English I

July 02, 2018Maria S. Mendes

I like this poem because it ponders on the complexities and ideological engagement of teaching language to the Other. I like this poem because it starts with suffering in the collective “we,” but wehave trouble identifying with that particular discourse of suffering. I like this poem because it uses physical images, such as the suggestive vignette for a teacher’s labor of grading, and I am a teacher and I like the traffic of languages: “the checks I make for right answers,/ the rosy golf-clubs on the page.”