The Dead Poets

I have just seen Dead Poet's Society for the first time. This means all the other English majors of the world had the permission to scoff at me on a whim up until last night. If you're interested in teaching, poetry, or acting, you should probably see this movie. Mr. Keating definitely brought back some fond memories for me.

The two greatest English teachers I have had each had a bit of Keating in them. One was in high school and the other in college. Mr. Ford (high school) was as romantic as Mr. Keating was. He saw the world through rose-colored glasses, without being blind to the darkness. Professor Shoaf (in college) had that interesting teaching style, seemingly obsessed with the way words of love could change (or distort) perception and vice-versa. People could distort love just as, or more, easily through the use of words. He taught me Chaucer and Shakespeare. I never loved Shakespeare until that class, and Chaucer took on so much more meaning than he ever had before. In high school, Chaucer was a bawdy poet making social commentary. With Shoaf, Chaucer was a bawdy genius who wrote multiple meanings into single words and paved the way for the future Shakespeares, and when read in Middle English, he was beautiful to boot. Although Shoaf didn't literally stand on tables to see the world in a different light, we basically learned the same concept. Ford was my introduction into the world of multiple meanings. It wasn't until then that I learned to look at each word in a poem more carefully than the poem as a whole. Shoaf brought that idea home and taught us how to use it.

I'll have to take my Chaucer and Shakespeare tomes out and bring myself back up to speed. Maybe I'll reconsider that Ph.D. and professorship in a decade or two.