I just finished teaching a poetry unit in which I did what we who teach poetry often do: I pushed my students over and over to write with detail and image, detail and image, dropping the general for the specific. I gave them all clementines and walked them through an exercise to feel them, see them, pierce the skin and smell them, listen to the sound they make while being peeled, then taste them. Write those five senses, I told them. They did.
Meanwhile, on my computer was this poem by Pádraig Ó Tuama, which is nothing but idea and which I really love. Maybe next time I teach poetry I need to invite students to write their own facts of life. No clementines needed.
(Do yourself a favor and listen to O Tuama read this poem—or any other poem—on the Poetry Unbound podcast.)
“That you will learn most from the situations
you did not choose.”
