Your Verse - Dead Poets Society (1989)

Mr. Keating: In my class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and languages. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I see that look in Mr. Pitts' eyes like 19th century literature has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right? Maybe. You may agree and think yes, we should study our Mr. Pritcher and learn our rhyme and meter and go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions. Well, I have a secret for you. Huddle Up...Huddle UP! 

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business and engineering, these are all noble pursuits necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, and love; these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman "Oh me, Oh life of the question of these recurring. of the endless trains of the faithless of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these? Oh me, Oh life." "Answer...that you are here and life exists....You are here. Life exists, and identity. The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse." The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

(http://www.whysanity.net/monos/dead.html)

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I'll start with the fact that I'm convinced I'm no poet. The conciseness of poetry is something I struggle with, the fact that you have to find just exactly the right words to express something and you can't go on for pages and pages.  For this reason, I have steered away from poetry creative writing classes, afraid of not being deep enough or that it will be too difficult to produce poems.


But after I watched Dead Poets Society (1989) the other evening, for perhaps the third or fourth time, I was convinced that I needed to sit down and write poetry.  


Now I know that actually becoming poets isn't the point of the movie. Not at all. The point is to find your own voice and to think freely, not conforming to societal norms.  And we definitely understand that when we see Neil, the main character, rekindling the Dead Poets Society with his friends and then deciding to act in a play against his father's wishes.  He does what he thinks is right, but still feels the pressure and eventually commits suicide.


But nonetheless, I don't know a time when I've watched the movie that I haven't felt like trying to write a few verses.  Something about the way Robin Williams encourages his students transcends the screen, making me feel as if I'm his student as well.


Dead Poets Society is a favorite among English majors because it emphasizes everything that we constantly discuss and think about in our classes. We realize how important literature is to expressing the human condition. We struggle with sharing that with those people who constantly ask us what we're going to do with our English major. "Teach?" is always their suggestion.


Teaching is a noble profession, but assuming that everyone majoring in English will become teachers because that's the only thing we can do is ridiculous.  The English majors of the world are proving you wrong friends.


Many of Williams' students are headed in the opposite direction to medical, business or law school. Those students often don't understand why literature is so important or why they should have to take an English class. "I won't have to know about Thoreau or Whitman when I get a job. Who cares?" says many a student in the sciences.  My own roommate, an engineering student, grumbled all the way through her English class last semester and they didn't even have to read poetry! 


I already said that the movie isn't about literature. And I stand by that. But I don't see how literature doesn't fit into finding a voice. If we don't read the voices of others and understand other points of view, how can we come up with our own?


I think that the movie leaves us with questions rather than answers.  How much should we conform? Are these 'radical' ideas too much for impressionable teenagers?  Were Emerson and Thoreau completely nuts when they were writing about these things?


Maybe Thoreau was crazy to go live in the woods deliberately.  But either way, he found his verse.


The question is, how will you find yours?