Friday, August 16, 2013

Poetry Friday: Atticus, Grading Essays, and George Bilgere


School has started.

I've lost not only an excellent cook, but a beloved evening companion.

When one is married to an English teacher, one measures out one's life not in coffee spoons but in the number of hours one will actually get to spend with one's husband once school and essay-grading have begun.

Is there a Mrs. Bilgere? Does she feel as I do about those stacks of essays? Is she, too, guilty of being the voice of temptation, the one who whispers lies about how those wretched stacks can wait?

Robert Frost 
by George Bilgere

Over there on the dining room table
are just twenty-five of the thousands of essays
on the poetry of Robert Frost
produced this week alone in the USA,
the world leader in essays on Robert Frost.

The essays are about ambiguity...

...And yet two days have passed, an entire weekend,
and it's Sunday evening and I am having a glass of wine
and the essays on ambiguity in the poetry of Robert Frost
remain unassessed by me, and this is getting very serious.

(Read the whole poem here, at The Writer's Almanac.)

The Poetry Friday round up is at Steps and Staircases today.

8 comments:

jencircletheworld said...

I can only sigh, and wish you good coffee and silent, solitary reflection.

BJ Lee said...

Life sure changes for a lot of folks once the school year begins! Thanks for sharing this poem. I don't know George Bilgere. I'll have to look him up.

Tara @ A Teaching Life said...

Ah yes, essays. I have two weeks to too, but I am already thinking of the stacks of reading journals and writers notebooks.

Mary Lee said...

My husband can relate to you -- he'll be losing me next week. And I can relate to the speaker in the poem. I'm NOT looking forward to grading!

Lisa said...

Thanks for sharing this poem, Karen--I know someone I can share this poem with and I will! It brought a smile to my face--The dilemma of attending to those papers and the lines "And the English teachers of America must read these pages and determine whether they are incisive or not incisive." Funny!

Also funny that my poem involved Robert Frost--Did you see it? Six degrees of Robert Frost ; )

Thanks for stopping by Poetry Friday--no snowy woods required : )

Lisa
www.stepsandstaircases.tumblr.com

Karen Edmisten said...

Yes, Lisa, I loved that we both had Frost-mentioning poetry, but not poems by Frost. :) Linda Pastan also wrote one of my favorite poems about mothers and daughters: To a Daughter Leaving Home.

And thanks, everyone else, too, for your sympathy and empathy. :)

Lisa said...

Thank you for sending another Pastan poem--Your timing is perfect!

I really appreciate you taking the time to share with me, Karen.

Karen Edmisten said...

So glad Pastan was doubly appreciated, Lisa!