It is the first monday of february and mary ellen is teaching George Herbert to her smartest juniors. His work is chaste but ardent and far from snowplows that wake sparks from icy streets. When Mary Ellen imagines Herbert's Britain, it is always High Summer, safe and daisied. In New Hampshire, where Mary Ellen lives, people close their faces against the cold, as if they're wary of losing warmth and moisture through extraneous talk. Then again this is New England, where talk is lean even in a lush and dappled August.
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The juniors aren't, as they say, "into" Herbert, though they admire the poems where form imitates theme, such as "Easter Wings," whose stanzas seem to rise off the page like a pair of butterflies. Today, Tim, one of Mary Ellen's most pragmatic students, comments that form equals function, kind of like life.
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Mary Ellen envies Tim's sturdy cheer. Last fall, her husband Frank Marten, a veterinarian who hunts, began renting across town. In December, Mary Ellen found herself wearing pale sweaters and beige pants, a snow hare in transition. Now she cloaks herself in mohair shawls the shade of ptarmigans in winter plumage. She's moving as carefully as she can through a house where she still finds flea dip in dark cupboards. Mary Ellen says, "Tim, I have to disagree. Most of the time, life has even less coherence than a smashed bug." The students eye her then, tilting
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