Julia Alvarez

Thank you, Kevin, for inviting me to the big table.

Well, I was in a fluster of trying among the many riches that the New Yorker has published to select a poem.

And then I remembered this little poem that I've been very fond of.

And this occasion gave me hope.

the opportunity to revisit it.

And I'm just fond of it.

I used it a lot in my writing workshops because it was always a great writing prompt.

Everyone has a school, grammar school or high school memory.

You had to sit there for eight hours and look a lot at

at your environment and your teacher and your classmates.

So a lot of it got stored in there.

So it was a great writing prompt.

And also for my students that I knew were going to go on and be teachers, I thought, you know, we try to equip them with all kinds of smarts, but it's really the things that the students come back with are the least likely things that you never studied for.

So I went and I discovered it was still there with all my teaching folders.

The Schoolroom on the Second Floor of the Knitting Mill

While most of us copied letters out of books, Mrs. Lawrence carved and cleaned her nails.

Now the red and buff cardinals at my back room window make me miss her, her room, the hallway, even the chimney outside that broke up the sky.

In my memory, it is afternoon.

Sun streams in through the door next to the fire escape where we are lined up, getting our coats on to go out to the playground.

The tetherball, its towering height, the swings.