The Ageing English teacher reflects:

The Ageing English Teacher Reflects:

When I started as a student

Close reading was the rage

And we didn’t study context

Just “the words upon the page”.

With a technical vocabulary

(I admit its learning hurt)

We debated what the poem

Or the poet might be worth.

Now the field has changed forever

Since the ideologues moved in

And leaving out the context

Has become a mortal sin.

We don’t debate the poem

Or discuss its qualities

We just look down our noses

At its ideology.

The Marxist and the Feminist

The Freudian and Queer

With hyphenated post- brigades

Bringing up the rear

Dead French men playing guru

In a prose that still appalls

While the poet and the poem

Are forgotten by them all.