Brad Aaron Modlin — What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade
Poetry Unbound
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Introduction
The title of the poem, what you missed that day you were absent from fourth grade, has a great sense of humour in it. The idea that any teacher would teach nine or ten year olds how to chant the psalms while taking cigarette breaks is fantastic and ridiculous,. But it speaks to the strong sense of a person feeling that they missed out. And so the poet has probably taught himself all these things, and that's the way with everybody. This poem invites, i think, the reader to look back to the story of their own life and to think, where ere the times when i felt out of my depth, when i felt nobody told me that this would be happening?
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