It’s been 22 years since I sat in my American Literature class in high school.
Miss Morrison. In so many ways, I am a product of her long-term investment. Who I am now in 2011, mirrors so much of who she is. However, I, a lesser version her, continue to want to be more like her in every way.
Pacing slowly back and forth in the front of the room, slowly, and with intentional eye contact. I can picture her back in my class, arms enfolded over her literature book, sitting just so. Perfectly timed questions provoking thought and inspiration string through the lesson. Years have passed and I still recall my own experience. It’s quite true, though odd, but I never wanted the bell to ring. A piece of me came alive in that hour and it has never died. Every day, her explanations on whatever work we were examining seemed to me so truly profound. The meaning of words, the deeper descriptions of images, the themes tied to each new scenario on each new page, images dissected in the lines of every stanza, the color motifs, the underlying messages telling the tales of the human race...I discovered this: literature is art. I recall having this distinct epiphany. It happened with short stories, poetry and, most effectively with The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Digging with deliberate watchfulness, like opening a treasure chest, we were taught to explore.
I have since not been the same.
She inspired me again today. Drifting back to those years. I sat in a small desk in the back right corner, set to listen. Yet now with an advanced mind and 22 more years of real life. Combined, these make a profound adjustment to the intake and judgment of a poem. Unfortunately, I have lost some sharpness to my insights, yet have gained real life and the gut-wrenching humility that comes with failure. In this way, years later, I certainly have more in common with those who penned those timeless lines, and that seems to matter quite a bit concerning interpretation.
Jealous, I sat. Seems strange, but I would go back if I could. Not to return to the long, self-focused years of High School. But instead to hear, to contemplate, to learn, to understand, to be taught the meaning of the lines of the poem, the novel or the essay at hand. In the end, I would love to go back and see how I am like the Romantics, the Puritans or the Revolutionists. Their words, their insights, adorations and contemplations would be more like shaping tools instead of test material or just pointless information. Human beings passing down messages that are altogether timeless and essential to us in our lost, modern world. They, in quiet rooms, trapped in cold, New England winters or looking out over miles of vacant hills and verdant valleys in undeveloped lands, spoke what is often unspeakable. Lost in the vast, deep of creation. Nature sang to poets in ways it still cries out today. Her words are hidden in sounds and colors and landscape and wind. But we hide in dark rooms with wires and plugs and speakers and sounds of cars and guns, or digital guitars and drums. A made up, virtual world that has secretly stolen the real engagement of adventure and the true lessons found in defeat. It’s never a real battle, it’s not a true cause, it’s not hands-on training, testing, or falling; no risking, not hurting, no planning, no true loss. It is nothing like authentic life. These games are a weak substitute for fresh air, damp dirt, and cool grass.
Walt Whitman, in Song of Myself, sat still in a field, smelled the air coming over valleys and through the leaves on tress, sweeping across his cheeks. Quiet and alone, filled with thoughts leading to other thoughts, settling into discoveries and valuable observations. He writes...and then questions us who are lost inside our four walls and closed windows:
Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?
Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.
Whitman means for us to take hold and breathe in the air, and touch the grass and feel the wind, and smell the leaves. First hand is better, he says. Alive our senses come, and this we were meant for. Ironically, we think ourselves advanced with the expansion of technology, broad pages of information with images from across the world. Sound bites, photos and a disconnected, distant experience is stealing the full development of who we are.
But instead, to sit under the shade of a tree in an open field, to breathe in the outdoors and stare straight up into the vast, blue universe...these pieces of living art pump our veins with warm blood, alive.
Desperate Whitman is, in a way I often feel:
I am mad for [Nature] to be in contact with me.
It’s much more than just the beauty for our eyes, or the oxygen it brings to our lungs. If we listen carefully, we can also hear the beckoning of trumpets. Paul said it well, “We know that the whole creation is groaning...” And likewise, we groan, “longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling.” The Romantics understood the seduction of Heaven whether they named it as such or not. Our days, our vision, our dreams are atrophied by black boxes and high tech screens. Walt Whitman spoke a different language, a universal expression of what sits inside all of us, waiting to be ignited.
Lisa Morrison taught me such language in a high school classroom 22 years ago. She lives in front of me still. I hope to speak it today in my own classroom. The truth is, words are limited, yet only for a short time. The sky will split, and what the poets fought to announce to the ages, we will echo with them, in perfect rhyme and meter.
