Up In The Top

I think Mr. Kooser is being a bit diplomatic in his description of the poem. Rather than awakening to the knowledge that all of us don’t see things the same way, I think this poem is about awakening to the knowledge that kids can be real assholes.

American Life in Poetry: Column 223

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

There’s lots of literature about the loss of innocence, because we all share in that loss and literature is about what we share. Here’s a poem by Alexandra Teague, a San Franciscan, in which a child’s awakening to the alphabet coincides with another awakening: the unsettling knowledge that all of us don’t see things in the same way.

Language Lessons

The carpet in the kindergarten room
was alphabet blocks; all of us fidgeting
on bright, primary letters. On the shelf
sat that week’s inflatable sound. The th
was shaped like a tooth. We sang
about brushing up and down, practiced
exhaling while touching our tongues
to our teeth. Next week, a puffy U
like an upside-down umbrella; the rest
of the alphabet deflated. Some days,
we saw parents through the windows
to the hallway sky. Look, a fat lady,
a boy beside me giggled. Until then
I’d only known my mother as beautiful.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Alexandra Teague, whose first book, “Mortal Geography,” winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize, is forthcoming in 2010 from Persea Books. Reprinted from “Third Coast,” Fall 2008, by permission of Alexandra Teague and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

It’s interesting how one’s tastes and opinions can change over the years (and by “one’s”, of course, I mean “mine”). During the 80’s I listened to a fairly wide variety of music and generally flattered myself by thinking I was some kind of music aficionado. In reality though, I was just another dumb kid with a Swiss Army knife and a bad MacGyver haircut. So it is only natural that music I considered significant back in the day doesn’t hold my interest as much now as it did then.

Similarly, there is music that I didn’t particularly appreciate at the time but which I now mind much more interesting. A perfect example of this is the music of Cyndi Lauper. While I liked “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” when it originally came out, I wasn’t that big of a fan of Lauper. Maybe it was the weird clothes or the association with Captain Lou Albano. Whatever the reason, I generally paid more attention to whatever Midnight Oil was preaching about at the time.

Flash forward twenty-something odd years and one less MacGyver mullet into the future, and I’m a pretty big fan of Lauper’s music from back in the day. An obvious part of the appeal is her voice. Let’s face it…the girl has some serious pipes. I always knew she had a good voice, but I don’t think it really dawned on me until I heard of version of Roy Orbison’s “I Drove All Night”. I’ve been an Orbison fan for quite some time, but I actually preferred her version. I think that song sort of started my reevaluation of her music. After all, if you can do justice to an Orbison tune, you obviously know what you’re doing. So while I don’t generally get the urge to go back and listen to Aussie protest music, I frequently cue up “All Through The Night”.