Populazzi Read Free Page B

"You were afraid to enter my class. You were wise."
    The room tittered as we sat, and Mr. Woodward retreated to a closet. He pulled out a two-foot-long billy club. Archer gave me a knowing look. He had told me Mr. Woodward was infamous for this: "the Bat." No one knew what the Bat was for or what horrors it could unleash, but it was legend. A chill ran down my spine and my palms started to sweat. Was he taking out the Bat because Archer and I were late?
    Mr. Woodward sat at the end of the horseshoe of three long desks. He held up a book and said, "
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
." As good, trained automatons, we all scrambled to pull out our copies, but Mr. Woodward cleared his throat and shook his head. "Watch and learn."
    He held the Bat by its handle and let it rest on the desktop. He started to read.
    "'Let us go then, you and I, / When the evening is spread out against the sky...'"
    As he read, he let the Bat rise until it was almost at a ninety-degree angle to the desk.
    "'Like a patient etherized upon a table.'"
    He let the Bat drop back down.
    He did this for several lines of the poem: let the Bat rise as the narrator got excited about his topic, then let it drop when his enthusiasm deflated. Finally, with a gleam in his eye, Mr. Woodward turned to us. "What is Eliot illustrating with his choice of words?"
    It seemed pretty obvious what
Mr. Woodward
was illustrating, and while Eliot was doubtless illustrating the same thing, no one in the room wanted to say it out loud. Several people in the room snickered, but none of them tried to answer.
    "Come on, kids, this is the good stuff. This is Junior English. This is T. S. Eliot. Let's dive into this! What is Eliot doing with his images? Anyone: shout it out!"
    I almost giggled when I realized I could now say this twice in one hour. "Um..." I began, "he's making them stand erect?"
    "
Yes!
" roared Mr. Woodward, and this time Archer didn't hide his smirk. "You've almost redeemed yourself for being late..."
    "Cara," I said.
    "Cara," he repeated. "So each time, Cara, when his images are at the peak of their 'erection,' if you will, what does Eliot do to them?"
    There was only one answer, and I wished I could say it without blushing. Still, I didn't hesitate. "He lets the images go flaccid."
    Mr. Woodward thrust the Bat into the air. "The woman is correct! In just the first stanza, this is what we're learning about J. Alfred Prufrock. Metaphorically, this is a man who can't keep it up. He can't make a decision, he won't face tough choices, and though he feels the longing pull of his hopes and dreams, he's too paralyzed to do anything about them!"
    Wow. The entire class was riveted. The next forty minutes flew. By the time the bell rang, several of us had gotten so involved in fervent Prufrock talk that we weren't even sitting on our chairs anymore—we'd migrated to the tops of the tables. That never would have been allowed at Pennsbrook, but I guess here it was part of the whole charter-school-teachers'-and-students'- creative-thinking thing. Whatever it was, I liked it. And although poetry had never been my thing, I was now willing to make an exception for anything by T. S. Eliot.
    As we filed out of the classroom, Archer asked what I had next. "Precalc," I said.
    "Ah," said Archer, "I was hoping it might be geometry. More opportunity for you to talk about verticals."
    "Ooh, you're right. Bummer." I looked at my schedule. "I have art fourth period, though; I could propose we
erect
a statue on campus."
    "Not bad." Archer nodded. "Or you might want to come to my seventh period theater class. We're going to do some directing."
    I winced.
    "Too big a stretch?" he asked.
    "Too big a stretch."
    Archer glanced down at my schedule. "We both have fifth period lunch. Maybe I'll see you then. I promise I'll work on being more clever."
    He gave me directions to my next class, then disappeared down the hall in the other direction.
    This was great. I'd had an amazing class, I was