romantics

Every spring, when my feet emerge from their winter hibernation in woolen socks, and my lungs are filled with fresh air and warmth, a specific memory always returns to me. Ninth grade English with Mrs. Rosenlof. It was during the merry month of May she first introduced the class to the English romantic poets. William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, John Keats, William Blake, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. They were a revelation! These were my poets. Yes! They understood the world! They had passion! Nature! Life! Ah!
Their melancholic, dreamy and often self-centered poetry would of course be attractive to a melodramatic teenager such as myself, but the fact that I return to them every year and still draw strength from their words speaks to their true roots in my heart.
Mrs. Rosenlof was anything but a romantic, quite the contrary. She was the first to introduce me to a feminist reading of fairy tales ("Cinderella is really about a woman living a miserable life, who can't change her circumstances, and needs to have a magical fairy to bring her to the love of her life who then solves all her problems. Do you see a problem in that?"), but I could tell even she was moved by the romantic poets. And who couldn't be with the world singing spring outside?
She was an incredibly influential teacher for me. We've kept vaguely in touch. She came to my wedding, where she danced with gusto and precision the entire evening with her husband, and I sometimes see her at the grocery store or at the Art Ball. She also introduced me to diagramming sentences, which changed the way I read and think about words (I parse sentences in my mind constantly, but that's another blog post).

Those are the kind of experiences I hope my daughters have. Revelations through literature, excellent teachers who enlighten and expand their minds, passion....but I'm starting to sound like Ann Shirley. A sign to stop.