March’s Poetry Pairing features Tyler Ford’s poem “Too Much” and a 2015 Op-Ed column, “From Caitlyn Jenner to a Brooklyn High School,” by Nicholas Kristof.
To view all the Poetry Pairings we’ve published in collaboration with the Poetry Foundation since 2010, and to find activity sheets to help with teaching them, visit our collection.
Poem
Tyler Ford of New York City is a 24-year-old transgender writer who is passionate about helping others become their best selves.
Too Much
By Tyler Ford
do you remember the first time you were called annoying?
how your breath stopped short in your chest
the way the light drained from your eyes, though you knew your cheeks were ablaze
the way your throat
tightened as you tried to form an argument that got lost on your tongue?
your eyes never left the floor that day.
you were 13.
you’re 20 now, and i still see the light fade from your eyes when you talk about your interests for “too long,”
apologies littering every other sentence,
words trailing off a cliff you haven’t
jumped from in 7 years.
i could listen to you forever, though i know speaking for more than 3 uninterrupted minutes makes you anxious.
all i want you to know is that you deserve to be heard
for 3 minutes
for 10 minutes
for 2 hours
forever.
there will be people who cannot handle your grace, your beauty, your wisdom, your heart;
mostly because they can’t handle their own. but you will never be
and have never been
“too much.”
Times Selection Excerpt
In “From Caitlyn Jenner to a Brooklyn High School,” Nicholas Kristof writes that in regard to transgender students and schools, “the fundamental challenge is simply acceptance.”
Spencer, 16, was born a girl and given a girl’s name, but he says it never felt right. On the first day of kindergarten, his mom dressed him in a skirt — the school uniform — and he cried.
“That’s for the girls,” he remembers protesting tearfully.
“But you are a girl,” his mom responded, baffled.
Still, he resisted so vociferously that for the rest of the year he was allowed to wear pants rather than the girls’ uniform.
“I knew I felt different from age 4, but I didn’t have a word for it,” he remembers. “In my mind, I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t I be a boy, even though I don’t have boy parts?’ It confused me.”
In third grade, he announced he was lesbian, but he said that didn’t feel right either. Finally, at age 12, after Google searches, he found the word that fit: transgender.
That didn’t make life easier. Spencer says he was bullied and mocked in middle school, and, at 13, he tried to hang himself. But he couldn’t manage to tie the right knot or reach the ceiling fan, and he finally cried himself to sleep in frustration.
… I visited Spencer at his high school, the Academy for Young Writers, in a gritty neighborhood in Brooklyn. It has provided that accepting home, and it offers some lessons for other institutions across the country.
… The Academy for Young Writers became a model because of a lapse. In 2011, one of the brightest girls in school, Tiara, seemingly headed for a great university, suddenly seemed poised to drop out. It turned out that the student was now identifying as a boy calling himself Seth — and the school had been oblivious. Seth ended up barely graduating and never went to college at all.
Courtney Winkfield, the principal, resolved that this wouldn’t happen again. She brought in a teacher to mentor students with such issues and to help students craft an anti-bullying policy.
Meanwhile, Spencer showed up and asked to use the boys’ bathroom and to be referred to as “he” and “him.” The school accommodated his request.
Some parents, teachers and students were upset, but the fuss seems to have calmed. Spencer says that thoughts of suicide linger but are now manageable. The school, he says, “saved my life.”
… I asked Winkfield what she would say to principals leery of sensitive gender issues. High school isn’t just about getting students college-ready, she said, but also about getting them world-ready.
“It’s easy to make this a granular issue about bathrooms or sexuality,” she said. “It’s really about preparing young people for the incredibly messy and complex world we live in.”
Here are two activity sheets you can use with any edition of this feature — and you might also check out the Poetry Foundation’s page of Articles for Teachers and Students:
“Too Much” appeared in the July/August 2015 issue of Poetry.