Where I’m Calling From
School starts tomorrow and I have been in a frenzy of cleaning out old folders, reorganizing my syllabi and semester plans, and putting my Philosopy of Teaching on paper for the job application. I also have been reading Byron in Love by Edna O’Brien. Then of course I had to pull out my ancient text of Byron’s poetry. Read some Keats, too, in anticipation of this movie.
So not just work, but poetry was on my mind this past week. Even wrote a poem yesterday. It was horrible, so I went back to morning pages today as a way to keep the writing oar in. Then later, cleaning out files, I found a poem I wrote twenty years ago stuck in amid all the lecture notes. It’s called “See Nick Overlook” a pun on the roadside scenic overlook. I remember how I got the idea for the poem. I was in class and the prof said “scenic overlook” and I heard “See Nick overlook.”
My mind traveled at light speed down a path light years from the classroom discussion. Who was NIck? What or who had he overlooked? Why were we talking about him instead of “Ode to a Grecian Urn”? Eventually I realized what the prof had actually said.
But that idea of a guy named Nick overlooking something stuck and I went home and wrote a poem about it. Which I have to admit I still really like all these years later. Also in the file box, a folder labeled “My Poems.” I didn’t open it, but I moved it to the front of the box. I think I might look through my poetry and maybe make a little book of it on Scribd. That might be my next project.
