Remembering …

… The American Scholar: My Teacher, Harold Bloom - Gary Saul Morson. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Like so many other students in the class, I was sometimes mystified, sometimes elated. No one better conveyed—in fact, embodied—the love of poetry. But if I had been asked what exactly I had learned from his lectures, the answer would have been: not much about the poems, but a great deal about how to teach. These lessons in pedagogy were both positive and negative. I constantly recall them, and they have shaped my teaching ever since.