Well, it's the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm grading student papers and writing letters of recommendation. Yes, still. You'd think I would be complaining, but, surprise to me, I am feeling some joy and a lot of gratitude.

These young people absolutely amaze me. Going into class and teaching for 75 minutes is the one time these days I feel happy and hopeful. And it is the only place and way I feel I can make a difference. But the last two days of reading papers for my (newly created) "Donne, the Metaphysicals, and his Legacy" have absolutely blown me away. I gave my students a different kind of assignment.

The first paper was an extended close reading of a Donne poem. But this paper was to be a serious (but also personal) reflection on what we have read and done so far (we've now been reading some Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Theodore Roethke etc.). I told them to use the "I" - that they could be personal as well as intellectual in their reflection (what poems/poets they liked, what spoke to them and why).

Every paper I have read has been a revelation. The honesty, the openness, the intimacy, as well as the keen understanding of the poetry. Students who were afraid of poetry, or who were so depressed they didn't want to read love poetry, a student whose boyfriend suddenly dumped her while at the same time she found she really hated science (the field she always wanted to go into), another student having no faith or hope suddenly discovering that other poets (like Donne) had struggled with much the same feeling.

Another student decided to add a major in English to her major in Environmental science. I have never had a class like this---and I've never offered an assignment like this, giving all twenty students permission to write a substantial paper that is really attentive to the poetic text, but also (if they want) to their own feelings and challenges and losses. I've been teaching more than fifty years but always changing things up, being more fluid in how I teach. For this course, it turned out to become for my students an exploration of poetry (metaphysical and modernist/modern) and exploration of self through poetry. Not everyone was so personal, but a surprising number explained that reading this poetry together in class had changed them...and for the better. I could not wish for more. I love, love, love, these kids.

Happy thanksgiving! We must celebrate whatever and whenever we can. To life!

Well, l'm totally exhausted at the end of this semester. The celebration of commencement at Radio City Music Hall became the stage for continued protest for the majority of students. As if this will end the bloody war. I love my students, love these kids, and have supported (and will continue to) every single one of my students.

So many of the students in my class really pulled it together and wrote excellent, meaningful, sometimes amazing term papers for my 17th Century Prose and Poetry course and my Enlightenment Colloquium. So proud of their work, and it gives me hope. Some said that I gave THEM hope (fake it til you make it?). My students were grateful, even that I didn't cancel the final assignment, since it allowed them to accomplish something they didn't think they could. But what a way to end the year

I am just very very sad.

But I do NOT intend to quit. I love my students and they love me. My Milton and my 17th century Prose and Poetry and my Enlightenment courses fill. They tell me I teach things no one else teaches (Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which hits home, Browne's Urn Burial, Margaret Fell, Spinoza's Thelogical Political Treatise, and Milton's Areopagitica in several courses) .

The students are inspired by what they read, see how it casts light on the present even as the present inevitably affects how we read earlier texts. I believe my work is more necessary than ever --it is my vocation in every sense , and my teaching continues to evolve.

But I really, really need to get away for a bit and recover.