Sentimental Education

by Tony Hoagland

And when we were eight, or nine,
our father took us back into the Alabama woods,
found a rotten log, and with his hunting knife

pried off a slab of bark
to show the hundred kinds of bugs and grubs
that we would have to eat in a time of war.

"The ones who will survive," he told us,
looking at us hard,
"are the ones who are willing to do anything."
Then he popped one of those pale slugs
into his mouth and started chewing.

And that was Lesson Number 4
in The Green Beret Book of Childrearing.

I looked at my pale, scrawny, knock-kneed, bug-eyed brother,
who was identical to me,
and saw that, in a world that ate the weak,
we didn't have a prayer,

and next thing I remember, I'm working for a living
at a boring job
that I'm afraid of losing,

with a wife whose lack of love for me
is like a lack of oxygen,
and this dead thing in my chest
that used to be my heart.

Oh, if he were alive, I would tell him, "Dad,
you were right! I ate a lot of stuff
far worse than bugs."

And I was eaten, I was eaten,
I was picked up
and chewed
and swallowed

down into the belly of the world.

"Sentimental Education" by Tony Hoagland, from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty. © Graywolf Press, 2010 . Reprinted with permission of the author.

Comment: Another poem I snagged from The Writer's Almanac. Sudeep took classes from Tony Hoagland and got to know him quite well in college. I never took a class with him in college, but I have read a bunch of his poetry and even saw him read here in Dallas. When I got him to sign my book, I told him about our G.W. and Sudeep connection and he said, "You're a long way from D.C." I don't know. It made me feel sad. He was right. It's odd where you find yourself 10 years later. It made me feel old and far way from those carefree days. At the time he was teaching at a university in Houston. I wonder if he is still there. I'm sure poets, especially ones who teach live a nomadic life. Anyway, I thought this poem was a good example of his work. He's so effortlessly funny and sympathetic as a narrator. His poems are always tinged with sadness and contradiction, but they feel honest. I love too the title of the book!