Poets

Did you ever watch the movie Dead Poets Society? It came out when I was in high school…or at least, I watched it when I was in high school. I don’t remember much about the movie, honestly, except that part of the premise was that the kids at some private school started a club where they read poetry together.

Why, you ask, do I remember this or want to talk about it? Because as I leave tomorrow to attend my 20th anniversary homecoming at my college, I find myself thinking about something that movie inspired.

Every Wednesday, my group of friends got together for “Poet’s.” It started pretty early in our Freshman year–we’d been talking about the movie and how fun such a group seemed to be, so we decided to start such a group ourselves. We didn’t have rules about what you had to read–it could be poetry, it could be prose, it could be something you’d written or by a favorite author. But at a college dedicated to reading and having conversations, this seemed like a pretty natural off-shoot…and one that let us pick our own things, rather than doing what was on a prescribed reading list.

Every Wednesday for four years, we met. I remember that in that first year, I read aloud an entire manuscript I’d written, one chapter at a time. Kimberly read us The Giver and Winnie the Pooh. Justin read bits of a book he’d written. Rob read us poetry. Martin chose an essay. Do I remember each thing we read together? Absolutely not, LOL. And that’s not the point.

The point is that we created something precious. The very act of selecting something to share with the group was important–it meant we were thinking about each other, that we were considering words that had impacted us. It gave us a chance to have fun conversations, to talk about everything from novels to poetry to essays to articles to songs. It gave us a chance to laugh together, to learn together, to share something that mattered.

The location of our meetings moved through the years, but it was always either in a dorm room or dorm common room. The core faces stayed the same, though others came and went. We had the most participants when we met in the common area of a dorm our senior year, and I still remember one of the “newbies” giving a rousing performance of a variation of “I’m a little teapot” in one of her first times coming. We often ordered pizza, or I (as the one with a kitchen) would bring something I’d baked. When Rob had completed a bartending course, he made us all some mixed drinks that we each took a sip of to see how he did (I don’t generally like the taste of alcohol, but I discovered that grasshoppers are delicious and quite enjoyed that single sip, LOL).

When I think about my college experience, I talk most often about curriculum and the focus on the dialectic that are an official part of St. John’s College. But when I think about the things I loved most about those days, I realize that a big part is that group of friends that made that focus such a part of our everyday lives. The fact that we used one of our free nights to keep doing the thing we were there officially to do, just on our own terms. We read. We discussed. We shared that experience. And that formed a foundation for friendships that have continued through the last two decades.

When we get together now with Martin and Kimberly, there’s never any hardship finding things to talk about, and for those “things” to quickly transcend into ideas and philosophy–because that’s what we did for four years. We started with a thing and we shared it and talked about it until it became something more. And by doing that, we cemented ourselves in each other’s thoughts and hearts and lives.

Even today, I often imagine how something I read would sound in one of their voices. I think about what they’d say on a given topic. I remember the scent of that delivery pizza and hear the shared laughter. It’s shaped me in ways I probably don’t even know. And makes me so glad that we not only chose to get together with our friends one evening a week, but that we chose something like that to do. That for four years, “Poet’s” meant fellowship and conversation and friendships that are lasting a lifetime.

I think today, when David and I talk about the sort of get-together we long for, that’s what we really have in mind. It’s not that we want to talk about any one particular subject at a party or meal. But we love to talk about things that matter. We love to share things that matter to us and present them to others so they become part of our common dialogue. We love the bonds that forge, and we miss it when it doesn’t happen. We’ve always “blamed” it on the St. John’s education…but you know? I don’t think it’s just that. I think we can “blame” it on ourselves and on that weekly getting-together we chose to do for four beautiful years.

We can blame it on Poet’s.