too, for --
[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: You have no idea, I mean, you thanked River of Words.
Hayat and his family, I mean, he walked to the library
to use the computer to talk to me via e-mail.
Every time they had to go to Sydney to do something at the embassy
for the visa it was a five-hour bus ride there.
So I mean, it was, you know, really a remarkable achievement
on your part that you got here.   So congratulations.

Robert Hass: And in that connection,
our gratitude to you and for the parents do.
This might be a good moment for all of the parents here --
Pamela Michael: Parents, yes.   Good, good.

Robert Hass: To please stand up and be honored.
[ Applause ]   Pamela Michael: Yes.

Thank you.   Thank you.

Before we go on to the teacher of the year award, I just want to say
that there's a man here named Otto Ahmean
[ spelled phonetically ]
who has some paintings by Afghan children.
He'll show them to you afterwards.
He sells these to raise money to send medicines to Afghanistan.
He heard about the event today.
He's the man in the baseball cap back there.
So at the end of the ceremony he'll be over near the artwork
and you can look at them if you want.
I also wanted to say that the District
of Columbia Poet Laureate is in our midst.
Could you stand up, please?   Thank you so much.

I've never met you before.   [ Applause ]

And gee, I feel like I'm forgetting something, but I hope not.
And now we're going to bring up --
someone who has an interesting connection to River
of Words is going to introduce Connie McDonald,
our teacher of the year.   Where are you, Harriet?

There you are.   Oh, there's -- oh, here.

Ann has -- Male Speaker:   [ Inaudible ]

Pamela Michael: This is -- thank you.
This is Hayatullah's beautiful drawing, yes.
[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: Oh, I know what I was forgetting, Yes.
Male Speaker: Sorry, I have one correction here.
This painting I'm not selling to raise medicine,
I'm not selling the medicine, I just want to make that correction.
I'm representing the unknown artist also from Afghanistan just that's --
Pamela Michael: Oh, I see, okay.   I misunderstood.

Forgive me.   Forgive me.

I know what I was forgetting.   Robert Boone.

Robert Boone from Anacostia Watershed Society
who had his own Earth Day event today cleaning
up the Anacostia has come
and brought some T-shirts for the winners.
So Robert, do you want to come up for a second and say something
and then we'll get on to Harriet and Connie.
We have had a relationship with the Anacostia Watershed Society
since our very first year, and we usually take a canoe trip.
Good thing we didn't try it this week with the -- hi.
Robert Boone: Hi, good to see you.   Pamela Michael: You, too.

Robert Boone: Hi, Robert.
Robert Hass: Robert, good to see you.
Robert Boone: Well, Robert Hass and Pamela blew into town and told us
about this vision and dream they had and really inspired us
about the connection between a person's imagination
and the environment.
And it really captured my imagination because it's difficult
in low-income schools to get funding.
There are no art teachers, number one.
And well, I don't go into all of that.
But anyway, we have struggled every year to find a teacher to go
into the schools to create and stimulate
and inspire the kids to do artwork.
Well, I've got one on so I'll just stand out here and model it for you.
A clean river is the bridge to our future.
And we have to have a positive vision for the future
that includes the environment.
With our mechanization and technology,
it's so easy to drift away from that, that bonding
and connection we have with the natural world.
And I have some shirts here.
I don't know how you want to distribute them.
Pamela Michael: At the end of the ceremony come find Robert
and he'll give -- for the winners, he'll give you a T-shirt.
Robert Boone: How many winners do we have?
Pamela Michael: We have eight Grand Prize.
Do you have -- how many T-shirts do you have?
Robert Hass: I may have eight.   Pamela Michael: Okay.

Okay. Well, you can work it out with Robert at the end.
Robert Boone: Okay.   Thank you very much.

Pamela Michael: Thank you.
Robert Boone: And Robert, this is such a wonderful program.
Robert Hass: Thank you.
Robert Boone: It is such an inspiration.
Pamela Michael: Thank you, Robert.   I'm so glad you could make it.

Thanks.   [ Applause ]

Pamela Michael: So now, Harriet Mauer
[ spelled phonetically ]
is the mother of one of our Grand Prize winners from --
do you remember the year?   Female Speaker: 2000.

Pamela Michael: 2000, okay.
Her son Kevin, who has also been a finalist, he was a winner in art,
or he was a winner in poetry.
He's been -- he was a winner in poetry
and he's been a finalist in art.   He's a multitalented kid.

And Harriet is also a teacher and she's a member
of the national writing program?   Project? I'm sorry.

I'm butchering this.
And she is a colleague and friend of Connie McDonald,
our teacher of the year this year.
And when we selected Connie as our teacher of the year,
her dear friend, Harriet, sent me -- you might not even know this,
Connie -- sent me photographs and a CD of other photographs
and a letter saying, "Here's some things you might not know
about Connie.
You really selected the perfect person."
And so I thought it would be really nice for Harriet to introduce you
and tell our audience a little bit about some of your accomplishments
because she knows you better than I do.
So Harriet Mauer.   [ Applause ]

Harriet Mauer: I'm delighted to introduce my colleague and friend,
Connie McDonald, as the River of Words teacher of the year.
During her career as an English and creative writing teacher,
Connie has mentored dozens of teachers and transformed hundreds
of students with her gentle nuanced lessons.
She has conducted teacher workshops and presented her research
at literacy conferences in England and Germany, as well as stateside.
I've known Connie since 1989
when she attended the first summer invitational institute
of the Acadiana Writing Project hosted by the University
of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Teachers are required to do a three-hour teaching demonstration,
and that first summer ten teachers stumbled through long,
chronological accounts of their classroom practice,
until Connie's workshop.
She led us teachers in writing poetry to Debussy
[ spelled phonetically ]   and Rivelle

[ spelled phonetically ]
, showed us how to write poems from words
and phrases clipped from magazines.
She was an early proponent of magnetic poetry without the magnets.
During lunch break while we teachers loafed,
she responded to our writing.
At the end of her presentation we wrote in our evaluations,
"Now we know what a demonstration is."
From her first days of teaching Connie invited in writers
and poets, whoever was at hand.
Her most recent collaboration is with Chicago poet Anna West,
who co-teaches slam poetry with Connie.
She is always sifting experience for lessons.
She took furious notes during Rita Dove's performance
at the last Geraldine R. Dodge poetry festival
and she fashioned them into a series of craft lessons, which she shares
with whomever is interested.   She is a truly selfless teacher.

Connie initiated several important writing programs.
She directed Yeah, You Write summer youth writing camp
for eight years before she moved from Lafayette.
She is a founding member of the Louisiana Writes Contest,
sponsored by a consortium
of the state's national writing project sites.
The award ceremony is held during the Louisiana Festival of the Book
at the state library where she
and her students lead writing activities in a children's tent.
Connie is the kind of person
who would give you the coat off her back.
Really. During our Dead of Winter Writing Retreat,
Connie spent the weekend outdoors in her red robe
because a colleague had forgotten to pack a jacket.
Connie's shout out poetry exercise was the hands down favorite
of all 18 teenagers who spent their date night writing
on the banks of Bayou Tesh.
Some of those shout out poems were finalists among this year's River
of Words entries.
Although Connie moved from our school district to Baton Rouge
in 1999, she is still our yoda.
We resolve lots of teacher issues by invoking her practice.
We say things like, "Well,
in Connie's classroom, here's what we see."
Her example is still that powerful.
I am so happy River of Words recognizes the depth
of Connie's commitment to fostering a love of nature
and a love of the written word.   Congratulations, Connie.

[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: At least we got this color right.
Connie McDonald: Thank you.
Pamela Michael: Congratulations, Connie.
Robert Hass: Congratulations.   Thank you so much for being here.

Connie McDonald:   [ Inaudible ]

I just wanted to thank Harriet and also to say that the reason
that I took my coat off on that cold bayou is
because she made me take it off.
She's the teacher who forgot her coat.
[ Laughter ]
I had to go scrounge around in my suitcase to find my red robe.
But I'm so happy to be a part of this celebration
of good student writing and poetry.
It was great to hear and see the poems and the art up close.
I've already learned so much today.
I'd like to thank Pamela, Michael and Robert Hass and Nora Ericson
for creating such a meaningful contest and for running it
in such a thoughtful way.   I also want to thank Dr. Ann Dobie,

the director of the Louisiana Writing Project,
and her husband Walter, and my friends
who are here today, Harriet, Sandy LaRee
[ spelled phonetically ]   , Dotty Casteel

[ spelled phonetically ]   and my daughter, Bonnie.

The River of Words has been an important contest to me and part
of my school year for about 10 or 11 years
since I spotted it on the Web site.
And when I did, I knew that it was a contest for Louisiana students
and one that they should get involved in.
Our students grow up along cooies   [ spelled phonetically ]

and bayous.
They help their papas in the gardens and in the rice canals
and in the crawfish ponds.
And I immediately broadcast the news to all of my colleagues
in the writing project because back then, as we do now,
we are in an almost constant state of sharing and seeking out,
kind of swapping ideas, good writing ideas for our students.
We have gathered these ideas from poets from Louisiana who have been
in our classrooms like Darrell Bourque, like Sandy Lyon
[ spelled phonetically ]   , SueAnn Owen

[ spelled phonetically ]
, and from novelists and editors like Robert Owen Butler
and Dr. Ann Brewster Dobie.
We have also gotten ideas from our favorite nature poets
who show us ways to look at nature, ways to write about it, Robert Hass,
William Wordsworth, Basho, Mary Oliver.
This past February Harriet organized
that overnight nature writing retreat.
She called it the Dead of Winter Poet Society Overnight
Writing Retreat.   [ Laughter ]

Five teacher consultants from the Louisiana Writing Project
and 18 students ranging from grade seven through their freshman year
in college went down to the banks of the Bayou Tesh.
That night we built a campfire, we roasted hot dogs;
we made s'mores under the stars.
The next morning we roamed the banks of the bayou
and the woods surrounding it and wrote and wrote and wrote.
Ms. Dixie made us a big steaming pot of chicken and sausage gumbo.
And after we had the lunch the poets sat
in a circle and read us their poems.
As Harriet mentioned, three of those young poets were finalists
in this year's contest.
Ms. Harriet encouraged them to polish
up their pieces, get them in the mail.
It was just a few days away.
We like to get these chances to get our students outside and writing.
We tell them to unplug, as Ms. Harriet says,
and to extinguish their cell phones, as Ms. Caroline says,
and to let nature be their teacher, as Wordsworth said.
Another bit of advice we like to give our students is something
that we learned from the poet Georgia Hurd when she came
down to New Orleans to give us a workshop.
She reminded us that poems hide.
She read us a poem by Naomi Nye called "Valentine for Ernest Mann."
In the poem Naomi Nye reminds us that even in things
that we might think are ugly, poems might be hiding.
She says, "Poems hide in the bottoms of our shoes.
They are sleeping."
She read this poem to us and asked us where our poems hid,
and all of us wrote and wrote that day.
And since then, on Valentine's Day almost all of us
in the writing project ask that same question of our students.
In Louisiana right now we have to look extra hard to find the poetry
because of all the devastation.
I live in between New Orleans and Lake Charles;
both cities were damaged heavily by the winds and the waters of Katrina.
Much of the landscape in both of those towns is destroyed.
The lives of many of the people have changed and been ruined.
Louisiana is a damaged place.
Friends and family and New Orleans reported for a long time
that the whole city and everything in it was an eerie shade of gray,
the yards and the houses.
The garbage was piled up almost 50 feet sometimes on every street
in New Orleans, and most of it is still there.
And the birds were gone.
Yet in the last few weeks we have heard about signs of recovery.
They tell us that the green is coming back and some of the families
that we know mowed their lawns
for the first time in the last two weeks.
They tell us that the beloved purple iris is blooming again along the
banks of the Creole Nature Trail and the Barataria Reserve.
They're hearing birds again.
They're not hearing any squirrels yet but the birds are coming back.
And in the midst of this chaos there are signs.
I spent Easter morning with Luciana Carmichael
[ spelled phonetically ]   in Orleans Parish.

She and her husband, both in their 70s, tend seven acres
of hardwood bottom land in lower Algiers.
You can get there by a ferry across the Mississippi River directly
across from the French Quarter.
Down the river, down a river road along a levy,
up a little gravel driveway, Luciana met me at the gate
and the first thing that I saw was a hundred-year-old pecan tree
that had been blown down by the storm.
Its gigantic root structure was tipped up,
and a few yards away was a water oak, an old water oak
that had fallen across the edges of the pond.
She and her husband, now in their 70s, run an artist studio
and tend this land, about seven acres of land.
A few yards away the water oak reminded her of the day
that she had returned from the evacuation.
She was evacuated for 41 days, and when she returned,
she found that what appeared to her to be total devastation.
The canopy of trees, pecan, hackberry and water oak was gone,
fallen trees and limbs littered the property.
She said it looked like a graveyard.
Yet the magnolia tree next to the house was
in full bloom, way out of season.
At first she thought the forest was confused, but after she roamed
through the property with her botanist, her gardener,
who was a botanist, and her husband,
they realized that many plants were blooming like crazy,
sprouting leaves and springtime blossoms way, way early.
Their seeds were being scattered far in advance of the season.
With the canopy gone the smaller trees, some of them decades old,
had shot up over six feet in the month
or so the couple had been gone.
The Carmichaels and their gardener finally understood.
The forest knew exactly what it was doing.
Luciana said what happened in the woods holds important lessons
for humans about recovery and compensating for what we have lost.
The Carmichaels decided to leave every tree exactly as it fell.
Luciana says, "These trees are our dear friends.
They deserve to be honored and studied.
These trees have not finished their work in the forest."
She envisions environmentalists and artists and poets going to the woods
to study, sketch, reflect, to find lessons in many forms
from public policy to poetry in those fallen trees
and the astonishing new growth on the grounds.
As I left Luciana at her gate,
I thought about the poems my own students found this year
as they wrote about the damaged places they know.
Susan's story wonders what has become of a piece
of our grandmother's lace she saw tucked in a drawer
on Saint Charles Avenue in New Orleans.
Billy Creed's poem is about an oxbow
that formed along his uncle's property in Chalmette.
Jamie Glass remembers a rickety old wooden rowboat embedded in the mud
in the Atchafalaya River Basin.
And Katherine West finds poems on the wing beats of birds.
I'll close with Katherine's poem.   She calls it "Hidden."

Poems can hide.   Waiting in the shadows,

dancing under the trees, poems can take flight.
Alighting on the wing beats of a bird.
Open your ears.
They hide on the wind's whispered breath.
Listen. They hide in the rain's gentle requiem.
Take care and listen close.
They hide in the heart's hidden song.
Look close.   They write themselves in the wind.

Watch. They hide in the colors of the sunrise.
Poems can hide.   Finding them can be hard.

Put yourself in their way.   They are waiting.

[ Applause ]
Pamela Michael: We have other things, too.
I have to show you some things we're giving to Connie.
One is, appropriately, an apple, and it says,
"2006 River of Words teacher of the year."
Connie McDonald: Thank you.   Thank you very much.

Pamela Michael: Congratulations.   Connie McDonald: Thank you.

Pamela Michael: And then keeping the apple theme consistent.
One of my oldest friends, lucky for you, is a wonderful jeweler.
And every year she makes a River of Words pen or pendant
for the teacher of the year.   And this has your name on it.

It says, "ROW 2006 Teacher of the Year."
Connie McDonald: It matches my dress.
Thank you so much.   [ Applause ]

Robert Hass: Thank you so much for your work
and for that wonderful talk.
A word to you kids who have been sitting for a long time,
that besides being the place that Mr. Jefferson imagined
that would guard the connection between freedom and learning,
freedom and the book, the Library of Congress makes terrific cookies
and brownies, and they're right over there.
But you're going to have a couple of jobs to do.
One is, some people might want to get you young authors and artists
to autograph their books, so in just a few minutes they'll be able
to buy them and we'll ask you to sign the books.
And we also want to go right outside and get pictures of you
with the Capitol dome behind you, so don't wander away until we are able
to do some of that stuff.
Pamela Michael: And Jane Rogers, who opened up for us is going
to appropriately close for us.
And I have also one little housekeeping thing.
Some child got given Connie McDonald's gift bag,
and you'll know it because in it is a book called Gift of Rivers,
and it's an adult book -- I mean, not adult but --
[ Laughter ]   -- you know what I mean.

And so you have the wrong bag.   We'll trade with you.

It will be in one of the burlap bags.
It will be one of the Grand Prize winners.
If you could just check and see and we'll trade.


Jane Rogers: I'm looking for that poem in the bottom
of my shoe and actually --   [ Laughter ]

-- it doesn't seem to be there, which must be why I'm the Cochair
of the Board for Operations instead of for artistic achievement.
The only good close is a fast one.
So thank you to all of our wonderful children,
our young artists and poets.
You have been incredibly patient today.
And it appears that every person
in this room is truly remarkable in one way or another.
Thank you to all of you.
Please do not forget to support River of Words.
Www.RiverofWords.org.
And the reason to do that is to torture just a little,
the close of Evan's poem, "and best of all, it multiplies."
Pamela Michael: Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Jane, your sister-in-law?
Jane Rogers: Step-sister, but that's okay.
Pamela Michael: Step-sister has something so say.
Female Speaker: We are so proud of you and the work you do
and that this year's River of Words has been dedicated to Jane and all
that she does as Co-chair and really a passionate supporter of the arts
and children and learning, and most of all,
the environment and it's protection.   Love you.

[ Applause ]   Jane Rogers: Thank you.

Let's eat, drink and be merry.   [ Applause ]

[ music ]   [ end of transcript ]