Day 2 is behind us. We had a terrific presentation from the poet Julia Bouwsma, who had the brilliant idea  of speaking to us as a student rather than as a teacher. What did we learn as a student that hindered our growth into the art? Was there a poem in particular that a teacher damaged for us? What could we have learned instead from that poem?

I myself had a terrible experience with Frost's "Birches" in tenth grade. When I look at it now, it is a poem about childhood solitude, the pleasures of earth and air, of becoming acquainted with the wild . . . all things that have mattered to me intensely in my life. Did we ever talk about these matters in tenth grade? No. We had to scan the poem to death. It was designed, as far as I knew, to be torn to pieces.

I think this is why I refuse to memorize the names of metrical rhythms. I can hear a dactyl, but I can't spout off the definition of a dactyl. The brutal academicizing of poetry was poison to me. I hated it. I still hate it.