Mizzay's Imitation

The Graduate

(Inspired by Naomi Shihab Nye’s “The Travelling Onion”)

“We don`t need no education, we don`t need no thought control, no dark sarcasms in the classrooms.
Teacher, leave them kids alone. Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone!”  --Roger Waters

1.      When I think of how much these graduates have endured

2.      just to enter our world today. I could (I suppose) sigh and forgive

3.      all small unflattering transgressions,

4.      tumbleweeds of student flotsam on the tabletops

5.      and on the floor and on the bookshelves (as an empty garbage can yawns nearby),

6.      the way whining resonates--

7.      excuses, complaints, non-sequitors multiplying exponentially ad nauseam in the florescent air

8.      leaving the curriculum to seep, just barely, in between the cracks,

9.      priorities revealed.

 

10.  Futile it would be

11.  to tell the graduates

12.  that the moments and minutes and accumulated hours of

13.  texting under the table, talking across the room, complaining about a grade

14.  will not satisfy their craving for knowledge of the Sun King (as they admire the fountains at Versailles)

15.  will not quench their thirst for a bank account’s balance (after tuition, taxes and Tahiti)

16.  will not season their father’s eulogy with just the right

17.  metaphorallusionanalogytone (How about that one, e.e.?)

18.  to capture years of love in three minutes or less.

19.  How someday, they will comment

20.  on a classroom

21.  or a teacher (her scarves, perhaps, or sarcasm)

22.  and what they learned

23.  or didn’t.

24.  Priorities reversed?

Kara Asmussen, 4/18.13

Epigraph (above line 1): An epigraph is the use of a quotation at the beginning of a work that hints at its theme. These song lyrics used here represent the students’ attitude about education: that the teachers should stop bugging them and let them do what they want. The poem that follow is a teacher’s reflection on this perspective.

(2) Hyperbole: Hyperbole is extreme exaggeration, often humorous. Once you read the whole poem you realize that when she uses the word “endured,” the speaker of the poem, a teacher, is being sarcastic--rolling her eyes at the perceived “hardships” of students. (It is, you see, the teacher who endures.)

(5, 12) Polysyndeton: Polysyndeton is the use of more conjunctions than is necessary or natural. The rhetorical effect is to make the reader/listener understand that garbage is everywhere except the garbage can. Because of the repeated conjunctions in line 5, the reader should sense “piling up” of the little bits of trash. Similarly, in line 12, the time references "moments and minutes and accumulated hours" are stretched out thanks to the extra conjuctcions. The reader is meant to feel the lugubriousness of both the garbage and the wasted time.

(7, 13) Asyndeton, the opposite in a sense of his brother "Poly," is sentence construction in which elements are presented in a series without conjunctions. The effect of the asyndeton in this sentence will make the reader/listener hear the complaints (and later, in line 13, all the infractions) in a rapid-fire, without pause succession. It makes them physically experience the never-ending, annoying feeling that is denoted in the word “ad nauseam” (7).

(7) Archaic Diction is an old-fashioned or outdated choice of words. “Ad nauseam” is a Latin phrase that means something has continued for so long it causes nausea. This word choice supports the rhetorical effect of the sentence structure (aysyndeton, 7, see above) and is also appropriate for the poem because the speaker is a teacher who likes fun words.

(10) Inversion: inverted word order; a variation of the typical subject verb sentence structure. The use of inversion here puts emphasis on the word “futile.” The speaker knows their poem’s message will fall on deaf ears now, but as this stanza ends hopefully, maybe that will change.

(14-16) Anaphora: repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of consecutive lines or sentences. The three lines that begin with the phrase “will not” seek predict future events, where actual curricular knowledge, heretofore absent from the poem itself, will be useful in graduates’ life.

(17) Pacing: the movement of a literary piece from one section to another. In this line the elimination of the spaces speeds up the pacing of the line. It’s meant to be read all at once, without a breath, as one word. The effect is the message that there really is a lot to learn. [These are also terms from the writer's specific course, so there you go!] Maybe the reader looks at the word and has to think about the different terms all jammed together, making them actually think about the individual terms and their meanings. (Sneaky, huh?)

(17) Apostrophe: directly addressing an absent, imaginary, or personified abstract. e.e. cummings is the author’s favorite poet. He frequently created his own words by joining them together. (His “mudwonderful,” is particularly fitting right now!) This is also a nod and a wink to the wonderful curriculum in language arts.