Last week's readwritepoem prompt was to write about ourselves in epic or exaggerated terms. Here is my ode to English teachers...I don’t tilt at windmills,
I make the semicolon salient.
I don’t swing from vines,
I swoop in and save dangling modifiers.
No mere Rapunzel in a tower,
I coax others to let down their hair
And weave it into a cogent argument.
I don’t ride through the village warning of danger,
I whip up a Wordsworthian warning
Of our getting and spending
And the world being too much with us.
My battle cry is not do or die
But be not afraid
Of Whitman
Or Dickinson:
Feel that cleaving in your brain and
Contain multitudes in it!
Know yourself to be nobody
And sing a song of yourself!
I am a sage for our age,
A patron saint of syntax,
A lion of lyricism,
A conqueror of commas gone wrong!
At every turn I offer wise counsel:
Avoid the cliché
Substantiate your generalizations
Cite your sources
Mix your metaphors wisely
And for God’s sake
Never
Ever
Pluralize nouns
With apostrophes.
