This week's throwback is a poem I wrote in 2022 celebrating my faculty advisor back in college. He had just released a new book of poetry, and I was feeling sentimental. This poem went on to be included in the Our Jackson Home online literary journal in fall 2023 (click here for the whole journal). Always a pleasure to be numbered among the OJH guest writers.
Anyway, this one's for you, Professor Rogers.
Advising an English Major
His office was a confessional: a straight-backed chair
facing his, the room ringed with rows of books (he’d probably
read them all) like silent witnesses. Twice a year
I’d slink through the door and drop my backpack, knee bouncing
while he skimmed my course list for next semester (had to
sign off on it). He stared through wireframes and into me
in search, I suppose, of potential. “What,” he would ask,
“have you been reading?” And I (too ashamed to admit
I no longer picked up books if they weren’t for class)
fumbled and declared my love for Homer, Beowulf—all things
covered in World Lit I. He looked back at my course list.
“Then you’d like 19th century Russian realists. Read
Anna Karenina over the summer.”
I thought I knew better, so I didn’t. But now
Russian has become a byword. Fierce-eyed triumphs lie
in waste on the altar of a tyrant’s ambitions and I think
perhaps it is time to read Anna Karenina.
©2022 Stephanie Traylor