Ninth Grade Meets Poetry

"Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary." -Kahlil Gibran

She sits at the front of the room, unbelieving. The class remains silent. With a sigh, she rubs her temples and repeats herself, "None of you actually read poetry?"
"I do!" I want to scream, "I do!" I want to tear the dog eared anthology from my backpack, with pencil thoughts in the margins, sticky notes pointing to the most intriguing words, and throw it on her desk. I want to gush about Emily Dickinson, to recite and analyze "I'm nobody, who are you?". I want to, but I do not. Instead, I bite down hard, forcing myself into acting out the same blase fatigue as the rest of the class.
Without a response, she sighs again and opens the book in front of her. Her voice fills the room.

The Lanyard by Billy Collins
http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/the_lanyard.html

I found myself lost in the beautiful language, in the paradox of "ricocheting slowly off the blue walls" and the comparison of the gift of life to the gift of the lanyard. We were asked to analyze it, to find a meaning. After a long pause, a girl in the back row offered an answer, "It means like, we can't ever pay back our parents, you know?" A silence ensued, and when nothing else was given, it was taken.
"We can't ever pay back our parents?" That's the only meaning she found in The Lanyard? Not only is that directly stated in the poem, its described as a "worn truth"! The meaning of The Lanyard, dear reader, is not directly stated in it. No, the meaning rests in the final lines, the confusion and guilt with which he admits that at the time, he was "as sure as a boy could be/ that this useless, worthless thing [he] wove/ out of boredom would be enough to make [he and his mother] even". In frustration, I resign to saying that the Ninth Graders know not, for whatever be the meaning, it remains locked inside the words, like Frost's snowy woods or Cumming's grasshopper.