Joshua McKinney: World Enough
Someone is making a motion
to make a motion on a previous
motion, concerning the minutes
from the last meeting…
Sydney Lea: Hush
Does it make any sense to say I heard dead silence? No matter. I’ll simply declare that I’ve never known such quiet in the sixty years I’ve roamed these woods and hills.
Baron Wormser: The Loss of Literature
Literature challenges the very idea of right thinking, which is one reason tyrants have suppressed literature, though that suppression is ably carried out by any zealous group of chiding, censorious know-it-alls.
Stuart Sheppard: The War Against Aesthetics in Contemporary Literature
We are increasingly being told that it is not important how well a poet writes; rather, the crucial issue is what a poet says.
Michael Simms: You Taught Me
you pointed
At the bubbles rising in the pitcher
Of beer to explain consciousness
Which was blurred by that time
Of evening
Video: The Opposites Game
An English teacher asks his class: ‘What’s the opposite of a gun?’
Sandy Solomon: Grammar Lout
Liz thinks we ought to have a day
devoted to apostrophes
In which we add or rub them out
in bands of roving grammar louts.
William Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 . Five years have past; five summers, with the … Continue reading
Richard St. John: Learning with the Lost
You taught us Dante: On a dike above
a burning plain, he peers at the charred and upturned face
of his own teacher, but the face I see is yours.
John Samuel Tieman: As Afternoon Darkens into Evening
the words we didn’t say I take a bite of my lunch silence sour and salt This afternoon I sit on my porch, proud of all I’ve won, thinking of … Continue reading
Naomi Shihab Nye: The Art Of Teaching Poetry
Why is it that so many people say they don’t “get” poetry? As teachers, how can we approach poetry so that it doesn’t seem to our students like a puzzle … Continue reading
