Kevin Hearle


Showing 1 - 2 of 2 annotations associated with Hearle, Kevin

The Lesson

Hearle, Kevin

Last Updated: Nov-11-2002
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The speaker had a childhood disability--"my strange, unruly hands"--that made tying his shoes a task to be dreaded, symbolizing failure. He addresses a caregiver who patiently ("for three years, for an hour each day") had taught him to tie his shoes. She reassured the child, "The doctors don't know / everything. You will be normal // someday. Normal."

The caregiver has also experienced bodily difficulties--from curvature of the spine caused by childhood spinal [tubercular] meningitis. She tells the child about her out of body experience ("You told me you'd died once") when she had seen herself on "the table," the "frantic" doctors calling her back "to the particular / boundaries of the flesh." She allowed them to bring her back.

Now, the adult speaker, no longer disabled, ties his shoes "by instinct," "my mind giving itself // up to the common world / of things" but when he focuses on the task, he slows down and remembers his caregiver; he becomes aware of his body, he becomes aware.

View full annotation

In Memorium

Hearle, Kevin

Last Updated: Nov-11-2002
Annotated by:
Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

This poem is in memory of poet, John Logan (1923-1987), who, it is surmised, killed himself by jumping off a building. The speaker of the poem imagines what might have been troubling Logan, who had been disabled by strokes.

View full annotation