The Home Stretch and "Community"

I've got 31 entries to go until this crazy spur-of-the-moment experiment is done. I can't wait for it to be over, but I also feel like I have so much to add before it ends. I'll try not to spin my wheels or waste too much of your (and my) time.


This is a poem I used to teach English as a second language. I've probably mentioned my problematic relationship with Frost, but I can't deny he had talent and vision. Who else could do this much with a couplet?

The Span of Life

Robert Frost

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.




I've always loved using poetry to teach a language. This could be because my Russian teacher (hi, Larissa Petrovna!) would use literature as the bait to make me learn things like the locative case or verb declensions. She knew she could always reel me back in with, "Have you read Bella Akhmadulina? Have you read Griboedov's 'Woe from Wit'?"


But there's something to be said for letting forceful, powerful language drive your comprehension and acquisition instead of, "Donde esta la biblioteca?"


Although that can be hella sweet, too:



(And if you're not watching "Community" on NBC Thursday nights, you're missing out like all those people just now discovering "Arrested Development" or "Firefly.")


T.S. Eliot spoke of how poetry could be understood before it could be comprehended. Even if there are holes in your vocabulary or you can't make all the connections between clauses, the essential literature-ness shines through. Even in a language you don't quite speak, poems work. More on this later when I wax even droller and more dull on yet more Russian poetry.