Phone Elegies: Students Reflect on New Policies

Upper School students across all grade levels submitted personal, poignant and sometimes humorous poems reflecting a blend of nostalgia, frustration and a newfound appreciation.

English teacher Rachel Eisler shared that the contest was a way to encourage students to process their adjustment creatively, saying, “Literature arises out of loss….” 

“It was hard to winnow down the submissions because each one really had powerful ideas and phrasing to offer,” Eisler said. 

The 20 entries were judged by English Department faculty and by students in Eisler’s Creative Writing course. To make the judging process fair, Eisler says she ‘anonymized’ all entries so that all judges were ‘reading blind,’ which is how writing contests are adjudicated in the real world.

Winners contest will have their poems featured in the school’s annual literary magazine, Melange, and displayed on screens around campus. Read some of the winning entries below.

Crush the snapdragons laid at his grave to rest. 

As they say, time will tell.

Do not trust 

the watchman or

the prophet or 

the merchant. 

He lies. 

Kill the starlings who destroyed the songbird's nest.

They seek to serve their master.

When the bell tolls, 

Bid goodbye. 

We named you differently, before.

A primal jerk to throw you

As far as possible.

When bodies were flesh, not metal

We knew what to do.

But you evolved like us.

Traded teeth for more effective means;

Colors not of Earth, to numb while you worm and rot.