Caught Up in My Feelings

Close your eyes and listen as I recite this poem.  Really imagine that you can hear me laying in on the hissssssssssssss of the sibilant “s”, and the frrrrrrrrrrrr fricative sound of the “f”.  Think about snakes, the steam of ice hitting something hot, cold so very cold, like Dante’s 9^th circle of hell, so cold and thick it’s painful to the touch like dry ice…  Ssssss, ffffffff, steam, bang, boom!  The sounds made in this poem through the use of consonance and alliteration also support its meaning.
 

Fire and Ice

                            ~Robert Frost

 

                      Some say the world will end in fire,

                      Some say in ice.

                      From what I’ve tasted of desire

                      I hold with those who favor fire.

                      But if it had to perish twice,

                      I think I know enough of hate

                      To say that for destruction ice

                      Is also great

                      And would suffice.

I have been thinking about this poem a lot lately as I watch the news.  I’d like to walk you back in time to when I used to teach this poem, and share with you some of what we discussed in class, all of which is sadly still relevant in our society today.  Robert Frost really hit the nail on the head with what he implicitly says about human nature.  One of the ideas in this poem that we discussed dealt with the idea of there being a thin line between love and hate.  On the board I have a line segment, labeled “love” on one end and “hate” on the other end.  I ask my students, “What is the opposite of love?”  They all reply in unison, “Hate.”  Wrong! The ABSENCE of love is the opposite of love.  Both love and hate are very powerful emotions, and they are really close to each other in feeling.  How so?  Go back to the line on the board.  I take the ends of my line segment and make a special line that has no end—a circle.  As the ends of the line segment, love and hate, come together and connect their ending points, it is very easy to “see” how close love and hate are to each other, not opposites at all.

We take pause to think and write before we continue to discuss the poem.  The playlist for this poem at times has included The Persuaders’ classic, It’s a Thin Line Between Love and Hate, Rick James and Teena Marie’s Fire and Desire, and Macy Gray’s Strange Behavior.  Thin Line… and Strange Behavior both speak of situations where love has gone bad, jealousy, cold-heartedness, the love of money—all examples that we could talk about in terms of themes and symbolism represented in the poem.  Students could use Fire and Desire to brainstorm symbols of both love and hate, and jot them down to help them think when writing.  Both their essays and the art work that resulted from writing workshops were amazing and well thought out.  They could talk about how love and hate, both powerful emotions, can lead to great destruction if taken to the extreme, like “being laid up in the hospital, bandaged from feet to head…”, as the song by The Persuaders croons when the lady’s heart can take no more cheating and creeping by her husband.  There were plenty of examples from the news at the time… Raven Abaroa, who murdered his wife in 2005… Eve Carson, who was killed in 2008 (in Advisory, my homeroom class made hearts that they decorated and wrote condolences on as they talked and grieved about her death)… Shaniya Davis, who suffered an unspeakable sexual assault and death in 2009… 

Studying this poem helped students to have an outlet for the things that were happening in their world, and they always liked how we could talk about things and still be on topic for what we were studying.  I never told them, but that is exactly one of the desired outcomes that I had in planning my lessons, that students have plenty to think and talk about as they read, reason, and write.  It’s called learning, and such conversations are the scaffolding to help students unleash great writing!  Aha, I believe wholeheartedly in using music, writing, and art to maximize learning in the language arts classroom.  I always wanted my students to be critical thinking, logical, compassionate students.  In becoming critical thinking, logical, compassionate students, I always envisioned them growing up to be young adults with those same qualities. 

I thought about this lesson in particular while watching the story about Glenn Miller, whose hatred for Jewish people (and African-Americans, Hispanics, anyone he considers not pure white, different, or somehow “other”) ironically killed a grandfather and his grandson, and another lady—William Corporon, Reat Underwood, Terri LaManno (remember them in your prayers)—Christian, not even Jewish.  Most disturbing though, three innocent people are dead because of someone’s extreme views, whether love of one’s race gone twistedly, evilly wrong, or a clear-cut case of extreme, icily ignorant hatred.  I pray that love will extinguish hate with love.  I say extinguish hate with love because all hate does is exascerbate more hate.   Love is the answer, the karma, that wins.  Peace.