The Poetry of Bar Harbor
What to do when someone claims your town has no poetry
My town has a big question about what mechanism should be used to limit cruise ship visits coming up in an election that occurs at the same time as a national election that is full of some horrible rhetoric.
And some people think that because my town, which is right next to a national park, is a tourist town that this is all it is and that it will lose its community. They portray it is as a toxic cesspool of greed that’s only been this way in the last 30 or so years.
There is greed here. Of course there is. There is greed everywhere. And there has always been greed here and everywhere in all sorts of forms.
But there is also a whole lot of good here and everywhere, now and in the past. And there will be in the future. I’ve spent the last two years trying to remind people of this. I’ve worked countless hours. Told hundreds of stories. And I’m failing.
So, I’m going to try once again.
A TOWN’S STORY IS DETERMINED BY ALL ITS PEOPLE
The story of a town isn’t determined only by the statesmen lawyers or doctors within it, no matter how loved they are. It’s not determined by the voices of only one sex with graduate degrees. It’s not even determined by the people who live in that same town most of their life. And it’s not determined by the journalists who don’t.
Neither is the poetry of a town determined by journalists with readers to grab or dopamine hits of outrage to give to those same readers.
The story of a town is made of all its demographics and psychographics. It comes from the smallest of interactions and not just the biggest of headlines.
It’s not often that I get outraged about my town. I watch it all and try to be two things: as unbiased as possible when I report on hard news and someone who loves the people within it as individuals despite the things that they do or don’t do.
Sometimes, I don’t do as good a job at either of these things as I’d like to.
But here’s the thing: I still try.
That’s not a popular way to be right now. I know that. People want sides in national, local, and state politics and issues. They want teams to root for like they do for sports teams or celebrities. To do that easily, polarities are created, us vs. them exists, and that division is leaned into.
I get that. I’m okay with not being a cool kid. I’m okay with not being on a team.
But for the sake of all things holy, don’t tell me that my town has no poetry in it just because you personally can’t or don’t want to see it.
WHAT IS POETRY WHEN IT COMES TO A COMMUNITY?
According to Brittanica, “Poetry is literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or an emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm.”
Poetry.com says, “Poetry is a form of artistic expression that uses language to evoke emotion, paint vivid imagery, and convey complex ideas. It is a means of communicating human experiences and emotions in a way that is both powerful and evocative.”
Let me tell you about the poetry I saw in just the last three days. Yep, just three days.
I saw three cool seventh grade girls from Bar Harbor go to our town ball fields and plant three trees with the town’s public works department while a town manager and town council chair cheered them on.
“I can do this!” each of the girls shouted at least once as they tried to use all their scant weight to get the shovels into the soil, to break the soil so that they could create life—trees that would grow and make the air better, that would provide shade, that would be beautiful.
“They’re so light,” someone whispered.
“But look at them go,” said the town council chair. “They’re doing it.”
Sounds simple, right?
It is. Poetry is about work, about making something for the future.
“People are going to love these trees,” one woman said, smiling. She’s a town employee and her eyes were a little teary. “Look at those girls go.”
Today, people cleaned up the trails of our national park together. Today, kids and adults went into Mount Desert Island High School and worked on a musical, singing Christmas songs in rehearsal, making something together for other people to enjoy.
Sounds simple, right?
It is. Poetry is simple. It’s about making resonance that lasts beyond yourself.
On Halloween, I welcomed strangers into my home. They were two long-distance friends, young women making a pilgrimage of sorts to Maine so that one could see where her great-grandmother came over from Ireland.
Everyone in my house, all these other people with very wide-ranging political beliefs, welcomed them with open arms as they told stories and greeted trick-or-treaters coming onto our dark porch in Bar Harbor.
Organizations and volunteers created trick or trunk events all over our island of less than 10,000 or so. Why? Because they wanted to lean into joy. They wanted to give. They wanted to celebrate. And what were they doing? They were making joy. They were making experience. They were making poetry.
An entire street in Bar Harbor was filled with 1,300 kids and adults hugging in the streets, frolicking, learning how to say please and thank you, greeting each other, and being goofy.
The next day, the kids from the school came down with their science teacher and picked up litter. Why? Because they care.
Sounds simple, right?
It is. Poetry is simple. It’s about making connections. It’s about making space for each other.
Today, I witnessed the funeral of one of my friends, Ken Mitchell, a lifelong police officer who devoted his life to trying: trying to do the best that he can, trying to make a difference for his friends, family, community and strangers.
He comforted women beaten; he helped bring child abusers to justice. And sometimes he just cooked dispatchers and fellow officers some breakfast foods on a late or overnight shift because they were hungry. He sang songs at his desk, he made list after list of things to do, and even as he was leaving us, he wondered if he’d done a good enough job.
Did he do enough good?
Did he try hard enough?
That’s part of what he wondered.
Sounds simple, right?
It is. Wanting to help others isn’t something that ends with a vote or an election or a ballot question or with someone bemoaning the lack of stores in a town that not only is very tourist-focused, but where small businesses have to compete with big box stores and Amazon Goliaths. It doesn’t even end when you’re dying.
That’s because poetry is about the human experience.
Some of it stinks. Some of it is glorious. But it always is.
Right?
It always is.
None of us are perfect. All of us are human, but damn if some of us aren’t too busy with our own self indulgence, our greed for relevance, our need to be on a team, that we forget to wonder: Are we actually doing good? Or are we just digging in? Are we just caring so much that our own team is right, that it wins, that we forget that the people on another team live right next door?
Bar Harbor is full of poetry.
That poetry?
It’s not in the pages others write about it.
It’s in the people who live here. It’s in the experiences they create. It’s in the joy they share. It’s in the love and in the wonderings like Ken had: Are we doing enough good? Did we try hard enough? Are we making poetry together? Or just another angry missive where we shout into echo chambers for our dopamine hits?
I hope we can remember that we aren’t. I hope that we can remember that we live poetry every single day. I hope we choose to lean toward each other, over and over again.