poetry Sensory Details

New York City poet Todd Friedman, a retired high school teacher, observes the silent censorship that aims to protect pupils from themselves or perhaps from the facts of life.

Todd Friedman Radical Teacher
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Sensory Details

By Todd Friedman

I saw you in the anthology, Walt,

“rude, unbending, lusty,”

and there you were

a live-oak growing

right there in the middle

of the high school classroom.

And I imagined the person

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who picked your poem

laughing into his hand

and slapping his thigh!

But the best part was in the instructions

on the side of the page:

“Write about something in nature that

reminds you of yourself and your friends.

Use sensory details.”

A year later they put out a new edition

and the poem was gone.

Use sensory details.

 Todd Friedman is a retired NYC high school English teacher who fought three major battles against the Department of Education.  An arbitration decision is named after him and he won a New York Library Association award for standing up against censorship.  His poems have been published in Jewish Currents, Tikkun, Midstream, Poetica, Jewish Literary Journal, Brooklyn Eagle, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and English Journal.