May 20th, 2024

Good morning friends,

    I participated in formal education for 10 years before I really learned anything. Oh, had I learned the three "R’s"…..reading writing and whatever the other one was. I learned facts. I learned the Palmer method of penmanship, but I really didn’t learn anything….at least not of substance. When I entered 10th grade at McQuaid Jesuit High School my English teacher interviewed everyone at the beginning of the year. He assessed our experiences and our abilities and he asked me what books I read. I told him I didn’t read. I didn’t like reading and I didn’t read books. Of course that didn’t sit very well with him. I think I became a personal goal for him to convert me to a reader. His name was Edward Zogby and he was a Jesuit scholastic which meant he was a "priest-in-training" and assigned to instruct at a Jesuit high school. But he was different than any of the teachers I had in the past. There was something about his instruction that held my attention despite my resistance. In the span of that year, I went from a non-reader to someone who would eventually pursue a degree in English literature in college. Now, when I look back and think about what it was that made the change there is only one word that describes it: PASSION. Ed Zogby approached his teaching with passion. He would pick a poem read it and discuss it with such enthusiasm that the words became alive on the page. He fed me books to read that changed my life: Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men. I became a reader with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a passion for words.

   Now, I do a lot of fishing as you know and this week I had the opportunity to fish on Skaneateles Lake, one of the great Finger Lakes. Although we didn’t catch any fish, we had a great experience and it reminded me of a poem that Ed Zogby had taught us. I share it here because, not only do I  fish all the time but I also read a lot of poetry and it’s because of Edward Zogby. He took this poem and he passionately read it and explained the images, the words, the poetic nuances. As he did it, his eyes would widen, and he showed excitement, exuberance and enthusiasm that I had never seen in a classroom. He put passion into education and I thank him for that.

You can hear the poem read here:

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-fish/#google_vignette

or read it for yourself:

    The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop 

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
- the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly- 
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
- It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
- if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels- until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! 
And I let the fish go.

With peace,

John Bernunzio