In the Beginning Was the Word and the Word Was Blue

Bechtel Prize Judge Chen Chen selected Peter Markus’s essay “In the Beginning Was the Word and the Word Was Blue: Exploring the Blues through Poetry and Song” as the 2025 Bechtel Prize honorable mention. The Bechtel Prize is awarded for an essay describing a creative writing teaching experience, project, or activity that demonstrates innovation in creative writing instruction.

The Bechtel Prize is named for Louise Seaman Bechtel, who was an editor, author, collector of children’s books, and teacher. She was the first person to head a juvenile book department at an American publishing house. As such, she took children’s literature seriously, helped establish the field, and was a tireless advocate for the importance of literature in the lives of young people. This award honors her legacy. Learn more about the Bechtel Prize here.

I write the word, “blue,” on the blackboard. We go around the room and begin talking about blue. 

“What’s blue?” I say. 

“A color,” says a boy. 

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s talk about blue as a color. How many different kinds of blue are with us in the world?” is the question. 

“Sky blue,” says a girl. Her eyes are not blue but brown. There are no blue eyes in this classroom gazing back at me. Outside the classroom’s window the sky is gray, overcast, flush with clouds. 

“What else?” I wait for someone to speak, to break the silence. One thing I’ve learned, in my 25 years of teaching, my 53 years of living, it’s OK for there to be silence. 

I am always going on: urging, digging, asking my students to look around at the world, to make use, to imagine. 

I smile. I don’t speak. Finally one boy looks around the room, moves his head from side to side and looks behind him, then says, “Isn’t anybody going to say something?” 

“You just did,” I say. “Thank you.” Then I ask, “What else is something blue in the world besides the sky?” 

“My granddad’s got a blue Cadillac,” he says. His name is Treshon. He is the young writer behind the poem “Love Is a Big Blue Cadillac.” 

Love is a big blue Cadillac
that never runs
out of gas.
He drives all night
down to Mississippi
to see his wife.
I watch them kiss.
The sun rises
like a gigantic cherry
turning the whole universe
red.

“Maybe Cadillac blue is a kind of blue,” I suggest. “What else is the color blue?” I go on with the asking. 

I am always going on: urging, digging, asking my students to look around at the world, to make use, to imagine. 

“Close your eyes if you have to,” I say. “What’s something blue that you see?” 

“I see a blue house,” says a boy who doesn’t often talk unless he is called on to talk. 

“Good,” I say. “Tell me more about this blue house.” 

I’m looking always for that one small detail for me to believe in. 

“It’s a sad house,” he says. 

He doesn’t say anything more. So I ask, I dig deeper: “What makes a house sad?” 

“There’s no one,” he says, looking straight at me, as if he is looking into me or right through me. Maybe he is seeing me as the man I sometimes fear that I am on a bad day. “There’s no one,” he tells me, he breaks the bad news, “living inside this house.” 

I press my right hand up against my heart. I shake my head. I am being dramatic. Sometimes we have to be dramatic to make sure it’s clear that we are listening. 

“That is a sad house,” I say. I want to say, “I bet you all live in a happy house,” but I don’t go there. Not every house with people living inside it is a happy house. 

“What else?” I say. I say these two words often. There is always something else to be said. 

“What else what?” somebody says. I say to this, without missing a beat, “What else is something blue?” 

More silence. I listen to the ticking-away silence of something blue. 

“If I told you to pull out your crayon box,” I say, “and draw a picture of something blue, what,” I say, “would that blue something be?” 

Now they seem to get it, to see what I am getting at. Sometimes these things take time. We must take the time. It’s good to take things slow. Poetry teaches us this. This is something I’ve learned, over the years. This is something I believe. 

“A bird,” one boy says, “can be blue.” 

“A river,” adds somebody else. 

“My shirt is blue,” says somebody else. 

And it’s true: I’m looking out at a sea of collared shirts that are all the same color blue. Now we’re getting somewhere. 

“The sweater you sometimes wear, Mr. Pete, is blue,” recalls a boy with his blue shirt buttoned up to his throat. 

“There’s a blue dog on TV,” says a girl with blue-marbled hair ties pulling her hair back into braids. 

When I point this out to her, she reaches up with her hands to see what she can’t see herself. We laugh. Or most of us do. 

“A tear,” says a girl who is not among those of us laughing. 

“What’s that?” I ask. I look into her eyes, half moons where others are gazing at me full. 

“A tear,” she repeats. But I still don’t get it. I still don’t see what she is saying. I am picturing a tear, a rip, like the tear I have in my winter coat from where my cat caught his claw and my jacket ripped. It’s now patched with a piece of black duct tape to keep the goose feathers from falling out. 

“A tear,” she says, a third time, “like when someone is sad, like when someone is crying, you know.” 

“Ah, yes,” I say. I nod my head, slow. “I do know. Now I get it. Thank you for saying so. So if you were to draw a picture of a tear running down a little girl’s face, that tear would be the color blue.” I keep nodding my head. I want her to see and to know that I am listening, my head telling her, “I hear you.” 

That’s all any of us ever really wants—isn’t it?—to be heard: our voices, our hearts. 

We’ve all at some point been aboard that big blue boat called “Everybody Gets the Blues.” There is room for all here.

I use this moment to turn the conversation closer toward where I think it’s already going. 

“If I came in one day and said to you all, ‘Mr. Pete is feeling blue today,’ what am I really trying to tell you?” 

Most hands go up to speak, to say to me, I believe, “I hear what you are saying.”

“It means you’re sad,” says the boy in the back who hasn’t yet contributed to our conversation about what is something blue. 

“It does,” I say. “You’re right,” I say. Then I ask, “Has anyone else besides Mr. Pete ever before felt blue?” 

All the hands raise up. All hands are now on deck. We’ve all at some point been aboard that big blue boat called “Everybody Gets the Blues.” There is room for all here. 

“That’s right,” I say. “And you want to know why?” I wait. I take a breath. I smile. “Everybody,” I say, “at some point,” I add, “everybody gets the blues. Even the big blue ocean, even Treshon’s granddad’s big blue Cadillac,” I say, “sometimes gets the blues.”

---

I begin again, to keep things going, this time with a song. 

“We’re going to listen to some music now,” I say. “It’s actually called the blues.” 

I write the letter “s” at the end of the word “blue” on the blackboard. 

“Do any of you ever listen to the blues?” I ask. “Do any of you know somebody who listens to this kind of music?” 

One girl, just one, raises her hand. “My granddaddy listens to the blues,” she says. When I ask her for a who, for names, she drops a big one. “B.B. King,” she tells me. 

“That’s right,” I nod my head thinking of the legend. “B.B. King. One of the kings of the blues,” I say. She is smiling big now. We are sharing a moment between us, a bridge across a blue river. 

She raises her hand again as if there is more that she is wanting to say. “Yes,” I say. 

“B.B. King,” she says, as if she is talking about somebody she knows personally, “he has a guitar named Lucille.” 

“That’s right,” I say. “How did you know that?” 

“My granddad told me,” she says back. Her smile is as wide and shimmering as a steel blue guitar. 

“Nice,” I say. 

She holds up her hand yet again, for a third time. “Is there something else you want to tell me?” 

“Lucille,” she tells me. Maybe she is telling more than just Mr. Pete. Maybe she is telling the whole world, or in the very least the whole class. “That’s my middle name,” she says. 

“That’s so cool,” I say. “To be named after B.B. King’s guitar.” 

I let her know that we’re going to be listening to B.B. King at some point, a short song of his called “Nobody Loves Me but My Mother” and another song called “Everybody Gets the Blues.” 

Again, I set my hand upon my heart. 

“Nobody loves me but my mother,” I say. I try not to sing it. I am no singer. But I remind myself that, it’s true, “Everybody gets the blues,” and I hit the play button on the first song. 

Out from my portable speaker comes the plucked strings of Lightnin’ Hopkins followed by the soulful, gravelly sound of his voice to set the stage: “I was sitting in my kitchen,” he cries out. 

I push pause. 

“I was sitting in my kitchen,” I say, the first line of this song. Or maybe it’s a poem. We’ll talk more about that later (how a song can be a poem, how a poem can be a song, a prayer). 

“What’s so sad about sitting in the kitchen?” I ask. “I sit in my kitchen all the time. How many of you sit in your kitchen?” Lots of nods. I add, “Let’s see what comes next.” 

I hit play. I let the song play. The song is called “That Mean Old Twister,” and it’s a song about a tornado that comes and knocks, it tears the speaker’s old house down. 

That Mean Old Twister
By Lightnin’ Hopkins

Yes I was sitting in my kitchen
I was looking way out ‘cross the way
I was sitting in my kitchen
I was looking way out across the way
I seen that mean old twister coming
I started then to pray

I fell down on my knees
There were the words I began to say
I fell down on my knees
These were the words I began to say
I said “Oh Lord have Mercy
And help us in our wicked ways”

You know the wind was blowin’
Coming in my windows and doors
Yeah you know the wind was blowin’
Coming in my windows and doors
Yeah you know my house done fell down
And I can’t live there no more

“Talk about a sad song,” I say. I keep talking. “Talk about a house that’s sad.” I shake my head, my hand over my heart. 

“And the people inside this house,” I go on. “This blue house,” I add, “who are left to sing the blues.” 

I drop to my knees, yes, for dramatic effect, but also because I feel, I am made to feel, by these words, by this song, not just the blues, but I feel what it would be like to be standing in those blue shoes, to be sitting in that blue house, with blue tears running down my face. 

I said, “Lord, Lord, what shall I do?'” I cry this question out, doing my very best to channel the sorrow of Lightnin’ Hopkins, the singer behind this song. “Oh Lord, I said Lord, what shall we do? Yes, there ain’t no other help I know, oh Lord, but you.” 

If I only had a guitar, I think. If only I could play the guitar, I wish. “This here is a song for everyone with ears,” I hear myself say. I think, if you are old enough to hear this song, you know what it means to be blue. 

This is too true. 

It’s our stories, our poems, our songs, that bring us together. The best classroom is a kind of campfire.

But to be blue is not the same as to sing the blues. Maybe by singing about what makes us blue we can make the blueness that we are feeling go away. Maybe the song, maybe a poem, can help us to put what is making us blue into a place where we can take hold of it, someplace outside of us, and not let the blues eat up our insides. 

“Tell me about despair, yours,” I say, quoting the poet Mary Oliver, “and I will tell you mine.” 

It’s our stories, our poems, our songs, that bring us together. The best classroom is a kind of campfire. 

“Come closer,” I like to say. “Listen.” We listen. “That sound,” I say. “You know what that is?” I ask. 

I wait. Time marches on. 

“That’s the sound of our hearts,” I whisper. “Beating as one,” I go on. “And the blood inside of me is the same color as the blood inside of you. Our hearts all pump with blood that is red.” 

---

I go on, I move from a song to a poem. “The Red Clay Blues” co-written by Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. 

We read through the poem, line by line, stanza by stanza, and I can’t help but want to sing the poem as if it is a song. 

Here’s just the first stanza of that poem: 

I miss that red clay, Lawd, I
Need to feel it on my shoes.
Says miss that red clay, Lawd, I
Need to feel it on my shoes.
I want to see Georgia ’cause I
Got them red clay blues.

“Is this a poem,” I say, “or is it a song?” 

“I’d say it’s a poem,” one boy says, and when I ask why he says, “because there’s no music.” 

“But if I had a guitar,” I say, and I air-play an invisible blue guitar, “would it then be a song?” 

“If it was sung,” says another voice in this crowd of blue shirts who have tuned in to the blues, “that would make it be a song.” 

“Who’s the singer in this poem talking to?” I ask. 

There is a pause, there is silence. The classroom, at times, when you offer students questions to consider—Who is the speaker? What’s inside a snowflake, or a stone? What does the soul look like?—it can be transformed into a kind of church, and maybe a church when there are no people inside it, when the silence there is the silence and the language of God. 

“Look at the first line,” I say. “The sixth word.” 

“What’s Lawd mean?” someone asks. 

“Maybe it’s the name of his mama,” someone else says. 

I say the word aloud, “Lawd,” I say. I drawl it out. Then I say it again, as “Lord.” 

“Lord,” someone else repeats the word. 

“It’s God,” says another voice from the back, the boy with the big blue Cadillac. 

I picture God driving down to Mississippi. I picture God behind the wheel driving all night. 

For a kiss, I think. Yes. It’s true. It’s simple. Let’s even say it’s red, is the opposite of blue even. This kiss. And when they kiss, “The sun rises, like a gigantic cherry / turning the whole universe / red.” 

---

Most of these students are too young to know what it means to be homesick, but I do my best to explain it. 

“To be homesick,” I say, “is to be away from where you live or where you spent a lot of time and then you miss it and it almost makes you feel sick, in your belly, in your heart, you miss it so much.” 

I say, “Let’s say, if we were to move to Georgia we might miss the concrete sidewalks of Detroit in a way that the speaker in ‘Red Clay Blues’ misses the red clay and the soft mud of his farm in Georgia.” 

I decide to do a quick exercise in metaphor, on homesickness and what that means, how you might make the feeling, which is invisible, which is inside us, felt but unseen, and transform it into something visible, visceral, something we can hold onto with our hands. 

Homesick like a snowflake falling from the sky.
Homesick like a feather on the ground that a bird has lost.
Homesick like a leaf in the fall turning brown.
Homesick like a cloud lost in the sky.
Homesick like a pencil with no eraser or lead.

“Homesick,” says the girl who said blue like a tear, “like a blue house or like a tear falling down my face.’ 

“Yes,” I say. “Exactly like that.” I swallow. Sometimes it is hard to swallow, the words of the child ring so true. 

Homesick like a house, I think, a blue house, with nobody living inside it. 

---

But everybody gets the blues. We go over, as a group, all kinds of things that make us feel blue. 

We come up with titles, of poems that we might write, of songs we might sing. 

“I Got to Go to School Blues.”
“I Don’t Want to Wake Up Blues.”
“The Late to School Blues.”
“I Want a New Pair of Shoes Blues.”
“My Mom Took My Phone Away Blues.”
“I Don’t Want to Do My Homework Blues.”

We go over the structure of a blues poem, the use of repetition, how to set the stage or situation for what the speaker is doing and where the story is being told. 

“Put the reader in your shoes,” I say. I write that sentence on the board. It is our motto, a kind of mantra for the blues, or for any poem if you want to know the truth. 

Here’s a poem called “Gray Sky Blues” about being bored on a rainy day: 

I’m sittin’ on my couch
Ain’t go nothin’ to do
I’m sittin’ on my couch
Ain’t got nothin’ to do
I look up in the sky
All I see is gray sky blues.

I’m sittin’ in my bedroom
Ain’t got nothin’ to do
I’m sittin’ in my bedroom
Ain’t got nothin’ to do
I want to go outside but I can’t
I got the gray sky blues.

I’m sittin’ on my porch
Ain’t got nothin’ to do
I’m sittin’ on my porch
Ain’t got nothin’ to do
I feel raindrops on my lap
I got the gray sky blues.

Or this, “I’m Hungry Blues,” a poem about being belly-hungry and about being pocket-broke: 

I really want some chicken wings
But I have no money
I got the hungry blues

I can’t afford those two-dollar shoes
I only have a penny I can’t use
I got the hungry blues

Man oh man I’m getting too old
I mean I can’t fit into these old shoes
I’ve got the hungry man blues

Oh I said I’m hungry blues
I don’t know what to do
So I’m singing the hungry blues

I want some of them chicken wings
But how when I can’t buy me some shoes
I got the hungry blues

All I need is to be fed
I’ve had French fries thrown on my head
Man oh man I wish I had a cozy warm bed

I got the hungry blues

Or this, “The Late to School Blues,” a poem about being tardy, but the speaker eventually shows up, “to learn new things”:

I woke up this morning
I was late for school
I woke up this morning
I was late for school

I’ve got the late to school blues

It was a really long drive
I worried so much
It was a really long drive
I worried so much

I’ve got the late to school blues

I zoomed past the kids
I ran up the stairs
I zoomed past the kids
I ran up the stairs

I’ve got the late to school blues

The class was still there
I wasn’t really late
The class was still there
I wasn’t really late

I don’t have the late to school blues

I’m glad I made it to school
So I could learn new things
I’m glad I made it to school
So I could learn new things

I don’t have the late to school blues no more

Here’s one more short poem before I go. “Midnight Blue Blues:”

Midnight so dark.
Midnight blue in the sky.
Oh it’s midnight blue in the sky . . .
Like the midnight wolf’s eye.
The moon brightens the midnight sky.
It’s barely mornin’.
Oh midnight blue sky . . .
So dark and blue.

---

So what should we do when we get the blues? What else might we do besides write a poem, or sing the blues off into a song? 

Talk to someone, I say. Talk to a friend, or a parent, or a brother or sister, talk to a teacher, talk to Mr. Pete. 

“I’m here for you,” I want them to know. 

It’s okay, it’s normal, to feel blue, to feel sad, to feel like a blue house with nobody living inside it. What makes it better than okay is how you handle the feeling of being blue. 

Or if you aren’t ready to talk about it, I tell them to try to find a way to laugh. To shake the blues by doing something silly. Maybe even write a funny poem, a poem that might make you, when you write it, when other people read it, laugh out loud. 

Here are some of those poems, offering advice to those who might be feeling blue: 

What to Do to Get Rid of the Blues

Play with your cat. Dig a
hole to China. Sing to yourself.
Dance on a dog.

Do yoga. Spin
until you drill through
the earth.

Hug a stuffed animal. Drive
the moon to a different
galaxy.

Make a cake and eat it.
Slide on Saturn’s
rings and jump off.

Sleep on fluffy
clouds and float
away. Dance on the moon.

What to Do When You Have the Blues

Take a nice hot bath.
Paint your hair purple.
Read a book about animals.
Draw on your bedroom wall.
Play basketball with a pencil.
Brush your teeth with hot sauce.
Find a pig and eat it.

Or this poem, four lines long, by Essence, who boils her poem down to, well, the essence on how to shake the blues: 

Talk to your shoe.
Make a funny face.

Put eighteen ice cubes in your mouth.
Have a race with a rock.

Remember, I tell them, these beautiful, black-haired students who sometimes get the blues. And here, I reach for a poem, “Blue Door,” written by one of their very own. 

Beautiful Is

Beautiful is a blue
door that floats up
in the dark blue
sky singing, “I believe
I can fly.”

Poetry opens such doors and makes such dreaming visible, like a color, like a blue door to a blue house where our words, to borrow from Hafiz, become the house we live in. 

Photo by Mariam Antadze from Pexels.