We Are All Learning

*Originally posted on my Wordpress blog 02.27.2020 

Why is that words have such power over me?  I read a lot of poetry and much of what I read does not resonate for me.  However there are the stellar poems, the true standouts, the ones who require me to read them aloud, and sometimes to weep.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the host of a new podcast from On Being called Poetry Unbound. I fell madly for this podcast after the first episode.  The opening poem on the podcast  is entitled "What You Missed That Day You Were Absent From Fourth Grade" and was written by Brad Aaron Modlin.  Pádraig reads this poem in his beautiful deep Irish voice, and he reads with such compassion and tenderness.

 

“What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade”

by Brad Aaron Modlin:

“Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.
After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s
voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—
something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted
Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.
The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.
And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person
add up to something.”

In the spoken commentary on the podcast, Pádraig speaks eloquently about the poem:

"The title of the poem, “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade,” has a great sense of humor in it — the idea that any teacher would teach 9 or 10-year-olds how to chant the Psalms while taking cigarette breaks is fantastic and ridiculous. But it speaks to the strong sense of a person feeling that they missed out. And I found myself, when I read this poem, thinking, what was the day we were taught that gay boys are boys too? What was the day that you were taught that loving poetry was enough? What was the day we taught that feeling desperately lonely, even when you’re 10, was OK? How could we be brought into the consolation that as you looked at your own family and felt like everybody else’s family is more together than mine — that that’s OK? How could any of these things be wrapped into the story of a life? This poem invites, I think, the reader to look back to the story of their own life and to think, where are the times when I felt out of my depth, when I felt, nobody told me that this would be happening, and not only did nobody tell me, but nobody prepared me to know how to survive the not-knowing? And this poem imagines this kind, gentle character of Mrs. Nelson, who taught a class how to do these things.

But even in that imagination, the poet was absent from that day. And so the poet has probably taught himself all of these things. And that’s the way with everybody."

Isn't that the truth?  We end up teaching ourselves so much.  Every human being learns at their own pace, in their own time.  And every life is a story with its own lessons and its own teachers.  We find our teachers, we find wisdom, and we generally find both right at the time we need them. We may be absent on the day that others learn something but  if we stay open and become our best learner selves, we will discover what we need to know.

 

For the full podcast transcript, check out this link:

https://onbeing.org/programs/a-poem-for-what-you-learn-alone/