anneoftheisland | anne the schoolteacher

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billy,
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anne the schoolteacher

Anne had found the butter churn -- very basic and homemade, but very nearly what she would have used back at Green Gables -- in the compound, where someone obviously kept it to protect it from the elements. The cream she collected herself, in the process keeping the kitchen supplied with enough milk to last a little while, as not nearly enough people on the island appreciated the importance of a glass of milk. While she was sure she would never be friends with the goats, quite, she thought they at least had an understanding now, after a few days of milking.

More importantly, she'd chosen a couple of books to start with, one that she was familiar with and one that she thought they might explore together. Billy would not be a typical student, after all, and there were no requirements for what she must teach him, so she thought she would give him the chance to choose.

So after hauling the churn and the bucket of cream outside, and slipping the two books into the pocket of one of her favourite skirts, she had only to take a seat by her apple trees and wait for Billy to arrive.

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Billy took the book from her and opened it to the first page. "'Ode to a Nightingale'," he started, and read the poem. Billy read slowly and carefully, his brow furrowing slightly as he lingered over a few phrases and words. He understood them, but knew he was missing all sorts of meanging.

When he was done, he wasn't even sure if it was a happy poem or a sad poem.

Anne, who had been listening very intently to Billy's reading, listening to where he flowed through it and where he hesitated, where he faltered, looked up from her work and smiled at him.

"Had you ever read that poem before?" she asked him. "Tell me what it made you think of, what it made you feel."

"Confused?" Billy said dryly, looking up at Anne. "I'm not sure how it made me feel. I think I got some of it, like he's talking about booze and drugs, right?"

"In some senses he is," said Anne. She had not, after all, chosen the poem by accident, or simply because she thought the imagery exquisite. "There isn't a right or a wrong answer. If there was a line that made you feel something, or if there was a particular point that meant something to you, then we can start there."

Billy looked back down at the poem and decided the very first lines was the best place to start.

"MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains."

He looked up at her. "I've felt like that," he said. "Where I get so drunk everything becomes really numb and distant and far away, and it's a really good feeling because sometimes I'd search it out." He paused. "But this guy, he isn't really drunk. Is he?"

"No," said Anne, without ceasing her churning. "But the sensation is the same, the sensation of being beyond sense, or of dying. He's using an familiar experience so that you might empathise with him, so that you might know what he is feeling though you are not inside his skin."

Billy reread the first stanza and nodded slowly. "That's really clever," he said. He looked up at Anne. "So the guy in the poem, he's dying?"

"Not necessarily," said Anne, "although you wouldn't be the first to interpret it that way. What else would make a person feel that way, like they were removed from the world, like they could not take joy from it?"

"A recent tragedy, like a death or somethng," Billy suggested. "Or if the person himself and gone through something traumatic.

"Keats had experienced both of those things," Anne agreed with him. "When I first read the poem, I knew nothing of the poet, and thought it to be quite melancholy and lovely, and there are some who say that when you study poetry you should study nothing but the words themselves. But I find that impossible to do, when the state of mind of the poet and the state of the world around him have such a tremendous effect on his writing. Keats was frequently ill, and died quite young, and there were times in his life when he experienced such a passion for poetry that he found it difficult to feel any connection to anything else at all. Does knowing those things affect how you see what he has written in the first stanza? I imagine it's very much like writing a song; it means so much more when there's something of yourself in it."

Billy nodded at that, rereading the first stanza again. And it did seem different, knowing what he did now. "It's true, about the music, I mean. Certain songs mean a lot more to me an' Joe than others, just 'cause of what we were feeling or what we were going through when we wrote them. But a lot of fans don't know that. They appreciate the music, but not in the same way me an' Joe do."

Billy furrowed his brow. "But if you didn't know that about Keats, like the fact that he was sick or whatever, then the poem doesn't really mean the same thing, right?"

"It's not necessary for a poem to have just one meaning," said Anne, lifting the lid of the churn to peek inside for just one moment, but it was far too early for it to have separated. "Though of course it had a meaning, in the mind of the poet, when it was being written. It's possible to appreciate it without knowing. Just like it's possible for your fans to appreciate your music, without knowing. Perhaps they put their own meaning on it, like you did when you first read the poem, imagining it's about death, or about being drunk, about something that means something to them personally."

Billy nodded at that, and he wondered how some of the people who heard their music interpreted it. "What's your favourite part in this poem, Anne?" He tilted his head. "You want me to take over the churning thing?"

"Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: "

quoted Anne, as she encouraged Billy to his feet. "It always appealed to my sense of imagination. Did you see how I was doing this? You just have to keep a steady rhythm; you'll feel it when it starts to change and solidify. Just let me know if your arms get tired. Now why don't you pick another bit of the poem that struck you particularly?"

Billy stood and tentatively took the churn from her, immitating her earlier movements. "I think I got it," he said, as he worked it in a steady rhythm. "And I like that part you just quoted, too. I mean, it sounds nice, but I'm not sure what it meant. Like the stuff about Bacchus and his pards. What the fuck is a 'pard'?"

"I didn't know that either the first time I read it," Anne confessed to him. "It's short for leopards. Bacchus is the Roman god of wine, and he rode in a chariot drawn by leopards. Isn't that a romantic image, to be drawn in a chariot by leopards? Though I don't believe the poet was trying to evoke that image particularly when he wrote it."

"It's pretty cool," Billy said, thinking about it. Sure as Hell beat the fucking goat van. "What kinda image do you think he was trying to evoke?"

"Don't forget to keep churning," Anne reminded him, when Billy started to slow. "Well, he's using a metaphor there; that is to say, when he says that he is not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, he means that he is not brought to that state by drunkenness. Do you see?"

Billy immediately started churning again, not sure if anything felt different yet or not. He wondered how long it took to make butter. "Oh okay, yeah. So he got that drunk feeling some other way." Billy considered the rest of the stanza; fucking queens and moons and breezes and shit. Billy didn't consider himself to be stupid, but he was kind of feeling it then. He sighed. "I don't get it, Anne. The stuff about the queen and the tender night, is he in love?" Billy tried.

"He is in love with the nightingale's song," Anne agreed with him, "but right there, he's talking about the night sky, about the Queen-Moon and her starry Fays, the moon and the stars, as perceived as a Fairy Queen and her attendants. The moon and the stars might be in the sky yet it is dark. The world of the nightingale that he imagines is in darkness."

"Why's he so in love with the nightingale?" Billy asked, then realized it probably wasn't meant literally. "What does the nightingale represent?" He thought about his own question for a while. He knew what it would represent for him.

"Well, what do you think?" Anne asked him earnestly. "What is the nightingale, or the nightingale's song, doing for him?"

"See, if it were me, it would totally mean music, my guitar," Billy said, brightening a little at the idea. "Because other than actually drinking, that was the only thing that would give me that feeling: of being totally seperated from everything, from the world. This blissful, numb, happy feeling where it was like I was outside of everything and I could just float away with what I was doing and playing."

"So what you're saying," said Anne, with a bright smile, "is that the nightingale's song is an escape, it's a way for him to get away from what the rest of his life is like."

Billy nodded quickly at that. "I guess it is, yeah. Hey, like, um, viewless wings, I get it."

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