8/ Things I Learned Last Week

(a special thanks to poet Colleen McCarthy for this exercise!)

Copy + read the following poem aloud in class:



Things I Learned Last Week
- by William Stafford

Ants, when they meet each other,
usually pass on the right.

Sometimes you can open a sticky
door with your elbow.

A man in Boston has dedicated himself
to telling about injustice.
For three thousand dollars he will
come to your town to tell you about it.

Schopenhauer was a pessimist but
he played the flute.

Yeats, Pound, and Eliot saw art as
growing from other art. They studied that.

If I ever die, I'd like it to be
in the evening. That way, I'll have
all the dark to go with me, and no one
will see how I begin to hobble along.

In The Pentagon one person's job is to
take pins out of towns, hills, and fields,
and then save the pins for later.



Discuss and have students write their own poem after "Things I Learned Last Week" by Stafford. (This is good early in the year if you are teaching a freshmen-level class.)