My Oxford Year

“Right. Sorry. How could you? Believing a man is only capable of loving a woman for six months.”

“Oh, and you don’t? Because from what I’ve heard, you’re the poster child for—” I stop myself. That’s too far.

His crazy-blue eyes flash with excitement, galvanized. “Poster child, really? How intriguingly scandalous. Please, do continue.”

All I can do is shake my head.

He smiles. “So, we know each other, know all about each other.” He sits back, grinning. “We sized each other right up in the chip shop, didn’t we? Weighed and measured. Had someone of lesser intellect declared their knowledge of either one of us, he would be thought prejudicial or quick to judgment. Can’t tell a book by its cover and all that. But we’ve sped-read each other, and, luckily, we’re the clever ones. After all, we’re Oxonians.”

This wrings a tight smile out of me.

He looks up at the ceiling and appears to pluck his next words out of the air there, reciting from recent memory. “‘Dismantling arts curriculum at such a crucial time both sociologically and solipsistically stunts the adolescent’s complex comprehension skills, ultimately ushering in an electorate that only thinks in black and white at a time when, if we are to survive, we must think in Technicolor.’” Now he looks at me. “I quite like that.”

He Googled me. The bastard Googled me after I purposely didn’t Google him. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or betrayed. But now I look like a hypocrite, the Education Evangelist who can’t even follow a simple assignment.

“Now I would have thought,” he continues, “that the woman who wrote that article would have quite a bit to say, actually, about how a poem makes her feel.”

I throw up my hands. “It was one article. I’m not even a writer. I’m not saying I know how to build an arts curriculum, just that it’s a necessity, not a luxury!”

He leans forward, excited. “Exactly. It doesn’t define you. But it is a first impression, isn’t it? You’re the hypercompetitive American, a Rhodes scholar no less, who sees Oxford as a series of hurdles to clear like levels in some video game, and I? I’m the hypocritical poetry scholar, espousing grand theories of love whilst shagging a different wench every night. Brilliant, glad we got that sorted. But who are we, really, eh? We’ve told each other what we think, but we’ve no idea what we feel. That requires a conversation. Having words, having language, to connect us to ourselves and each other.”

He looks down at the book again and opens it. His rhythm has changed. He flips through it with excited purpose, some destination in mind. “To truly experience a poem,” he mutters, almost to himself, “you need to feel it. A poem is alive, it has a voice. It is a person. Who are they? Why are they?” He sticks his finger in the book, and closes it, holding his place. Then he looks back to me. “Hearing her words, as she speaks to you, you think and feel certain things. Just as, hearing my words now, you think and feel certain things. Reading poetry is a conversation of feeling between two people. It shouldn’t answer anything, it should only create more questions, like any good conversation. What did she make you feel? That’s what I wanted you to examine.”