It has been clear to me for some time that my students didn’t read what I read in high school, so it was little surprise to me that students in my Shakespeare course had no idea what I was talking about when I walked into class this morning warning, “Beware the ides of March.” I’m not teaching Julius Caesar this semester, but I couldn’t let the “ides of March” go by without acknowledging the play that made the line “famous.”
I read Julius Caesar in junior high with Mr. Elliott, an amazing English teacher. As he demonstrated in his booming voice how we should read/act out the play, he drew us into the text and into the lives and motivations of the characters.
I haven’t reviewed the high school literature curriculum lately, but I’m pretty sure students are no longer required to read what I “had” to read–eons ago. I imagine English teachers today have serious challenges providing a curriculum that embraces the traditional “canon” of dead white men and the more inclusive contemporary “canon” to a generation that cut its teeth on e-readers and hyperlinks.
Anyway, in honor of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, and my 9th grade English teacher, I’m dropping by not with a warning but with a poem about the unpredictable mid-March weather that makes us all “watch our backs.”
I shot the “foggy day” photo outside our home in New Orleans March 15, 2012–the “Ides of March” six years ago. If the poem is difficult to read on the photo, it appears below:
The Ides of March by Marcella Remund
The seer was right to warn us,
beware the ides of March.
It’s a dangerous time, peering
through iced windows at the jeweled
tease of crocus and daffodil.
We’ve weathered another season
of deep-freeze, locked up tight
in muscle and mind. We’re tired
of winter’s grey and gritty leftovers.
But this is no time to get careless,
toss a floorboard heater through
the beveled glass and go out,
where spring flashes her flannel petticoat
embroidered in pinks and greens,
leaves us gaping, breathless,
in air still cold as a knife blade,
stripping off the down.
The author, Marcella Remund, is also an English professor. I wonder if her students came to her familiar with the phrase–“Beware the ides of March.”
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Yes, Chandra, as a high school student who endured 4 yrs of Latin taught by a strict Nun, I read Julius Caesar in Latin. Glad to know you too remembered.
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Since you’re a lawyer and an English professor, I imagine you love teaching Julius Caesar! Did you use the text in your Law and Literature course?
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Yup. We were supposed to get snow today. It was partly cloudy/mostly sunny. With a cold wind that took your breath away. 🙂 Love the photo Chandra 😉
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Our weather has been one long, contentious affair with a winter that can’t decide whether it’s in or out. It comes and goes, comes and goes. I just want it to gone!
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I think of that every March 15 and have often been surprised, when I mention it, that so many people don’t know what the heck I’m talking about…and they’re my age! I guess their high schools were different than mine or it didn’t sink in.
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I guess…but even if they’d never read the play, doesn’t it seem they would have heard that phrase somewhere along the way??? It comes up every year, at least on March 15.
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You’d think, haha. I have a cousin (by marriage) who’s birthday is March 15 and when I first found that out, I was all excited and said, “Wow, Ides of March.” She just looked at me like I was nuts so I never mentioned it again.
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Hahahaha! 😀
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Thanks for posting my poem so beautifully! What a delightful surprise to see it here. 😉
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Your poem is perfect for the crazies of mid-March. I’m happy you “found” it here. I’m honored that you dropped by. 🙂
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