Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Dara Wier’s "The Teacher Said" is a chilling meditation on the interplay between innocence and horror, instruction and destruction, and the unsettling task of constructing meaning out of death. Presented as a monologue in the voice of an instructor, the poem blurs the boundaries between education and indoctrination, childhood and mortality, discipline and trauma. Wier crafts a strikingly ironic tone, using the language of a well-meaning lesson to guide students through deeply disturbing imagery.

The poem begins with a command that feels both theoretical and deeply personal: "Imagine someone you love is dead." Rather than allowing the reader to dwell on grief, the teacher immediately follows with a task: "Now build them the heaven you'd put them in." This imperative transforms mourning into an architectural project, a forced act of creation that requires the student (or reader) to fabricate an afterlife for the lost. The directive turns emotional devastation into a construction exercise, reducing the idea of heaven to something to be designed according to personal preference rather than theological certainty.

The lesson continues with a shift in focus: "Look for heaven in Life and Look and look while you're at it for hell." Here, the teacher frames existence as a scavenger hunt for evidence of both bliss and torment. However, Wier makes it clear that hell is not merely something to be found—it is something we must build, just as heaven was: "For hell is another place we'll have to build." This shift from discovery to creation suggests that suffering is not just a passive condition but an active process, something we participate in constructing.

The imagery turns explicitly violent: "Find a terrible fire, hook and ladders, red as waxed apples and dark as rich soil." The similes initially suggest childhood associations—waxed apples evoke school lunches, rich soil suggests gardening or play—but these comforting images are swiftly undercut by the reality of destruction. The fire is not metaphorical; it is consuming, real. The phrase "hook and ladders" references firefighting equipment, further emphasizing catastrophe.

The horror deepens: "Look at the ten tiny firemen, already burnt in their clumsy helmets and coats, someone, someone's little sister, falling, falling faster over the safety bars of a seven-story landing, falling into a safety net on fire." This moment is particularly harrowing—the image of small, ineffective firefighters already charred, their supposed protection meaningless. The repeated "falling, falling faster" increases the poem’s sense of helplessness, and the "safety net on fire" is a cruel paradox, reinforcing the inevitability of destruction.

Then comes the emotional gut punch: "And find a face so forlorn as it looks on and feels she's gone." This moment shifts from the spectacle of disaster to the intimate pain of loss. The forlorn observer, witnessing the irrevocable, stands in for the student, the reader, anyone who has ever watched a tragedy unfold and been powerless to stop it. Wier closes this section with a stark truth: "Remember nobody's heroic, nobody is saved, no one gets out alive." This assertion dismantles the expectation of rescue or redemption, leaving only mortality as the universal lesson.

The poem then transitions into a grotesque classroom exercise: "Paste it to your posters and we'll tack it to the board." This line reduces the immense suffering described earlier to a mere arts-and-crafts project, as if death and destruction are just another part of the curriculum. The suggestion of an insect sketch next to the students’ artwork—"Right next to the [here is sketch of an insect?] U-T-FULL birds and composite flowers you drew for your fathers and mothers."—reinforces the contrast between childhood innocence and the brutal lesson they are being forced to absorb.

The final lines twist the language of classroom discipline into something eerily sinister: "Let's strive to keep our edges just inside the lines. Remember to ask permission before cutting out the picture of the corpse preserved four thousand years in peat." The polite, structured tone juxtaposed with the macabre subject matter is deeply unsettling. The corpse preserved in peat—a reference to ancient bog bodies—becomes just another image to be neatly excised and arranged. The final admonitions—"Take care when you use your scissors not to run or climb on rickety chairs. Be obedient, be tidy, be so careful, be very sweet."—read like an unsettling parody of childhood instruction. The gentle reminders to be "obedient, tidy, careful, sweet" are delivered in a way that suggests enforced innocence, a demand for controlled, unquestioning behavior even in the face of horror.

By using the voice of a teacher, Wier crafts a poem that is both satirical and deeply disturbing, exposing how easily we integrate trauma and violence into everyday learning. "The Teacher Said" suggests that we are conditioned—perhaps from childhood—not just to observe but to accept, organize, and even participate in the making of both heaven and hell. The poem’s power lies in its juxtaposition of a calm, methodical voice with imagery of destruction and loss, making it a searing critique of how we process suffering in structured, almost bureaucratic ways.

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