Showing my underbelly.

They say that 80% of what you teach is who you are. Tomorrow, I am sharing some of my poetry with my students. Over the weekend, I assigned them the task of writing a fifteen line poem based on something they've read thus far in Othello. They need to pick out a line from Act IV, Scene 2 that was particularly striking to them, write a poem based on it, and write a few sentences that explain why they chose that line...and tie their poem to the themes presented in the play.

I know some of my students are reluctant writers, particularly with anything creative. To make them more comfortable, I wrote my own poem. I'm pretty proud of this one, even though it took me ten minutes to write and still needs to be tweaked.

For those of you that know me, you know that showing anyone my personal writing is kind of a big deal. I want my students to know that they are part of a trusting environment...part of establishing that type of classroom requires me to trust them back. So I am taking the first step tomorrow...we'll see how this goes.

The Dance of Envy

"Let me see your eyes. Look in my face." (Line 30)
She raises her head,
The lights of innocence, purity, those bright lights of fidelity,
Jump across the blackness of her despairing pupils,
To bridge the gap,
Between what she knows,
And the crushing whiteness that is yet to come.

He looks but does not see,
She looks,
But does not find.

Shadows of doubt and jealousy,
Two-step across his mind,
Slamming his soul up against and straight through,
The opened cage of his unleashed emotions.
5, 6, 7, 8. Fall.

There is an inherent irony to Othello's request to see Desdemona's eyes, to look into the windows to her soul. I was immediately struck by Othello's cold reaction to his weeping, pleading wife. The mental assurance of a fake reality is enough to cloud acknowledgment and acceptance of the truth.