About “Where I’m From”
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“Where I'm From” grew out of my response to a poem from
Stories I Ain't Told Nobody
Yet
(Orchard Books, 1989; Theater Communications Group, 1991) by my friend, Tennessee
writer Jo Carson. All of the People Pieces, as Jo calls them, are based on things folks actually
said, and number 22 begins, “I want to know when you get to be from a place. ”Jo's speaker,
one of those people “that doesn't have roots like trees,” tells us “I am from Interstate 40” and “I
am from the work my father did. ”
In the summer of 1993, I decided to see what would happen if I made my own where-I'm-from
lists, which I did, in a black and white speckled composition book. I edited them into a poem —
not my usual way of working — but even when that was done I kept on making the lists. The
process was too rich and too much fun to give up after only one poem. Realizing this, I decided
to try it as an exercise with other writers, and it immediately took off. The list form is simple and
familiar, and the question of where you are from reaches deep.
Since then, the poem as a writing prompt has traveled in amazing ways. People have used it at
their family reunions, teachers have used it with kids all over the United States, in Ecuador and
China; they have taken it to girls in juvenile detention, to men in prison for life, and to refugees in
a camp in the Sudan. Its life beyond my notebook is a testimony to the power of poetry, of roots,
and of teachers. My thanks to all of you who have taken it to heart and handed it on. It's a thrill to
read the poems you send me, to have a window into that many young souls.
“Where I'm From” By George Ella Lyon
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I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch. (Black, glistening, it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush the Dutch elm whose long-gone limbs I remember as if they were
my own.
I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the know-it-alls and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I'm from He restoreth my soul with a cottonball lamb and ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch, fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost to the auger, the eye my father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed was a dress box spilling old pictures, a sift of lost faces to drift beneath my
dreams.
I am from those moments-- snapped before I budded -- leaf-fall from the family tree.
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George Ella Lyon, “Where I’m From," George Ella Lyon | Writer & Teacher, Accessed April 30, 2017,
http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html.
27
“I am From Poem," Santa Ana Unified School District, Accessed April 30, 2017,
http://www.sausd.us/cms/lib5/CA01000471/Centricity/Domain/3043/I%20Am%20From%20Poem.pdf.