Over the past several days, I read my parents Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." This seven-part poem was assigned to me during college, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean I actually read it. I only remembered the most famous lines ("Water, water, everywhere/ Nor any drop to drink!") and a skeleton of the plot: a crazed old seaman corners a wedding guest and pours out his mystical tale of albatross and woe.
Reading my parents a poem each morning has allowed me to revisit works I haven't read for years, or haven't read at all, alongside attentive (albeit captive) classmates.
This morning we paused in our reading of the final section to look up definitions of shrieve (archaic "shrive," meaning confession/penance/absolution) and kirk (meaning church). Did our love of words grow from our love of literature, or vice versa? Chicken-or-the-egg, folks.
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On Saturday, our second day into "Mariner," my dad said the poem reminded him of one he read in his youth, about a sailor who was shipwrecked for years, then returned and, looking through the window, realized his wife had remarried and was living a new life. I searched "shipwrecked husband whose wife marries a new man poem" and the first hit was "Enoch Arden" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Bingo!
As we read "Enoch Arden," my daughter Palmer called. When I explained what we were up to, she said, "Oh! You've got to watch 'Cast Away'!"
So that's what we did Saturday night! Next, we dove into some online research and learned that "Enoch Arden" was based on a true story, and "Cast Away" was likely influenced by "Enoch Arden." For kicks, I threw in my own retelling of "The Odyssey," maybe the oldest of man-lost-at-sea stories.
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One of the things I love about teaching English is the invitation to explore how writers and thinkers process experiences and use words to translate their thoughts and feelings into stories, poems, and films that then challenge us to both explore others' lives and reflect upon our own.
School is out for the summer in Atlantic. But out here on Eagle Avenue, three lifelong learners are still cracking the books. Tomorrow, we will revisit "Middle Passage" by Robert Hayden. It's time.
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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