Last Train Out: Ana Parra on the beauty of 'bubblegum poems'

During the presidential election of 1992, I learned to love poetry. My sixth-grade English class had the pleasure of having a visiting artist from Greenville County Schools’ ARMES (Arts Reaching Middle and Elementary Schools) program come to our class to teach us about the art form.

For little Ana, a voracious reader who snuck away at the Greenville library to read Danielle Steel novels, it was a wonderful treat that made me fall in love with verse. 

Mrs. Jaskwhich was the poet/teacher who arrived in our classroom to get us to write a collaborative poem, and, boy, was she fun! It’s been 32 years and I still remember how it felt when she arrived. She seemed to be as excited as we were to have our regularly scheduled programming interrupted.

Mrs. Jaskwhich started each class by leading us in writer exercises. “Exercises, exercises. Let’s all do our exercises,” she would say as we bent and stretched our pointer fingers to prepare to grab a pencil.  

Besides the vivid visual memories I have of that time, I can also remember the feeling that came over me when we finished our poem. I felt awe at creating something with my classmates that talked about current events and had our own spin.

We had Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr. and Ross Perot enter a bubble gum blowing competition to determine who would lead our country. I can’t remember who we had win the competition, but I do remember that we did a damn good job on our poem. 

For students at one of the lowest-ranked middle schools in the district, we were clever, and our teacher brought out our best.  

Some people look up their old boyfriends or girlfriends online. I look up old teachers who made me see the world differently. I looked up Mrs. Cynthia Jaskwhich the other day and found out she passed away in 2002. She taught poetry to wide-eyed, awkward kids like me for 20 years. Her obituary said, “She leaves behind a treasury of bubble gum poems.” 

I will always be grateful to Mrs. Jaskwhich, who also taught me during a summer ARMES program where we befriended a tree in the school’s courtyard. We named the tree Javelin and used it to inspire us to write, sitting by it to help stimulate the creative process.  

What a gift Mrs. Jaskwhich gave so many of us. Time as children to find inspiration in what was right outside our window or from the events happening in the world. What she taught us made me feel less small and more connected to the world. 

Programs like ARMES and teachers like Mrs. Jaskwhich helped kids look beyond rankings and how others defined the halls we were growing up in to see beauty in our surroundings and talent in our classmates. The middle school I attended continues to rank low and is often in the news for efforts to turn things around, but despite the negative press, my experience there was filled with beauty.  

 At this school with its low test scores, I learned how to write a funny and relevant poem one year and the next year I was able to explore poetry further, discovering Langston Hughes. But it didn’t stop with poetry. Despite barely being able to afford an instrument to practice with, I also learned to play the violin, making it to the Greenville County Youth Orchestra (another great arts program in our community) and learning to play everything from Lionel Richie to Pachelbel.  

Arts education made my mind and heart expand in ways that I am still discovering. It enhanced my life and helped me through some of the tougher parts of adolescence.  

It has also changed the life of my older son. Once again, enter the ARMES program during his middle school years. He fell in love with acting thanks to Mrs. Anne Tromsness, actor and 2021-2022 District Teacher of the Year. She’s another artist and teacher who changes lives and expands worlds.  

Unlike my son, the actor, who went on to study drama at the SC Governor’s School for Arts and Humanities and then to college where he is an acting major, I have become neither violinist nor poet. But poetry remains in my life. Pablo Neruda, Nikki Giovanni and Robert Frost carried me through college. Mary Oliver, Maggie Smith, Clint Smith, Saeed Jones and Ada Límon through work, marriage, motherhood and the world being on fire.  

I don’t know the best way to measure success when it comes to educational programs. But in my 40s, I am still using poetry to make sense of the world and find humor in the every-day – all thanks to “bubble gum poems.” 

ContributorAna Parra is an executive for CommunityWorks, a nonprofit loan funder committed to financial equity. She lives in Greenville with her husband Ian and has two sons. A proud daughter of immigrants, Ana says she believes storytelling and listening to stories is how we learn to value everyone and create community.