The Detroit State Poems: Marking

Tom Wayman

I begin each essay with a calm mind--
a fresh start.
But as I consider what they have written
I get angry: the most cursory of rereadings
would have caught this sentence fragment,
and here is a misused semicolon
after we spent more than an hour on that in class
and where I talked to this student individually
for another thirty minutes about this persistent mistake.
And instead of the simple structure of the expository paper
which we have also gone over and over
and which can be so helpful a model, a technique, a guide,
here again is a jumbled series of random observations:
trite, contradictory, obviously hurried
and spelled wrong.

My red pencil becomes enraged.
It stalks through the words,
precise, bitter, vindictive,
acting as if it is pleased to discover error
and pounce on it, hacking and destroying and rearranging,
furiously rooting out sloppiness and weakness
as though upholding some stern moral precept
against another, softer age.

But the hand gripping the pencil
begins to tremble with remorse.
It feels it has led the students on
to try to expresss themselves
and then betrayed them:
attacking what they have exposed
of their ideas and emotions.
What use is righteousness, the hand wishes to ask the pencil,
without charity?

I read the name at the top
and think of the young person whose effort this is.
Now all I see on the paper
is a face, crestfallen when I hand back what they attempted.
Eyes look up at me
apprehensively, as at a judge.
We both know my weighing of their skill
will be taken to be an assessment of themselves.

It is as though I have been asked to mark
not essays but their faces,
not sentences but who they are.
I raise my pencil, but my hand still shakes.
I want to show them what in normal English usage
is considered incorrect.
But I can not assign a grade to their eyes.

From: Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993. Madeira Park, B.C. : Harbour Pub., c1993.

The Poetry of Bad Weather

Debora Greger


Someone had propped a skateboard
by the door of the classroom,
to make quick his escape, come the bell.

For it was February in Florida,
the air of instruction thick with tanning butter.
Why, my students wondered,

did the great dead poets all live north of us?
Was there nothing to do all winter there
but pine for better weather?

Had we a window, the class could keep an eye
on the clock and yet watch the wild plum
nod with the absent grace of the young.

We could study the showy scatter of petals.
We could, for want of a better word, call it “snowy.”
The room filled with stillness, flake by flake.

Only the dull roar of air forced to spend its life indoors
could be heard. Not even the songbird
of a cell phone chirped. Go home,

I wanted to tell the horse on the page.
You know the way, even in snow
gone blue with cold.

from Southwest Review, 2006
Volume 91, Number 1, Page 90

The Little Boy

Helen E. Buckley


Once a little boy went to school.
He was quite a little boy
And it was quite a big school.
But the little boy
Found that he could go to his room
By walking in from the door outside,
He was happy
And school did not seem
Quite so big any more.

One morning,
When the little boy had been in school awhile,
The teacher said:
Today we are going to make a picture.
Good, thought the little boy.
He liked to make pictures.
He could make all things;
Lions and tigers,
Chickens and cows,
Trains and boats -
And he took out his box of crayons
And began to draw.

But the teacher said, Wait.
It is not time to begin.
And she waited until everyone looked ready.
Now, said the teacher,
We are going to make flowers.
Good, thought the little boy.
He liked to make flowers,
And he began to make beautiful flowers.
With his pink and orange and blue crayons.
But the teacher said, Wait!
And I will show you how.
And it was red, with a green stem.
There, said the teacher,
Now you may begin.
The little boy looked at the teacher's flower.
Then he looked at his own flower.
He liked his flower better than the teacher's.
But he did not say this.
He just turned his paper over
And he made a flower like the teacher's.
It was red, with a green stem.

On another day,
When the little boy had opened
The door from outside all by himself,
The teacher said:
Today we are going to make something with clay.
Good, thought the little boy.
He liked clay.
He could make all kinds of things with clay:
Snakes and snowmen,
Elephants and mice,
Cars and trucks -
And he began to pull and pinch
His ball of clay.
But the teacher said:
Wait, it is not time to begin.
And she waited until everyone looked ready.
Now, said the teacher,
We are going to make a dish,
He liked to make dishes,
And he began to make some
That were all shapes and sizes.
But the teacher said, Wait
And I will show you how.
And she showed everyone how to make
One deep dish.
There, said the teacher.
Now you may begin.

The little boy looked at the teacher's dish,
Then he looked at his own.
He liked his dishes better than the teacher's.
But he did not say this.
He just rolled his clay into a big ball again
And he made a dish just like the teacher's.
It was a deep dish.

And pretty soon the little boy learned to wait,
And to watch, And to make things just like the teacher.
And pretty soon
He didn't make anything of his own any more.
Then it happened
That the little boy and his family
Moved into another house,
In another city,
And the little boy had to go to another school.
This school was even bigger than the other one,
And there was no door from the outside into his room.
He had to go up some steps,
And walk down a long hall
To get to his room.
And the very first day
He was there,
The teacher said:
Today we are going to make a picture.
Good, thought the little boy,
And he waited for the teacher
To tell him what to do.
But the teacher didn't say anything.
She just walked around the room.

When she came to the little boy she said:
Don't you want to make a picture?
Yes, said the little boy,
What are we going to make?
I don't know until you make it, said the teacher.
How shall I make it? asked the little boy.
Why, anyway you like, said the teacher.
And any colour? asked the little boy.
Any colour, said the teacher.
If everyone made the same picture,
And used the same colours,
How would I know who made what?
And which was which?
I don't know, said the little boy,
And he began to make a red flower with a green stem.

In Mrs Tilscher's Class

Carol Ann Duffy


In Mrs Tilscher's class
You could travel up the Blue Nile
with your finger, tracing the route
while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery.
”Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan.”
That for an hour,
then a skittle of milk
and the chalky Pyramids rubbed into dust.
A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.

This was better than home. Enthralling books.
The classroom glowed like a sweetshop.
Sugar paper. Coloured shapes. Brady and Hindley
faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake.
Mrs Tilscher loved you. Some mornings, you found
she'd left a gold star by your name.
The scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved.
A xylophone's nonsense heard from another form.

Over the Easter term the inky tadpoles changed
from commas into exclamation marks. Three frogs
hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce
followed by a line of kids, jumping and croaking
away from the lunch queue. A rough boy
told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared
at your parents, appalled, when you got back
home

That feverish July, the air tasted of electricity.
A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot,
fractious under the heavy, sexy sky. You asked her
how you were born and Mrs Tilscher smiled
then turned away. Reports were handed out.
You ran through the gates, impatient to be grown
the sky split open into a thunderstorm.