Poem of the Week: 'O Me! O Life!'

Anyone who has seen the Robin Williams film, Dead Poets Society, will have heard his character, Mr Keating, use this poem to try to inspire his students to 'seize the day' (the Latin phrase for which is carpe diem) and make the most of every second they have.

Walt Whitman was a prolific, American poet in 19th Century America, many of whose poems celebrated humankind and the potential for happiness and fulfilment in life. Although so much of literature gives an opposite message, it is hard not to be uplifted by Whitman's words. Yes, life is difficult; yes, the world is full of fools; yes, there are 101 reasons to be miserable. BUT...

So have a read, and then go and make something amazing of your life too...

O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

Recommended Reading: The Wave

I saw V for Vendetta last week. If any of you have seen it, you will know that it is a futuristic thriller set in an England which is ruled by a terrible dictatorship very similar to Germany under the Nazis in the 1930s. Personal freedom is restricted; the government controls EVERYTHING; and ANYONE who is seen to disagree is imprisoned, tortured or even killed. In that film, it takes a hero to overthrow the government and save the day!

The book I am recommending this week is a different exploration of how easily a society can slip into such a reign of terror, and how easily normal, ordinary people can be sucked into a totally terrifying way of life. But THIS story is set in a SCHOOL!

It is a book called The Wave by Morton Rhue. And it is scary stuff...

You can read the first couple of pages by looking INSIDE the book at amazon here.

Recommended Reading AND Poem of the Week: Love That Dog

A different idea altogether this week. A few year ago, we bought for the English department at GM, a set of copies of a new novel for teenagers called LOVE THAT DOG. I was captivated by it instantly, apart from anything else because it was SO original.

So there are TWO big reasons to recommend this to you. Firstly, it is fantastic - a blend of both POETRY and FICTION (hence the double blog entry this week). And secondly, don't worry about buying a copy or borrowing one from your library: all you have to do is ask Ms Chiwara very nicely if you can simply borrow one from our stock room at school! :)

This is how the author, Sharon Creech, describes the novel herself:

Love That Dog is the story of Jack, his dog, his teacher, and words. The story develops through Jack's responses to his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, over the course of a school year. At first, his responses are short and cranky: "I don't want to" and "I tried. Can't do it. Brain's empty." But as his teacher feeds him inspiration, Jack finds that he has a lot to say and he finds ways to say it.

Jack is both stubborn and warm-hearted, and he can be both serious and funny. Although he hates poetry at first, he begins to find poems that inspire him. All year long, he is trying to find a way to talk about his beloved dog, Sky, and the poems his teacher offers him eventually give him a way to do that.

Jack becomes especially fond of a poem by Walter Dean Myers titled "Love That Boy," and it is this poem that finally gives Jack a way to tell the whole story of his dog, Sky. In gratitude, Jack invites Walter Dean Myers to visit his class.

And here is an excerpt from the novel (which I found on her website, which you can visit HERE):

Jack

Room 105 -- Miss Stretchberry

September 13

I don't want to
because boys
don't write poetry.

Girls do.

September 21

I tried.
Can't do it.
Brain's empty.

September 27

I don't understand
the poem about
the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
and why so much
depends upon
them.

If that is a poem
about the red wheelbarrow
and the white chickens
then any words
can be a poem.
You've just got to
make
short
lines.

October 4

Do you promise
not to read it
out loud?
Do you promise
not to put it
on the board?

Okay, here it is,
but I don't like it.

So much depends
upon
a blue car
splattered with mud
speeding down the road.

October 10

What do you mean
Why does so much depend
upon
a blue car?

You didn't say before
that I had to tell why.

The wheelbarrow guy
didn't tell why.

October 17

What was up with
the snowy woods poem
you read today?

Why doesn't the person just
keep going if he's got
so many miles to go
before he sleeps?

And why do I have to tell more
about the blue car
splattered with mud
speeding down the road?

I don't want to
write about that blue car
that had miles to go
before it slept,
so many miles to go
in such a hurry.

October 24

I am sorry to say
I did not really understand
the tiger tiger burning bright poem
but at least it sounded good
in my ears.

Here is the blue car
with tiger sounds:

Blue car, blue car, shining bright
in the darkness of the night:
who could see you speeding by
like a comet in the sky?

I could see you in the night,
blue car, blue car, shining bright.
I could see you speeding by
like a comet in the sky.

Some of the tiger sounds
are still in my ears
like drums
beat-beat-beating.

October 31

Yes
you can put
the two blue-car poems
on the board
but only if
you don't put
my name
on them.

November 6

They look nice
typed up like that
on blue paper
on a yellow board.

(But still don't tell anyone
who wrote them, okay?)

(And what does anonymous mean?
Is it good?)

November 9

I don't have any pets
so I can't write about one
and especially
I can't write
a POEM
about one.

November 15

Yes, I used to have a pet.
I don't want to write about it.

You're going to ask me
Why not?
Right?

November 22

Pretend I still have that pet?

Can't I make up a pet'
a different one?
Like a tiger?
Or a hamster?
A goldfish?
Turtle?
Snail?
Worm?
Flea?

November 29

I liked those
small poems
we read today.

When they're small
like that
you can read
a whole bunch
in a short time
and then in your head
are all the pictures
of all the small things
from all the small poems.

I liked how the kitten leaped
in the cat poem
and how you could see
the long head of the horse
in the horse poem
and especially I liked the dog
in the dog poem
because that's just how
my yellow dog
used to lie down,
with his tongue all limp
and his chin
between
his paws
and how he'd sometimes
chomp at a fly
and then sleep
in his loose skin,
just like that poet,
Miss Valerie Worth,
says,
in her small
dog poem.

December 4

Why do you want
to type up what I wrote
about reading
the small poems?

It's not a poem.
Is it?

I guess you can

Poem of the Week: 'Into my heart on air that kills'

Recited at the end of Nicholas Roeg's 1971 film of the book, Walkabout, this poem by A. E. Housman is a beautiful meditation on memory and the past. I won't spoil it by writing much myself - suffice it to say, you can read into it what you like (like most literature). But I read it as a mourning of lost childhood, and the innocence that dies with the inevitable process of "growing up"...

INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Recommended Reading: Walkabout

Back in 1999, when I was teaching in Muswell Hill, I spent a lazy hour digging through the dusty shelves at the back of the English stockroom, seeking something 'different' to teach to my Year 8 classes. Eventually, I came across a book called Walkabout, by James Vance Marshall. It was a revelation - and my classes and I were quickly mesmerised.

The book tells the story of Mary and her young brother Peter, the only survivors of an aircrash in the middle of the Australian desert. They are facing death from exhaustion and starvation when they meet an Aboriginal boy who helps them to survive, and guides them on their long journey back to safety and 'civilisation'.

Two things fascinated me when I first read it: firstly, the relationship between Mary and the aboriginal boy, both on the cusp of adulthood, and both simultaneously cultures apart and skin-close; and also the minute detail in which Marshall manages to describe the beauty of the plants and animals of the Australian outback.

This is no action-packed adventure - but it is even more intoxicating as a result. A languid, almost meditative exploration of a fundamental culture clash, the trauma of adolescence, and the beautiful landscape of a distant land. Highly recommended (as is the 1971 movie, which I am happy to lend to any of you if you like the book).

For a pre- and post-reading worksheet on the novel, click here.
For a children's review of the novel, click here.

And here is an extract from the novel itself, from where the aborigine first meets the two children:

The girl's first impulse was to grab Peter and run; but as her eyes swept over the stranger, her fear died slowly away. The boy was young - certainly no older than she was; he was unarmed, and his attitude was more inquisitive than threatening: more puzzled than hostile.

He wasn't the least bit like an African Negro, His skin was certainly black, but beneath it was a curious hint of undersurface bronze, and it was fine-grained: glossy, satiny, almost silk-like. His hair wasn't crinkly but nearly straight; and his eyes were blue-black: big, soft and inquiring. In his hand was a baby rock wallaby, its eyes, unclosed in death, staring vacantly above a tiny pointed snout.

All this Mary noted and accepted. The thing that she couldn't accept, the thing that seemed to her shockingly and indecently wrong, was the fact that the boy was naked.

The three children stood looking at each other in the middle of the Australian desert. Motionless as the outcrops of granite they stared, and stared, and stared. Between them the distance was less than the spread of an outstretched arm, but more than a hundred thousand years.

Brother and sister were products of the highest strata of humanity's evolution. In them the primitive had long ago been swept aside, been submerged by mechanization, been swamped by scientific development, been nullified by the standardized pattern of the white man's way of life. They had climbed a long way up the ladder of progress; they had climbed so far, in fact, that they had forgotten how their climb had started. Coddled in babyhood, psycho-analysed in childhood, nourished on predigested patent foods, provided with continuous push-button entertainment, the basic realities of life were something they'd never had to face.