Here I am, avoiding the (digital) stack of papers before me, knowing full well that I’ve got a full day’s work between me and sleep again.
That said, I had a good week of teaching amid my stormy week at home, so I figure I ought to write a few words about it.? First the storms.? On Tuesday night, Micah’s cough getting worse and Mary having Wednesday off, we decided to take Micah to the first-come-first-served Sunrise Clinic at Micah’s pediatrician’s office.? The problem we’ve run into on that front is that the pediatrician who sees him is the first one on the rotation that opens up, and the last two times we’ve gotten a pediatrician who’s far more aggressive with prescriptions than we prefer.? So, predictably, when she heard a bit of wheezing in Micah’s exhalation (none on the intake), she immediately put him on FOUR DIFFERENT KINDS OF MEDICINES.? We’ve only got until Sunday to get through them, and after that, if Micah needs to see his doctor, we’re scheduling an appointment with his doctor rather than rolling the dice.? Then, later that afternoon, our computer’s hard drive collapsed.? We’re still waiting on word from GC Computers on whether they can restore any of our files, including the last four months or so of Micah’s pictures, which I hadn’t backed up.? I suppose this is another lesson in being cautious with one’s files.
But on to the teaching bit.? This has become a teaching blog, after all.? On Tuesday and on Thursday I covered a selection of Psalms alongside four 17th century English Christian poems.? On Tuesday we did John Donne’s Holy Sonnets and on Thursday Herbert’s Temple.? I pretty well talked them through two poems and two psalms on Tuesday, and on Thursday I broke them up into groups and had each group present a poem or psalm to the class.
The realization that I saw firing in student after student was that Christians who write Christian poetry think in Christian categories.? If they thought they saw sin, redemption, baptism, or any number of Christian theological items, they were probably right.? Beyond that some of them had their minds blown when they realized that poets as well as movie-makers pack extra meaning into their works, placing modifiers and puns so that even in our short class we delineated as many as four strong and distinct? readings for any given difficult passage.
My students have also brought to me some interesting ideas for their second papers.? The upshot of the assignment is that they have to pick any Psalm and any postbiblical poem and say something interesting in 1000-1500 words.? I’ve got students doing papers on Walt Whitman’s world-encompassing egoism compared to the Psalms’ piety, the fiery hatred of the imprecatory Psalms compared with the almost-Stoic detachment of Wilfred Owen’s WWI poems, and a few other interesting projects.? I’m looking forward to reading them.
But now I need to read those Joseph papers.? I can always sense a weight lifting when I get down to ten to go; that’s my goal today.
Onward!
