Teacher / Poet #1

Breaking Through the Surface of Our Lives

…And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

Emily Dickinson, “I Felt a Funeral In My Brain”

I am equal parts challenged, terrified, and nourished by this stanza of poetry from Dickinson. We understand—don’t we?—that there is more to this life than its Reasonable surface, the one we skate or skim over, worrying about how we are going to make this or that payment, irritated by a knucklehead here, or amused by another there, watching our shows or sharing our meals, or doing one of a hundred human things that are sacred but also hide their sacredness, their mystery. Poetry, if it’s any good, should help us with the fall, help us break through the surface of our lives, give us a little shove so we might “drop down, and down” as the immortal Dickinson had it, “And hit a World, at every plunge.”

Amen, Dickinson! I say.  So here we go: another guy and his Substack. 

I will aim to be brief in this, my inaugural issue. Its contents and the contents it previews I hope will whet your appetite for more.

Titles matter, and they matter even more in poems. So, why, you ask, is this Substack called “Teacher / Poet”? 

Beyond the obvious–yes, I am a high school English teacher, and yes, I am a poet–the slash is what I’d invite you to consider most particularly today. Because I hold that it is in the interchange between these two vocations that the meaning and magic happens. 

I know from my own experience (both as teacher and student) that the classroom can often kill a poem or even kill a love of poetry. I know that poems–and stories and novels and essays too–enter into our bloodstreams often without us really knowing how. We can get them on a cellular level without necessarily being able to explain how. I will always honor this way of knowing, reading, and being nourished by literature. And at the same time, the act of interpreting a work of literature is powerful! And I believe can change the way you live your life.

“Literature is equipment for living,” said the critic Kenneth Burke. And I will add: everybody needs the equipment, and anybody can equip themselves. You don’t need a fancy degree to do it. So the slash between “teacher” and “poet” isn’t just for me. It’s yours as well (if you want it), because when you read the poem, you complete it, too, take part in the making that the poet did. Are a little bit POET, too. (Or short story writer, or essayist, or novelis, or whatever it is you’re reading.)

Maybe you, reader, are a “Carpenter / Poet” or “Banker / Poet” or “Lawyer / Poet” or “Convenience Store Clerk / Poet” or “Uber  Driver / Poet”. Whatever you are, whatever your ‘slash’ might be, I hope that the intersection between your life and the poem or sotry you are reading is a fruitful one, and that the reading and writing I model here offers you your own true ‘way in’ to the poem or story (which is no doubt different than mine.) I hope too that these bi-monthly interpretative acts  inspire you to find your own touchstone poems and stories. Transformation awaits.

–

What can you expect (or hope) from me as the writer of this Substack?

1. I will look to share a poem or excerpt of fiction and a short interpretative essay once every two weeks. So I can keep to this joyous discipline, a lot of these poems / story excerpts will be one or two or three hundred years old (very much in the public domain!) I will also be committing to share and interpret poems by LIVING POETS. When this happens, I’ll look to reach out to the poets themselves so you can get a sense of their process as an artist. The idea, as with my podcast, Open Your Hands, is to give you a sense of both the poet’s craft and their vision.

2. I will aim to give the teachers in the audience (whether elementary, middle, high school or college) some practical pairings of other texts, songs, videos, etc that could make for interesting conversation or discussion of the poem in question. In my experience as a teacher of poetry, context matters. The more you have as a reader, the more you appreciate the poem. For the time being, I’ll call these “Text to Text” connections, stealing the term from reading / writing scholar Jeff Willhelm. (Yes, I am that big of an English teacher nerd.)

3. I plan on sprinkling a few soap-box style essays on teaching, the state of education, and schools in the mix here, too. Because, why not? I imagine if you’re taking the time to read this Substack, you might be curious about my opinions on the larger educational, schooling picture. Suffice it to say, I do have many of those. 

4. It’s my opinion that the art of READING LITERATURE ALOUD has been sadly neglected. Also, reading things aloud is just a lot of fun. So, you will note that the newsletter will always open with me doing my best and most passionate reading aloud from the text for the issue. 

And that’s all for now, folks! My word count has me just a shade below 1000 words (creeping up as we speak with this lame parenthetical), and my goal is to keep these newsletters somewhere around that length, give or take a few hundred words. If I’ve piqued your curiosity to keep going, please do subscribe! My next issue will be a reading and interpretation of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s terrific, “The Haunted Oak” (1903).

All peace,

Zach