The light wind is blowing across my cheeks
with sunshine shining down on me brightly.
Birds taking off and flying south for weeks,
while walking, I pull my pink coat tightly.
Arriving at school, I climb concrete stairs
to open the big white doors and the heat
hits me in the face. People talk and stare
at me. I walk to the office and meet
the principal and the main office staff.
Say hello, check my mail, walk to my room.
This is my routine: hearing children laugh,
teaching them English, and watching them bloom
into young adults. My job is lots of
fun and I would not change it no matter
what. Through my job I want to spread some love
and inspire intelligent chatter.
By: Elizabeth Harvey
I thought you did a really good job with the enjambment. It does make the poem sound almost like someone’s actual thought process, rather than a fixed sonnet form. Also, when I was first reading this poem, I thought the speaker was a student, rather than a teacher. So, to find it the other way around was a nice surprise. One thing I would say in critiquing this poem, though, is that it is a little bit overly sentimental, so you may want to see about changing that. Other than that, considering the attention you necessarily had to pay to form, I thought you did a really good job constructing the poem.
Great use of enjambment! I love the first six lines, especially about the birds flying south, as a subtle way of portraying that it’s fall. I also like the imagery of the building being so hot the heat “hits” the speaker in the face. I think the line that “My job is lots of fun and I would not change it no matter what” could use more imagery. Maybe portray what the speaker does with the children, to show how much he/she loves them. There could also be more description with the line “People talk and stare at me”. Do they talk/stare at the speaker in a hostile or curious manner? Why do they do this?