Why Poetry Gives You Superpowers

Today we'd like to give you a look inside the Martin Saints curriculum. Then we'd like to introduce you to a Martin Saints student in action.

Mrs. Jocelyn Jekel was the first teacher we hired at Martin Saints, and for four wonderful years she guided and designed our curriculum. This year, with the birth of baby Jekel #2, Mrs. Jekel is home focusing on being a mom, and we miss her very much.

However, all is not lost. One of her most recent lectures is now available on video. Watch it, and see for yourself what we're trying to do in a Martin Saints classroom. Brew yourself a cup of tea, get cozy, and enjoy Mrs. Jekel's tour de force presentation about poetry and Catholic education.

Quick preview: Mrs. Jekel explains how poetry embodies the Catholic "sacramental imagination," that mixture of practicality and mysticism. Poetry helps us pay attention to the concrete details of life, but with an eye on the mystery just below the surface: what we see matters, but what we see isn't all there is. By teaching us that the spiritual and the physical are integrated with each other, poetry helps us to perceive and love reality more deeply and truthfully.

That explains why classical education gives you super-powers. Poetry trains us to inhabit reality more deeply and truthfully than we otherwise would. Tragically, many people sleepwalk through life, but not someone educated like this.

Keira Watters is a Martin Saints ninth grader who is wide awake - fully alive - and who shows what this looks like in practice. Below is a poem that Keira wrote about last month's canoe camping trip:

My Experience on the River 

A line of blue, sparkling with light,

Winding forever gloriously through the wild

Bordered by trees, varying in height,

Its laugh free and joyful like that of a child.

The eagles soar, high and free,

White clouds are drifting across the the wide blue sky

The sun looks down, smiling on me,

And o'er the river winds rush, through trees they sigh.

The air is fresh, nice and clean

I breath it in as my paddle submerges,

Water splashing up, cool and pristine

All but truth and wild it purges

The quiet is peaceful and good

Here there are no worries, no sadness, no stress

Only the river, sky, and wood

Now all I think; God had sewn this perfect dress

We're proud of this poem. We're proud of Keira, because she can write like that, because she is observant and articulate. Most of all, we're proud of Keira because she knows that a river is not just a body of water and a pile of rocks. No - Keira knows that a river is these things, but it's also God's "perfect dress." This way of engaging reality is the Martin Saints way.