No grading pens, no stacks of essays high,
Just verdant hills and stories reaching to the sky.
Bread Loaf’s embrace, a summer solstice dream,
Where Shakespeare whispers secrets in the sunlit stream.
No lesson plans, no bells to set the pace,
Just open pages beckoning, a sunlit grace.
Frost’s ghost, a flicker in the pines,
Austen’s wit in dewdrop patterns intertwines.
No ruler clutched, but curious hands unfold
The mysteries where Dickinson’s visions hold.
With seasoned guides, we navigate the maze,
Unearthing truths in Faulkner’s haunting haze.
But workshops sing with more than crafted line,
Confessions bloom, where vulnerability entwined.
Teachers, too, unveil their burdens deep,
Sharing their stories, in the firelight’s keep.
No distant desk, no judgment from afar,
Just open hearts, beneath a canopy of star.
In chorus sung, where laughter meets the tear,
Teacher and student, voices drawing near.
And when the sun dips low, casting long, cool shade,
We gather ’round the fire, dreams in embers laid.
Back to classrooms, spirits bathed in newfound light,
To paint for students worlds that burn through summer’s night.
No lonely podium, just kinship hand in hand,
Fellow pilgrims, seeds of wonder on the land.
Bread Loaf’s magic lingers, long after summer’s sigh,
Where teachers, students, share a sky.
I used Bard, and I prompted it to write a poem about the experience of being a high school English teacher attending graduate school at the Bread Loaf School of English. The first effort was ridiculously flowery. It also first depicted students at Bread Loaf as poets learning to write. I revised my prompt and asked Bard to emphasize the study of literature. The AI repeatedly depicted the Bread Loaf student as one who was abandoning her “red pen,” and her role as “a sage,” and I got into an absurd almost argument with Bard as I asked for references to grading with a red pen to be removed. Red changed to crimson and finally to ruby. I was becoming exasperated. I started over and asked Bard to write a poem capturing the experience of a high school English teacher who was studying literature for the summer at Bread Loaf. This is the final result. There still are some lines that don’t really make sense to me (“No ruler clutched…”), but I gave up. I also changed Bard’s reference to “Hemingway’s ghost” to Frost’s ghost as that makes much more sense to anyone who has studied at Bread Loaf. I was somewhat amazed that the AI did seem to “understand” something about the unique relationships at Bread Loaf between teachers and students, who are themselves teachers, and I was also impressed that the AI captured the fleeting nature of the Bread Loaf experience which ends each August as teachers return to their own classrooms.