In 1837, a large group gathered to commemorate the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolution. And Ralph Waldo Emerson read a poem that contained one of the most famous lines in American history and poetry.
By the way, not everyone living in America liked the Declaration of Independence. Tories and Loyalists objected, and two of them actually penned and published a response. Back in England, in the nave of Westminster Abbey, you can find a memorial to Major John Andre, ordered by General Washington to be executed for spying; the memorial commends his zeal for his country. We forget that for those who signed the Declaration of Independence, they were risking everything, including execution for treason. (I discovered, courtesy of Family Search, that I am related to one of the signers, Robert Treat Paine; he’s a second cousin seven times removed.)
A couple of contrarian views about poetry surfaced this week. Steve Knepper at New Verse Review explained why he’s against publishing the “selected poems” of poets, at least somewhat against. And former English teacher Susan Spear took issue with how poetry is taught in schools, focusing on “meaning” rather than “versecraft.”
When I agreed to co-teach a Sunday School class of second graders, I had no idea of what I was going to experience. And it wasn’t the kids.
It was my co-teacher, Carl.
He recruited me. We both had our youngest children – boys – in second grade. The Sunday School class needed a teacher. We’d met in an adult Sunday School class, but we weren’t particularly close friends.
“Look,” Carl said, “they need a teacher for the second grade. I can entertain the kids, but you’re the teacher. We have to make this fun. We can show the kids that Sunday School is fun. And so is learning about God.”
It begins with the boy slowly waking up and welcomed by the rays of his much-loved friend, the Sun. While not noted, it’s assumed that they know each other well and have had previous adventures together. This day the adventure will be a swim.
As always, in addition to the adventure, the Sun tells the boy a story. The stories are like fables, running the human qualities good and bad, each with an obvious moral. This day, the story is about pride, and how a sunflower listens so deeply to the flattery of a snake that he forgets his closest friend, the rose.
I’m always suspicious of Facebook messages coming from people I don’t know. If it seems that a message might possibly be legitimate, I’ll check the person’s profile page. More often than not, it’s people from Hong Kong or the Philippines or Africa, or people who names and profile photos clearly don’t match. Click delete.
A few weeks ago, one arrived that raised my suspicions, but the sender seemed legitimate. And he was. He asked me if I was the author of this article at Emerging Civil War: “Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.” Yep, that was me.
He said he had an interesting story to tell me, and we eventually connected by phone.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.
We’re familiar with the meaning of chronic illness. The most common types are cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, diseases with no known cures. They can often be mitigated and their effects reduced or controlled, but that doesn’t mean they’re eliminated, or that they no longer have to be dealt with and lived with.
The impact of chronic illness on families can be devastating, disrupting and forever changing the patterns of daily life and relationships and often fundamentally changing the relationships themselves. That is what Alison Blevins explores in Where Will We Live if the House Burns Down?: Poems, a collection of 62 untitled prose poems in paragraph form. Collectively, the poems read like a fable of contemporary life.
