Wendy Barker — Image and Video by kenne
“Why I Hate Telling People I Teach English,” is a new poem by Wendy Barker. I love this poem! But I feel obliged to point out that the nice thing about being able to answer the question, “What do you do for a living?” with “I teach English,” is not having to explain what it is you do after answering the question. I’ve had jobs that would generate a follow-up question, “So, what’s that?”, which directs the conversation into my answering a question that was not asked with the intention of getting an answer – it’s just “small talk.” It’s the small talk that gets to us, which is why most people should find Wendy’s poem entertaining as well as being very good prose poetry.
kenne
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Reblogged this on Becoming is Superior to Being and commented:
On this Sunday morning, as I often do, I began the day by reading poetry. This morning I pulled Wendy Barker’s book of poetry, “Nothing Between Us” off the bookshelf. In 2009 I videoed her reading from her then-new book, as I did her reading, “Why I Hate Telling People I Teach English.” — kenne