The Day I met T.S.
by. Christopher Boskovski
It was a gloomy day last year, and I sat in the classroom of senior year of high school. My teacher, a brilliant man who was full of wisdom and experience, came in and stood infront of us tired and half awake teens and started to read a verse from memory.
"Let us go then, you and I
when the evening is spread out against the sky,
like a patient etherised upon a table..."
As I sat there, listening to the beautiful words roll off my English teacher's tongue and lips, something in my heart shattered and I grew very emotional and I sat up and looked right into my teacher's eyes and I could hear the poet's words stab me in the heart with his pen and heart full of mystery. What was this great verse of
poetry that my teacher was quoting and shaking my nerves every which way. My teacher finished with a tear in his eye. A few kids clapped, and the rest texted their friends away, and I sat there quiet and full of mixed emotions of excitment and sorrow. To hear this
sad poem, that was beautifully reversed from complete memory, very impressive I had thought in the back of my mind.
"Does anyone know what I had just read?" my teacher said, wiping the tear that rolled off his cheek. Everyone sat quiet and didn't want to answer, with that phobea of getting the question wrong and being embarrsed. My teacher looked at us. I was still in amazement and sorrow. Soon my teacher opened his mouth and taught his lesson for the day. We learned of Modernism of the artist and the "Death of Romantism" and how World War I changed the way artists, poets, thinkers and the average Joe and Joesphine thought about life. Soon, and I will never forget that moment, when my teacher turned away from the whiteboard and announced the name of the poem. Many of you poets and readers already know, just from the title, but I'll say it anyway.
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. by T.S. Eliot." my teacher announced with pride and a type of zealous attitude in his voice, that uplifted you from your seat, and made you plung into a poetry reading phase. All I wanted to do, was read that poem over and over again, till it was printed and stamped into my memory of bliss. That week, after school was let out, I went to my teacher and talked about this man T.S. Eliot. He intoduced me to beauty and a new era of poetry. I later went to the bookstore and looked up T.S. Eliot and found a thin book of poetry of his early works. I turned to the first page after the introduction and it was the poem that my teacher had read. I quickly plunged into the book of outstanding poetry and buried my thoughts and imagination and read the poem over and over. There was this one part where I couldn't read it, because it was so emotional, I cried and cried tears of sorrow, yet a hint of joy as well.
"When I am pinned and wiggling on the wall." That was the line, the line that made me cry. That feeling of being useless and hard to understand. To be pinned on the wall of mortality and depression and having no way of getting off the wall, for you are pinned, and the only thing you can do is wiggle away, till the nights pass. It was sad. That day I discovered something that spoke to me in plain english. Something that captivated my heart and made me shed several tears over and over. That day I met a man who spoke to me. That was the day I met T.S.