Hello Again, and A Bit of Poetry

Hello all,

I know it has been quite some time since I last posted. For that I apologize, I have had PhD dissertation rather than blog on the mind lately (ok, for the last year or three). I am trying to find a balance between the two, so that perhaps this blog will be a creative outlet, a sort of vacation spot away from Dissertation-land where I will still be living for the next year or few.

For today's offering, I give you a poem I wrote in a college poetry class. It was right after we lost the amazing and irreplaceable Robin Williams, and I wrote several poems to help myself deal with his loss. For me one of Robin Williams' most memorable roles was John Keating in the film Dead Poet's Society. This is my attempt to work through losing such an influential, wonderful professor.

John Keating is Dead

Once a room filled with poetry,

with sparkling language and flashing ideas, now

cold, dry, uninspired.

The classroom was once filled with verse,

Pulsing with life and vigor, and music,

where a man taught boys to

constantly look at things

in a different way,

taught them to go beneath the pages, to dive

into their own souls and bring up poetry,

words still dripping with their soul’s blood,

To listen to their hearts beating and sound their barbaric

YAWP over the rooftops of the world.

Now only the sound of fingers drumming on the edge of a desk,

The creak and rustle of shifting bodies,

Bored enough to notice the hard wooden seats.

The clearing of a throat,

A quiet cough.

The Captain they loved has gone.

Where for a few brief months there was

excitement, there was life, there was

poetry, now boys are immersed in the drone of

a lecture, choking out the vivacity that was once there.

Words wash over all,

Lecturing to ears attuned to hearing

subtlety, nuance, and rhythm,

no longer the monotone drilling of

a rote lesson, dry and barren.

Ceaseless waves of meaningless words

trying to wash away memory of their Captain

and his ideas, the thrill of his classroom.

The pressure of the class’s silence

kills the metronome voice,

this new teacher drowning

in his own mediocrity.

Grasping for more to say,

More quotes, rustling of pages,

Words begin to splutter, gasp, flail,

sinking in the once uplifting classroom.

Silence. No help from the class.

Questions? Remarks?

Anyone?

Anyone, please?

WORKS CITED

Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke. Touchstone, 1989. DVD.