December 2017
Robert Nisbet
robert.nisbet042@gmail.com
robert.nisbet042@gmail.com
I am a retired high school teacher and presently creative writing tutor, living in the far West of Wales, about 30 miles along the coast from Dylan Thomas's Boathouse. Although I don't see myself as unduly competitive, I have recently won the Prole Poetry Pamphlet competition and my chapbook entry, Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes, will be published soon by Prolebooks.
Author's Note: How young is “young”? Well, when I wrote this poem I was 40 years younger than I am now. I was an idealistic young English teacher, with some very keen senior classes of 17 and 18 years of age, many of them female. One of our set books was Milton’s Paradise Lost, and I was struck by the fact that in that work Satan should confront the young woman, Eve, and tempt her with the idea of knowledge (of good and evil). And here I was, approaching these young women with another ideal of knowledge (and academic fulfillment). It seemed an ironic parallel and I set out, in the manner of a young English graduate, to speculate about it, in closely-rhymed iambic pentameter.
Teaching ‘Paradise Lost’ to a Sixth Form
The class is mainly girls, blithely accepting
That knowledge and fulfilment are to hand.
The inbuilt irony’s a shade too glaring
And forces me to question where I stand.
Cast in the part of sad, unwitting Satan,
I’m still uneasy with the tempter’s role.
The question Satan raised was one of knowledge;
The answer should have much to do with soul.
Once, long ago, when they were twelve and trusting,
They sought to know because we said they should.
Deep in their rapt and puckered concentration,
They quite assumed that just to know was good.
Corruption’s not in knowledge, but in motive –
Meal-ticket arts of learning just enough.
The glistening fruit of academic glory
Shows knowledge as a marketable stuff.
My tempter’s hope would simply be to lure them,
Just one or two perhaps – the rest are lost -
To sanctuaries of still and pure defiance,
Where people learn with no real thought of cost.
The garden of the twelve-year-old has vanished.
The clouds of adult know-how loomed and rained.
But if my knowledge-dream could counter-tempt them,
Just one or two, not yet ambition-stained,
The garden might survive in dreaming legend,
Remembered still, if never quite regained.
This poem first appeared in Lines Review 62, September 1977.
Teaching ‘Paradise Lost’ to a Sixth Form
The class is mainly girls, blithely accepting
That knowledge and fulfilment are to hand.
The inbuilt irony’s a shade too glaring
And forces me to question where I stand.
Cast in the part of sad, unwitting Satan,
I’m still uneasy with the tempter’s role.
The question Satan raised was one of knowledge;
The answer should have much to do with soul.
Once, long ago, when they were twelve and trusting,
They sought to know because we said they should.
Deep in their rapt and puckered concentration,
They quite assumed that just to know was good.
Corruption’s not in knowledge, but in motive –
Meal-ticket arts of learning just enough.
The glistening fruit of academic glory
Shows knowledge as a marketable stuff.
My tempter’s hope would simply be to lure them,
Just one or two perhaps – the rest are lost -
To sanctuaries of still and pure defiance,
Where people learn with no real thought of cost.
The garden of the twelve-year-old has vanished.
The clouds of adult know-how loomed and rained.
But if my knowledge-dream could counter-tempt them,
Just one or two, not yet ambition-stained,
The garden might survive in dreaming legend,
Remembered still, if never quite regained.
This poem first appeared in Lines Review 62, September 1977.
© 2017 Robert Nisbet
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF