Poems

Word Jumble

38 Comments

Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden

Hey Mr. C.,

We’re just about to get out of school for another year and I can’t wait. Whenever May comes around I start to think about much fun summer is going to be and I kind of lose track of things, which is too bad because that’s exactly when we’re taking all those tests.

This year I was really sweating it in English class because Ms. Filbert-Nutt got this idea that we should all memorize the same poem – this thing by Robert Frost about a yellow brick road somewhere in the forest or something. I’m not too good at remembering things, probably because I’m kind of old, for a sophomore.

Anyway, she told us in September we’d have to learn it, and as soon as you felt ready to recite it you just had to tell her and she’d give you two minutes to do it in class. Alicia Bombardo did it the very next day, of course! I kept putting it off, and by the time March came around she started calling on people who hadn’t done it yet. I had to use my fake sore throat voice a couple of times just to get a pass.

So I thought I’d managed to dodge it completely, but then last week when we were doing the essay part of our year-end exam, it turned out she wanted us to write it on the test paper! Longhand!

And it was just my luck I was sitting a little behind and just off to the side of Stephen Craft. He’s kind of smart but he’s also wiggly and he’s got these really thick arms and he kind of hunches over his papers when he writes. So I was only able to get a glimpse of word groups here and there while he was writing it out.

It’s not easy to copy from someone’s paper when they’re all fidgety like that. Especially if the teacher is as fussy about cheating, which Ms. Filbert-Nutt is.

Anyway, I did my best. But when she gave me the paper back I had a “D”, with a whole bunch of question marks scribbled around my answer to that poem question, along with this note: “What happened here? Talk to me!”.

Here’s what my paper said:

Two woods diverged in a yellow road,
And travel I could not sorry both
And long be one, traveler I stood
And as far down one looked as I could
Bent to where it in the undergrowth;

Then just the other, as took as fair
And better having the perhaps claim
Grassy it wanted, and because was wear,
Passing the that as though for there
Worn about them really had the same,

Both equally and morning that lay
Step in no leaves had trodden black
Another first marked I for Oh the day!
Way how on knowing leads yet to way
Ever should I come if I doubted back.

With this telling shall I be a sigh
Ages somewhere and ages hence:
Roads a wood diverged in two and I,
Traveled the one I took less by,
Made the all and has that difference.

So now I have to have this meeting with Ms. F-N and I think my whole grade kind of rests on it. Mr. C., I’m wondering if you could help me think of something good to say that isn’t too false, but isn’t totally honest either. Something with just enough spin that it could keep me from flunking my sophomore year. Again!

Your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby that I try often enough but I’m not a very good liar – whenever I tell a whopper people see through me right away. All my excuses tend to fall flat so I didn’t think I could help him. He wrote back and accused me of making that answer up, which, of course, was true. But he asked me to pass it along.

What should Bubby say to improve his grade?

38 thoughts on “Word Jumble”

  1. Good morning. Bubby, I think there is one option that might work – memorize the poem and repeat it from memory to your teacher. Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t do that. I guess you can’t tell her the truth. Maybe a sob story would work.

    Tell her about all the years you have struggled with trying to complete your sophomore year. You need to be somewhat hysterical. Don’t over do the hysteria, but make it believable. A little crying might help. Think of this as the biggest performance of your life unless you really want to be a sophomore again next year. With a good performance your teacher might be willing to give you the minimum grade needed to let you complete your sophomore year.

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  2. bubby should say hes not very good at memorizing but he is good at getting the gist of it. the poem here is certainly rhymey and robert frost would recognize the essence of the thing here and he just hasnt quite got it committed to memory. he had it a month or two ago but then that darn sore throat kept him from being able to recite it for the class. now he will have to recommit to memorizing it for the presentation which son of a gun he had forgotten all about until the gentle reminder on the test . thanks ms fn for the timely reminder and what day is the last day of school this year? do you think i could maybe recite it the day before that?

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  3. i took a course in speed reading years ago ad in the booklets they handed out were some readings where the words were all jumbled up and even backwards in the way they wrote them. they first had you read the text then tested you on the content and only after you had answered al the questions about the subject did they go back and point out that the words were arranged less than perfectly.
    i think you could tell ms filber nutt that the speed reading has shifted over and affected your speed memorization here. all the content and intent is here. the words pretty much are the right ones arent they and the order is something that is good for comfort but isnt it really about the overall picture of the thing? frosty roberts wrote some good stuff but geeze…you be expected to remember everything. im just a sophomore

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  5. When it comes to explaining what you wrote on the exam, Bubby, I think you should try to say nothing or as little as possible about that. Go right into a sob story, or some diversion. You might try tim’s explanation for what you wrote, but I think the safest thing is to avoid saying anything about that. I have been exposed to a lot of lying and I’ve seen the stone walling approach of not saying anything used by some of the country’s top liars.

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  6. Between lying and telling the truth, Bubby, I think your best hope lies with lying through your teeth. You could plead for sympathy by claiming you have an exotic dyslexia that scrambles your words, and this has been your secret shame for years.

    On the other hand, it might be smarter to appeal to Ms. Filbert-Nutt’s selfish side. Tell her that if you flunk her course, you’ll be held back in school another year. And that means you will be her student again next year. She’ll pass you.

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  7. This is what you need to do, Bubby. Tell Ms. F-N that you felt so deeply about this poem that you thought it would only be right to retell it from your internalized perspective — this is what Frost would have wanted, for you to take that other road.

    When I was in college, I took a poetry-writing class from a professor who also had the title “Writer in Residence”. All his poems were long skinny things,many with the last line being only one word. He was a huge fan of Basho and haiku as well. During that trimester my dad was quite ill and I didn’t spent much time thinking about my class or my work. The night before we had to turn in our final folios, I feverishly rewrote many of my pieces in the professor’s style… skinnied them up and ended several with just one word on the last line. I got an “A” — the only one in the class. I have to admit that this experience has made me a little cynical about the value of grades.

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    1. It’s a long-used technique: stroking the teacher’s ego. Some of these folks literally “wrote the book” that you’re required to read. God forbid that your writings in any way contradict or challenge the teacher’s beliefs, too! I recall being foolishly naive when I was first in my graduate program. I honestly believed that originality or an extra inquiring mind was something my teachers would value highly. I received the only “C” in my college career by challenging a public health professor’s pet theory that sexual repression causes violence. He even incorporated Larry Flynt’s writings to bolster his position. This blue book test came back with so many angry comments in red ink that I could barely make out my own writing! My cogent argument challenging his pet theory had triggered a virtual tirade of insults. I later concluded that he must’ve been sexually repressed.

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  8. If Bubby can’t or won’t learn to apply himself, passing his sophomore year will be the least of his problems. Lying sets the stage for bigger problems down the road as well. Bubby should suggest to Ms F-N that poetry is living language and not scripture. Reinterpreting it can be part of the creative process, an active response rather than a passive one. To really seal the deal, Bubby should then reinterpret a couple of other poems, or the Frost poem a couple of different ways and submit those to Ms F-N as well. In Bubby’s case, he being a habitual slacker, the possibility is slim, but deconstructing poetry could be an exercise that could lead to a life-long interest.

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    1. I agree that lying is not the best approach. The best thing that Bubby could do is just tell the truth and take the consequences. Will Bubby do that? No. Unfortunately, if he can get away with lying he will fit right in with some our leaders in the world of politics and big business.

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  9. If Ms F-N seems dubious, Bubby can express to her how much he admires e. e. cummings’ “Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town.”

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  10. I was going to say I’m with Jim – memorize the original NOW – repeat it over and over in different voices to you dog. Then explain that you hadn’t had much sleep the night before when you took that test – perhaps the most “white” of the lies you could tell her. But I’ll have to say that Bill makes good sense there.

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  11. You have to wonder what Ms Fig-Newton’s intention is here, other than devising a test that is simple as possible to grade. To memorize a poem, you need not understand it or even absorb it. If the poem is not one of your own choosing, you need not reflect on the meaning at all. So what is accomplished? I have a serious aversion to arbitrary and pointless exercises, so it’s easy to see myself in Bubby’s situation, though not for Bubby’s reasons.

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  12. Poem memorization is not about understanding the meaning, it is about internalizing the rhythm of the words (to my mind) – and poetry is as much about the rhythms as it is about the meaning, otherwise it would just be prose. So, Bubby, you can explain that you were simply writing out the rhythms as you interpreted and internalized them. Maybe it’ll work. VS’s story of her poetry class reminded me of my sculpture class – a class where I frequently clashed with the professor (mostly because he was a sexist boob, which I had no patience for no matter his artistic talent). I wound up getting an A in his class when we had our end-of-semester review and I was able to explain that his notion of sculpture was to create space from inside a solid form (his favored media was carving into rock), whereas my preferred method was to create a solid form into the space (a holdover from my theater design background where you start with an empty stage and create the space by adding elements to the emptiness). We approached the same discipline from exact opposite ends. Bubby – you can explain that you were doing the same: approaching Frost from the exact opposite side. Creating the rhythms and tone to create the same idea, which meant it came out a bit jumbled.

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  14. OT-Will be only sporadically on the trail for the next few days. Heading to Fargo for son’s graduation from MSUM with his Master’s degree in counseling and student affairs.

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  16. The idea of an exotic processing disorder has already been described here by others, and in better detail than I would have managed. I admire those of you who entertain the idea that at this stage in life, Bubby might actually memorize the poem in an evening out of sheer desparation.

    Renee’s post has brought to my attention the passing of time, and the fact that soon, the s&h (who has absolutely NO talent for lying whatsoever, even when it is absolutely necessary) will be in the same class as Bubby. Given that he has been a fan of Bubby’s for years, this information is going to completely freak him out.

    My question is this-Bubby, why do you want to leave the sophmore class. It seems to work for you, go with your strength. Junior year is fraught with all sorts of rings you are supposed to be grabbing at-is that how you want to spend the next year? Think about this carefully, your entire future could depend upon it. Once you leave your sophmore year, I don’t think they will let you go back.

    Think about it.

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  17. I don’t see a problem here. Is not “D” a passing grade??? Passing is good enough, isn’t it, especially for Bubby.

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    1. Yes, maybe he can slip by with a D, but he will have to be careful when responds to Mrs. F-N’s request for a meeting. Perhaps he should pick up some flowers to give to her.

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  20. the woods are wonderful here on the trail
    and if i dont focus ill need help making bail
    bubbys a sophmore a time warp indeed
    dales the author his warnings we heed

    i love his poetry interventions
    makinng you think of a poets intentons
    aabba or a similar pattern
    makes your brain spin in a rhyming turn

    i love the chance to think like a poet
    my feet are a part and the certainly know it
    they are long fellows you know what hey say
    long feet long other stuff how was your day?

    i took the path right here on the trial
    that leaves me so thankful for my friends making bail
    its a tough crowd says rodeney listen good bubby
    for a sophmore your beard is quite stubbby

    good luck in the year of 2014
    i m gonna knock you clean right outta your spleen
    eight nine ten eleven
    gonna get this trail right lined up with heaven

    15 16 17 18
    i bet your all gone to bed no one is waiting
    19 20 21 22
    see you i a couple hours on the trial renewed

    thank you dale for our daily tweak
    insights to our personality got a real good peek.
    where the hell are krista, allanna and clyde
    hope all is well and no ones gone and died

    see you tomorrow with a new topic of discussion
    get on here and lets have a lively discussion
    mb or the nazis we’ll all wait and see
    the trail has got attention from you and from me

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