Last year (2021), I wrote right after teaching the basics of English to a student that was struggling so much with the language that I wondered if she had ever been in love.
On the Siesta After the Class
I was teaching 'have/have got' and feeling a mix of boredom and excitation about the following idea: What if I misplaced the answers in this exercise? So, I did. I misplaced some of the answers (and made up some) — as my student answered the right ones —, thinking of what would happen in those situations: 1. Susan likes to keep fit, so she has a baby every day. (Would Susan be the woman history has expected me to be ever since Eve?) 2. We had a rest last week, it was great! We invited lots of people. (Perhaps I should do that. I hate when I meet people and they want to keep walking while talking.) 3. Excuse me. Can I have a chat at your newspaper, please? (Not only with newspapers. I’d have a chat with several books and magazines. I have chats with words themselves.) 4. I saw Ann in the supermarket yesterday. We stopped and had a look — around. (Contemplating the delusive creation that will one day fall.) 5. I don’t usually smoke, but I was feeling nervous so I had a good flight. (That one actually made a lot of sense.) The remaining options were: Have a cigarette (1) Have a swim (2) Have a shower (3) Have a party (4) Have a nice time (5) I matched them with winding actions. So, when the class ended, (A) I enjoyed — 5 (B) Myself — 4 (C) In the bathtube — 2/3 (D) I took a long breath, relieved — 1 I didn’t even think about my former lover — maybe just a little. And I fell asleep, gracefully, not bored at all.
I’ve always found any language's text book activities a work of literature and language itself an expression of love and lust. Although I never found anyone who seemed to share my point of view, I kept referencing the classes I teach and the insights that come to me from language in my poems.
Today one of my favourite contemporary poets, Ann Pedone, posted a remarkable poem on Instagram:
The first match I made was "naked” fleets of nouns, I even commented that. Soon I felt inspired enough to write a whole Response to that poem. And it was simply the matching of the columns.
Column A Matches Column B
A response to Ann Pedone’s poem
the Aegean Part Two
Serge Gainsbourg spurning kisses
came into the room in these spent hours
scriptures related to this Greek lips
we possess the concept of desire
chocolate has chocolate got lover to lover
it was the sea like rain
as an exile where is a place I can write this
dinner guests much in the way that
Kant never faced the garden
the wife within which is rectangular
hot sigh calling the police
“naked” I am inclined
very strong electrical light my heart
is another body is it disappointment
per esempio if you reach all of the way in
then Agamemnon speaks an earthworm
outside of my sex fleets of nouns
protect us from who knows
skin-like honey or grease
After matching the columns and joining them, I thought of italicise-comment every line, but that would be a quest to another class.
Thank you, Ann, for allowing me to share this.
Ann's last published book, “The Italian Professor's Wife” is available at https://www.press53.com/ann-pedone.