Student comments

At the end of every semester, students are asked to write a reflection.  For the first freshman course, it is to reflect on one of the principles of good writing they learned, and in the second freshman course, they are to reflect on something they read which touched or interested them.

Marios was in the second semester course, and he wrote, “Four months ago [at the beginning of the semester] it took me less than a minute to read a short poem in English, now it takes me five to ten minutes to read the same poem.” How wonderful!

Scads of wonderful writers have commented on the nature of poetry, but Marios seems to be following the thoughts of Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”  It takes time to lift the veil, time to let the beauty and uniqueness of the offering sink in.

The poet W. H. Auden wrote, “’Why do you want to write poetry?’ If the young man answers, ‘I have important things I want to say,’ then he is not a poet. If he answers, ‘I like hanging around words listening to what they say,’ then maybe he is going to be a poet.”  Marios commented on this, too.  “…now I understand that each word has its own deeper meaning and all the words put together are like a picture.  A poet can give the meaning of his point in just a few sentences.”  He carried his new appreciation into his native language, Greek, saying that while he “used to only take the general meaning out of [poems written in Greek], they are now more understandable for me.”

This translated into his learning how to “give meaning to my essays,” with an expanded vocabulary and better organization.

Ahhh.  I wonder what Marios is doing now.  I am satisfied, though, because he learned, and enriched his life.


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