Selling the Romantics



If any non-English teachers has ever wondered what it is like to teach Romantic Poetry…I can tell you that it is very similar to being a Used Car Salesman.  I mean, why bother with something old, unstylish, and outdated when you can get the newer, sleeker, cooler model?   The one with all the snazzy buttons and things that light up….when, for pretty much 100 years, all you really need are the basics:  wheels, engine, windows, etc.  Here is where we need all the old-timers to help me spread the “they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to” sentiment. 

It really is the same with Romantic Poetry.  Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Emerson, Thoreau and many others were just trying to say what these following memes are trying to say now:

 

 

To them, nature was something we were sometimes “out of tune” with and that we had “given away our hearts” for the acquisition of things.   Today’s generation with their faces in their phones need to be reminded of Thoreau’s famous lines “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” 

Here is an article that proves what these Romantics were saying all along about nature being a teacher and a healer:

Doctors Explain Why Going On A Hike Changes Your Brain. How It Works Is Fascinating
http://www.wimp.com/what-hiking-does-to-the-brain-is-pretty-amazing/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=story/

 The bottom line is that the used car can get you to the same place as the newer one can.  Truth is, sometimes I want the new car, too.  There are some fantastic modern poets out there.  That’s the awesome things about both poetry and cars, they can both get you from point A to point B, older versions and the newer ones.  The new versions are great, but sometimes it’s best to stick with the classics.