That "Spark"

The spark that started the flame. I often times think this is what Professor Sexson would like us to accomplish and affect in our presentations to the class. It was not until today that I felt this, and only moments ago connected it to Stevens.

I am a student of English, but I am also a student who wants to teach English, and more than anything I want to teach in a rural setting. Growing up in a rural setting is such a unique experience, and a part of me is a little embarrassed to realize I am beginning to sound like a broken record, as this is my third (?) post on its importance. In a few weeks I will be presenting in my teaching capstone, a lesson on the importance of understanding your role as a teacher in a working/ranching community. I keep asking myself what do I want my fellow prospective teachers to learn from this lesson, and I just keep hoping that for a moment they understand their importance as a teacher, as a facilitator of imagination and things in a rural setting.

A few weeks ago Dr. Sexson assigned to me "The Poem that took the Place of a Mountain" I sat there reading it, trying to glean some sort of understanding with this piece wrestling with its contents so that it might reveal its secrets unto me.
To me this piece speaks of an idea, or a spark that takes hold of you and as you shape it, take meaning from it, it works and it changes you. Creates a new space in which you exist as the person who has been changed by this experience. We don't know exactly why we are changed, and what has moved us towards this piece, but rather we are aware of this change no matter how subtly it may occur. Regardless of its magnitude its effect is intense and to which one must pay attention.

So perhaps this next week when I must present my beliefs to my class, I will whip out this poem, and tell them of the importance of the spark, or the poem that took the place of a mountain.

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.