Poet-Teacher Conference

While waiting to talk to a poetry teacher about my poems, I suddenly realize I felt like a parent right before a teacher conference about his or her child.

                                                               Poet-Teacher Conference

                                                          I must say, it is a delight
                                                          having your poem in class.
                                                          Very bright, very clever, very creative…
                                                          but he is also quite easily distracted
                                                          and sometimes jumps from subject
                                                          to subject without getting his work
                                                          done, pursuing every stray image
                                                          as if it were a rare butterfly
                                                          drifting past the classroom
                                                          window and then leading him
                                                          to airplanes or old friends or
                                                          god knows what.

                                                         Also, I’ve had to warn him
                                                         about casting himself as the
                                                         class clown. Fun is fun,
                                                         but poetry is serious
                                                         business, and a well-wrought
                                                         couplet is worth more than
                                                         a verbal hand fart. Still, your
                                                          poem is quite popular with
                                                          the other verses- if popularity
                                                          counts for anything. I just wish
                                                          he would stop “borrowing”
                                                          things from them. I can’t tell
                                                          you the number of metaphors
                                                          I’ve caught him “borrowing”,
                                                          and then he claims they were
                                                          his own to begin with
                                                          before he returns them
                                                          all bent and mangled.
                                                        
                                                         I think he just wants to fit in,
                                                         which is understandable at his age
                                                        -after all, he is only a first draft-
                                                          but he must realize his own
                                                          full potential and make
                                                          all this facetious imitation
                                                          the road not taken.