Secret Codes

Yesterday in class I was discussing the importance of form in poetry -- how a poem can either be structured or unstructured. And thus came up the issue of codes and secret language.

In high school and college, I had a lot of friends who were learning about the language of computers back then -- FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, and the like. To me, all that stuff they were writing seemed nothing more than arcane squiggles of nonsensical, seemingly random groups of weird words and phrases. But they called this vegetable soup “code,” and they discussed their efforts with excited but bleary-eyed reverence.

“You guys are such geeks,” I told those friends, walking away from their warren of cables and keyboards, confidently assured that this computer craze was little more than a modern day hula hoop.

I, on the other hand, stuck to my type of writing: literary stuff and, more specifically, poetry -- sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, with the occasional foray into the unstructured chaos of free verse. There were, surely, far more people paying attention to what was inside The New Yorker than would ever be interested in what was inside those dimly lit computer screens with their haphazard, blinking rows of strange green letters and ampersands.

And thus, twenty eight years later, there I was-- attempting to explain to a group of twelve to thirteen-year-olds the importance and elegance of structured form poems such as the sonnet and the villanelle and the rondeau. Yesterday it went something like this:

“ABBA...ABBA...CDCDCD....14 lines....ten syllables......”
while, on the other hand,
“A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.….see, you alternate.....”

“So...it’s kinda like a code,” one of my more intrepid students stated questioningly.

“Yes, it’s very much like a code.”

“But what if you don’t know the secret key??“

“Well....most people back then learned the codes in school, or they explained them amongst themselves. Kind of like you guys do for Cheat Codes with Call of Duty.”

“Those aren’t a secret. Those are all online,” ring out ten voices in derisive unison. “You just have to Google ‘em.”

“Well, regardless....sonnets are indeed like a code, and I’ll explain how it sometimes helps you understand what the poet is trying to say. But also, the special code was there to help people remember the poems when they recited them out loud at parties.”

“WHAAAT?!?!??!?!?” ring out twenty voices this time in hysterical unison. “Are you crazy?!?!?! Who would say any o’this stuff at a party?!??!!?!?”

“Yes, I know, we wouldn’t do that today. But once upon a time, people would read these poems just to simply entertain themselves -- for enjoyment.”

“Ohhhh, that’s crazy!” exclaimed one leader of the pack. “I would never read one of these for entertainment, even if I did have the secret code!!”

Nods in agreement, giggles, all around. Clearly, this lesson was going to be nonsense.

“Well...I think I would,” one lone voice piped in.

And that, sometimes, is about the best you can hope for in seventh grade language arts.