An English Teacher Confession

Here it is: I'm a horrible speller. I lean on spell check heavily. So heavily in fact that the other day, when I was responding to student letters, I opened a Word document to check myself (this is a normal practice). I just typed the words in and left them there throughout the day.

Well, when I was done with my document, I looked at the words I had checked. And they are:

Butterflies harbor dying succeeded likable similar easier nickname criticize suspenseful? Awful verse sonnets explain nonsense mean description rereading

I'm not sure where the question mark came from, but it fits, doesn't it? Maybe this doesn't make any sense to anyone else, but I thought it was entertaining. Not to mention the "Awful verse...explain nonsense mean...rereading." Ha! I love poetry, but I know there is so much awful verse out there. If you can call it verse at all - does anyone actually try and write verse anymore? And don't tell me free verse is "verse." Gag. That's poetry (poetry?) I rarely read because I find it so lacking.


I recently picked up my lone copy of Yeats. I'm rediscovering a few gems, including lines like, And live alone in the bee-loud glade, ("The Lake Isle of Innisfree") and, Come away, O human child!/For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand, ("The Stolen Child"). And even though I don't like all that I read of his, Yeats has his moments - some very profound. I like what he says about the nobleness of his well-beloved in "The Folly of Being Comforted." Not a quality of a woman that is much praised these days.


My human child is crawling on me, so I'll stop.