As a boy, I sometimes attended a country church. I would sit with my father and other men, mostly farmers, listening to a farmer named Buck teach Sunday school.
In those days, country churches bought booklets called quarterlies. Each had 13 lessons. You studied one a week and changed topics every quarter. You might have lessons on The Psalms in spring and switch to lessons on the gospels in summer.
In sorting stuff to move to Georgia, I was surprised to see I’d saved a few of those old quarterlies.
Two things struck me:
• I was surprised at the strength of the memories of my father. He’d been raised in that farming community. After Pearl Harbor, he’d been torn away by the draft. He fought through World War II. Then the G.I. Bill gave him opportunities he never imagined. Though he had a Ph.D. and was a Fulbright scholar, he’d sit quietly and listen as Mr. Buck did his best with the Sunday school lesson. If called on, my father would speak. Otherwise, he kept silent. He’d had a different experience with education, but he respected what those men were trying to do.
• I thought those quarterlies would make a good model for other subjects — say, the American poets. Those Sunday school students were mostly older men, and they were trying to come to terms with the Bible, a book they held in reverence, with what education they had. The books I am thinking of, reverently, are collections of poems by William Carlos Williams, Toy Derricott, William Stafford, Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Reznikoff and Lorine Niedecker. I can buy a book of poems. But it’d be nice to have a little guide, perhaps just 13 lessons, to help keep me focused. I could start with William Carlos Williams in the spring, switch to William Stafford in summer … and I can already see there are not enough seasons in the year. But I think it would be fun.
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