The Poetry of Pain

Another student offers: "I lost my uncle. He's dead. He was a policeman. He got shot."

Educators who have worked with Danley say that what she offers is invaluable, not only because she's able to effectively teach the basics of writing, but because she manages to give kids who might have pain in their hearts a tool for release. But not everyone is comfortable with the emotions Danley taps.

Last spring, she did a stint at Jeffers Hill Elementary in Columbia that was partially funded through a Washington Post Co. Educational Foundation grant. Her two-week residency culminated in a small evening performance, attended by 15 or so students and their parents and teachers. One girl stood up to describe a visit to Disney World, but most presented stories of loss.

A student named Nicholas performed a piece he'd worked on with Danley about a beloved pet, he said, who "was as dead as a leaf in the fall on the ground." Another told the audience about "the nicest person I know," her deceased grandmother. Then a girl broke down while describing the time she was hit by a car as a young child, and nearly all of the audience members were wiping their eyes, too. "Oh, princess," Danley said, quietly, "take a deep breath."

Sometimes parents get upset seeing their children reduced to tears. With this residency, there was one complaint, from a mother whose child came home weeping after hearing some of these painful stories from her classmates. The mother wondered whether there should be a counselor on hand to provide emotional support.

Jeffers Hill's principal, Pamela Butler, calls Danley "phenomenal," but adds that if the school were able to hire her again, "maybe we'd send a letter of explanation ahead of time to parents."

And they'd have to come up with the money. Arts programs such as this are expensive. In Danley's case, schools pay as much as $5,500, often with significant support from the Maryland State Arts Council. The Maryland chapter of Young Audiences/Arts for Learning, a Baltimore-based nonprofit, acts as Danley's cheerleader and booking agent, arranging most of her school visits. Danley makes from $2,500 to $5,500 a job, depending on the length and depth of the residency. Last year, she did 20 residencies in Maryland, as well as assemblies, performances and workshops in places as far away as New York.

Pat Cruz, education director at Young Audiences, knows that Danley makes some adults squirm. "Even the teachers sometimes don't feel comfortable with that kind of emotion in the classroom," Cruz says, "but Gayle's whole point is: 'It's okay to be sad, it's okay to feel these emotions. We just have to be healthy in the way we express them.' {lcub}hellip{rcub} If that's not what [schools] want, I just tell them they need to look for a different poet. It would force Gayle to not be true to her art form to do any less than that, to do something that's just about butterflies and happy sunshine."

Danley sighs when asked about the parents and teachers unnerved by some of the poetry she helps children create. "It's new, and it's raw, and it's real," she says. "It's a kid standing up and saying, 'My grandma died,' and sometimes we don't want to hear a kid doing that."

Lately, the resistance she sometimes encounters and the energy that teaching demands have worn on Danley more than usual. She's booked at area schools through January, when her third child is due to be born, but she wonders if her fatigue is more than just physical. Maybe, she says, it's time for her to look "beyond the cafegymatorium."

Eleanor Kelley, a special-education teacher who arranged for Danley's September residency at Deerfield Run, smiles at the thought of Danley giving up her teaching assignments at schools. "She's not going to be able to," Kelley predicts. "Everyone wants her."

Gayle Danley's career as a slam poet was born in the summer of 1994 in Atlanta, where she'd returned to live after getting a master's degree in television, radio and film from Syracuse University. At the time, she was working in radio ad sales and other media-related jobs and still trying to get over the loss of her mama, Laverne Bradley, who'd died of lung cancer in 1989. (A poem Danley wrote about the loss, titled "2 Pearls," is the one she most cherishes. One line reads, "Between classes I learn/they must take your left lung/and you use up one of your last breaths/to tell me to finish school/and don't even think about giving up.")