007: On Writing in Dark Times

Back to school with W.H. Auden, Doodle Dispatch, Guest Contributor David Neel & Small Good Things

September 1, 1939

When I was teaching English, I had a rule that the first conversation we had about a poem had to be unresearched. That is, I didn’t want my students going online and reading about “what the poem means.” I didn’t want them looking up allusions or otherwise bringing in expert sources. I wanted them to read the poem and respond to what the poem did to their senses.

Later, on second and third readings, we looked up that stuff and talked about how the meaning changed, and in this way I could show them how poems work on multiple levels. I did this because I think students hate poetry because it’s given to them as difficult word problems that they must “get right.” And, the result of this was really interesting discussions and a poem that was oxygenated and elevated rather than a poem that had been vivisected an left as a bloodied stack of syntax and ‘meaning’ on the classroom table.

I say all this because I have been walking around with W.H. Auden’s poem September 1, 1939 …