"How do you spell 'embarrass'?"
Dumb silence.
"Well?"
"How many b's?
How many r's?
How many s's?"
"You won't find it
written on the ceiling."
He was larger than life
this new teacher,
voice boomed
prophetically -
it was 1957
grade 7.
His bright eyes
and wide challenging smile
looked like a diver
poised above us
hungry for the plunge.
"Well?"
"Why do you stare like cows
herded for slaughter?"
I turned to my classmate
one desk over -
shifted uncomfortably
on squeaky wooden chair,
he nodded agreement -
we'd never heard
an English teacher
speak this way
never felt one
shame us
by a mere question
a spell
was cast,
stupefying us.
"A guess won't kill you."
"Who dares break
this icy silence!"
a doubtful
belly-laugh.
We knew how small
we must have looked
from his height,
his backward
binocular vision
reducing us to mice.
"Must I release you
from your pathetic trap
of ignorance?"
The melody of his
utterance
was magnificent.
"One b, two r's, two s's."
Hearing those letters
felt like he'd handed us
a key
the world
had cracked open
a door unlocked
the darkness
pierced
by a sudden shaft
of light.
Is this based on a moment from Seymour's past? Based on a story he shared with you? or a memoir he wrote? You reconstruct the moment very well, but I may have missed its significance. How did this "[crack] open a door unlocked'? did he teach them to spell? did he teach them the importance of the correct spelling of words? did he embarrass them about their ignorance, and inspire them to want to learn more? or was it the melody of "one b, two r's, two s's" ... did that open a world of poetry to the students? I wasn't 100% sure what got cracked open ... all of the above, or none of the above?
ReplyDeleteAnd please send my regards to Seymour, btw.
Yeah, it was inspired by a story Seymour told at an event in the 70s at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal when he introduced Irving Layton reading from his book For My Brother Jesus. He told the story to express the impression Layton made on him as a young student. But what struck me about it, and this was where my imagination comes in, was that a student could be embarrassed or feel ashamed of their ignorance. The same week I listened to the recording if that event, my daughter, who is in grade 11, submitted an essay in AP English. When it came back with a mark lower than she’d wanted, rather than ask herself, or the teacher, what she might have done better, she cursed the teacher out, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. I guess I was feeling nostalgic for a time when students respected their teachers and had a sense of humility.
DeleteAs for the ending; doesn’t feeling a sense of one’s own ignorance open a portal of light in the universe? Isn’t being a know-it-all ultimately a very lonely place, a kind of jail? Isn’t thinking that no one has anything to teach you a darkness of ignorance? In this sense shame of one’s own ignorance is liberation.
DeleteDoesn’t feeling a sense of one’s own ignorance open a portal of light in the universe?
ReplyDeleteIsn’t being a know-it-all ultimately a very lonely place, a kind of jail?
Isn’t thinking that no one has anything to teach you a darkness of ignorance?
In this sense shame of one’s own ignorance is liberation.
That's a poem!