Memories of Speech Class

The following is an excerpt from the poem "The Lanyard." During my eleventh grade Public Speaking course I presented an example of an informative speech. My topic was Billy Collins. In my intro I spoke about how most people don't like poetry and it's understandable. Then I segued into my thesis statement, which was something like, "Billy Collins is a talented, funny and accessible poet." The main body started with his earliest bio info - birthplace, parents, etc, then I spoke of his teaching career at Lehman and his early years as a poet, then his rise to fame and popularity (and the controversy over his marshaling of less cryptic writing then some of his colleagues), his being poet laureate of the U.S. and then of N.Y., his contributions as poet laureate ("The Names," and Poetry 180) and then I read What She Said and showed the YouTube clip of him reading "Feedback." My conclusion was that he's a good poet for students to know about because he's easily understandable and enjoyable and also usable for assignments.

I did not read "The Lanyard" during the speech, but did have it on hand. Afterwards, an exceptional student asked me if I could recommend others like Collins and I did but said I think he's the best of his ilk. Then I showed the young man "The Lanyard" and he read and loved it on the spot. He commented that most students wouldn't have gotten the reference to the "cookie nibbled by a French novelist." I had about two seconds to decide between pretending I got the reference or coming clean. I chose the latter. This young man told me that eating a cookie is the pivotal inspiration for Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. I asked him how he knew that and without the least bit of flippancy he told me that he read it - on his own. Cool.

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.