Things I Learned Last Weekend

One of the CAWP co-directors shared this poem with us earlier this week, and I immediately became enamoured of it. (On a completely unrelated note, what does it say about me that every time I use the word enamoured, my brain insists on using the British spelling of it?)

One of the things that I am most excited about for teaching a new course this year is the opportunity to use much, much more poetry than I have in the past, teaching AP Lang. I am excited to use this one as a model with my students.

Things I Learned Last Week

by William Stafford

Ants, when they meet each other,

usually pass on the right.

Sometimes you can open a sticky

door with your elbow.

A man in Boston has dedicated himself

to telling about injustice.

For three thousand dollars he will

come to your town and tell you about it.

Schopenhauer was a pessimist but

he played the flute.

Yeats, Pound, and Eliot saw art as

growing from other art. They studied that.

If I ever die, I'd like it to be

in the evening. That way, I'll have

all the dark to go with me, and no one

will see how I begin to hobble along.

In the Pentagon one person's job is to

take pins out of town, hills, and fields,

and then save the pins for later.

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Things I Learned Last Weekend (in St. Louis)

There really is a difference

between freeways

and highways,

and that difference is

stoplights.

The sentiment,

"At least it's a dry heat"

is annoying,

but accurate.

Humidity sucks.

Monet's Waterlilies is

WAY larger in real life

than it looks

on other people's bathroom walls.

Shakespeare in the Park

on a summer night in open air

is exactly as wonderful as

I always dreamed it would be.

There are many people in this country

who think of any place

west of the Mississippi River

to be

West,

even though I had to fly

hours east

to get there.

It is mind-boggling.