Here we go a-meara-ing:

I always think of "a fishhook/an open eye."

It kills me every time I read it. The book that's from (_Power Politics_) is incredible from start to finish.

For reference:

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

I can't read poetry with my higher brain on -- I just let my eyes skim the pretty words until some of them catch on my heart.

I do this sometimes, too, particularly with e. e. cummings. I'm not sure what it is about his work that lends me to heart-reading but it does. This is one of my favorites, and I get something different out of it when I read every word (it's a sonnet, with the correct scansion and rhyme, so reading every word emphasizes that) and when I just try to absorb the language through a weird kind of osmosis:

your homecoming will be my homecoming-

my selves go with you,only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming

(an almost someone always who’s noone)

a noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your morning

feeling their stars have risen through your skies:

so,in how merciful love’s own name,linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very life who’s your

-when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear.
Everywhere and joy’s perfect wholeness we’re

Silvia Benso (her views on ethics would be interesting to a number of Buffistas - Jen, I'm looking at you.

Duly noted! I'll check her out.

That was a great list of poets upthread, Jen.

Thanks hayden! I love Richard Wright, too.

I feel like I left out so many poets from that list... Donne, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Baudelaire, Dickinson, Sexton, Forché, Glück (our current poet laureate), Neruda, García Lorca, Kees, Kenyon, Thomas, Roethke... The list is never-ending.

Never read him, P-C. One day.(I'm just frustrated by my lack of understanding.)

Did Mark Doty, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, and Linda Pastan make that list? I've been skippy girl, but those are a few of my favorite contemporary poets.

Jesse really was too cool for school.

I once got an A on a paper I finished in longhand during class. There was no reason for me to respect my classes. Even worse, IIRC, that paper was for AP English.

I've been skippy girl, but those are a few of my favorite contemporary poets.

I pimped Sharon Olds.

I once got an A on a paper I finished in longhand during class. There was no reason for me to respect my classes. Even worse, IIRC, that paper was for AP English.

Heh. My senior year of high school, AP English, I handed in my final paper of the year the day before graduation. The grades had been due some time before that, and my teacher had called me in to tell me that he'd give me an A in the class if I promised to hand in an A paper before I graduated. So I did. (I believe the paper was on Louise Erdrich, who is one of *my* favorite contemporary poets.)

I once totally forgot about an essay that was due. I wrote it during study hall the period before it was due, and then when we got them back, I got an A- and the teacher read mine to the class as an example of how we should have approached this topic. (The question was, "Were the Dark Ages really dark?" My answer was basically, "Well, a little bit, but not really.")

I once got an A on a paper I finished in longhand during class. There was no reason for me to respect my classes. Even worse, IIRC, that paper was for AP English.

FWIW, there sometimes just isn't a connection between the amount of time a student spent on a paper and how good it is.

I've had kids turn in crap papers that I know they slaved over (because they just aren't astute readers or just aren't yet great writers--any number of reasons), and I've had students who wrote it last minute ace it. Like anything, some people just have that skill, like a musician who doesn't practice but is amazing anyway. The practice always helps, but they're always going to be better than some other poor slob who practices every single night and will never be as good.

It's not fair, but there you go. This may be apropos of nothing, but I felt the need to chime in. I think mainly my frustration here is stemming from the fact I was accused this year by a student of "playing favorites" when the truth likely lay in the fact some of his classmates just didn't have to work as hard as he did.

t /English teacher

I don't recommend this method, but I got an A on a paper my junior year of college that I wrote on my roommate's word processor (hey, it was 1991, and not everyone had a computer in their dorm room) on Halloween night. I typed it one-handed, because I had a can of beer in the other hand. My roommates were running in and out of the suite of rooms we shared, getting ready for various parties, and I was swearing at them in between typing and drinking, because they got to go out and I didn't, since I had procrastinated on that paper, which was my MO in college.

I decided at one point that I was living the cliche of drinking while writing a paper, but I needed a cigarette to complete the cliche. So I crawled out onto the "balcony" we shared with another suite (it wasn't so much a balcony as it was the roof of the front entrance to the dorm, which our windows overlooked; we were expressly forbidden to go out there, which meant we spent every free moment in good weather out there) to knock on their window and bum a ciggie. So I smoked (very very very badly, I might add), drank, and wrote that paper.

I really don't deserve my college degree.

My fun paper story is the four-page paper I wrote on Richard III the night (as in, I pulled an all-nighter) before it was due. The next week, my professor turned to me at lunch and said, "You wrote a good paper....You should get the fuck out of biochemistry."

Another good one is the paper I wrote on Nevermind the day it was due. I think I started right after lunch and finished an hour before the 5:00 deadline. Not only did I get a good grade, but the professor quoted it before handing the papers back.