I've been canning tomatoes, dealing with school lunches, mowing grass, picking beans, editing an education textbook, fretting about Harmony Fair paperwork, etc., but someday I hope to be a poet again. In the meantime, I want to thank Maureen for her comment on yesterday's post. I never had a teacher who told me how much she loved Dickens . . . or any book for that matter. Funny how one can go through 13 years of public school and never realize that your teachers care about what they teach in any intensely personal way. Why not? Of course personalizing one's affection could go wrong: a little too much Prime of Miss Jean Brodie indoctrination perhaps. But the result of that educational distancing, at least as far as I'm concerned, has been a lifelong shyness and embarrassment about letting anyone know that I love books in the way I love them. I still feel like a fool, no matter how many cathartic essays I write and how many readers tell me they agree with them. Still, it's possible that feeling like a fool is a regular and necessary part of the human condition. I think King Lear may have something to say about that.
3 comments:
That is funny. Like admitting a crush.
It is so true that teachers, at least in the past, never let anyone know what they thought about books. I remember 1 professor in Freshman year who would discuss books and who shared her special passion for Wallace Stevens. Me, I tell kids what I am reading and also what I think about the many books I borrow and yes devour from the YA section of the school library. I am always recommending a book to someone in my class. They must think, 'oh no, her she comes again with a book I just have to read!!'
And I meant to add that I'd be more comfortable tackling one chapter alternating week to week, especially now that school is starting
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