LINDSEY’S WRITING PRACTICE: A Review

Posted: September 2, 2026 | Author: Lindsey Martin-Bowen | Filed under: Book Review, Books, Collection, Lindsey's Writing Practice, Poetry, Review | Tags: Backstories, Book Reveiw, Lindsey Martin-Bowen, Lindsey's Writing Practice, Maryfrances Wagner, Poetry, Writing be Read | Leave a comment

Backstories Poems by Maryfrances Wagner A REVIEW by Lindsey Martin-Bowen

No doubt, this collection by established teacher and poet Maryfrances Wagner reveals

stories may rightfully appear in the form of poetry, too. Certainly, these 52 poems evoke laughter, tears, and definite insights to the chaotic world of high school students from the late 1960s though the 2000s.

For Wagner, teaching was a lifelong quest. “In third grade, I told my family I wanted to be a teacher,” she recalls. Thus, Wagner requested a desk for Christmas, and received a fine roll-top. The next year, she requested a chalk board and received one.

Then, she asked for books, “so I could start creating lessons.”

By sixth grade, she employed these tools to teach neighborhood children a week of “Bible school.”

“The passion never ebbed, I walked into my first year of high school juniors as

though I’d been teaching for years,” she recalled. “After all, I had, but what I didn’t know was how much I would learn about my students, myself, human nature, and inequality during the years I taught.”

The section of poems about—and sometimes written by—her students, opens with “Chuck,” a student in one of her high school classes, who

“. . .takes a seat so close he taps my desk.

Every day a Polo, dress pants, buttery loafers . . .

He’s 18, I’m 21. He doesn’t treat me as his teacher

ready to discuss Lord of the Flies. Behind his silky

voice and Gucci shoes, I see his mean. He instigates

fights and whacks small boys, particularly Juan—”

The poem entails what happens when the bully Chuck attacked the scholarly Juan (somewhat equivalent to “Piggy” in Lord of the Flies) in the restroom, resulting in an ambulance arriving at the high school. Wagner’s poem notes that when “the gurney arrived, Juan

was unconscious. Chuck earned his last credits

on Homebound. Juan’s parents moved to Texas.

A door had opened into a new darkness. . .”

Yet, such a traumatic experience didn’t stop Wagner from pursuing her dream. In her journals, she never quit, but documented these and other events, which she later transformed into poems.

Obviously, most of the poems don’t contain such violence, and the collection includes humorous events, sorrowful, and ironic passages in four sections, interlaced with collages Wagner created, among them, “Future?” “That Fault in Ourselves” (which includes a photo of Julius Caesar’s bust”), “Up a Tree,” containing a photo of the cover for A Separate Peace, “Hope,” including Dickinson’s line ‘hope is the thing with feathers,” “Homework,” which centers around a profile of a youth with the word “Promise” across its forehead.

Indeed, the humorous and thoughtful poems especially caught my attention, such as in, “My Sophomores View the Eclipse,” wherein the class “set aside Brutus’s soliloquy” (from Julius Caesar) “to poke pinholes into paper, tear a second sheet for viewing. . .” and “Worthy of her role as Casca, Emily stabs her paper five times.”

Plus, Wagner includes a found poem that evokes chuckles, “The Sophomores Study Grammar: A Found Poem,” containing such delightful lines as

“Why do we have to study grammar? We already

know how to speak and understand each other.

“You expect us to learn all this in one unit?

I’ve never heard of a verbal in all my life, only gerbils.”

One of the most fascinating sections of this collection includes “The Detention Suite,” comprising poems written solely by students during detention. Here, Wagner reveals she was a teacher “ahead of her time.” How so? Rather than using the school’s standard detention room, she designed her own detention, wherein, in lieu of punishment, student were encouraged to explore why they “acted out.”

I endorse such wisdom: Perhaps by learning how to understand and better meet their emotional needs, “problem” students may more easily grow into adults in lieu of into narcissists, who must—and often cruelly—demand center stage. And not only that, reading these poems by students evoked many chuckles. These are the openings of

some of my favorites:

“Brandon Langford Talks Through Detention”

“. . . I don’t even understand why I have detention.

You tell us to say what we think. I spoke

my thoughts, and that’s my right. My dad

does it all the time, freedom of speech,

and we cheer. Well, we did. He’s a combat vet,

but now he’s in prison for child porn

and hitting my mom. She’s glad he’s gone. . . ”

“Danielle Dances in a Mosh Pit”

“What did you do

last weekend?

You probably

sharpened pencils

or bought

new red pens.

I’m only

kidding.

Me and Carly went

to a headbanger

and danced

in a mosh pit.

We were the only

girls in there. . .”

“Niki Comes in Complaining”

“I still don’t why I’m here. I’m one of your best

students, I turn in my work, and I read the dreadful

literature you assign us like it means something

to me. I probably should zip my mouth before I say

what I think, but how can I relate to Hester Pryne? . . .”

“Scott Whittington II Stoops to Detention”

“I should not have to be here.

Do you know who my father is?

He has a street named after him.

He could get you into so much trouble.

At the least, you can expect a call. . .”

“Holly Keeps on Talking through Detention”

“Well, here I am, nd I’m gonna try not to talk

nonstop since that’s the reason I’m here, but

you know me. Mostly, I can’t help myself like

when Jeff Bell was nominated for homecoming

queen. That was big news. . .”

“Libby Steps in for Her Brother Connor”

“Hey, I know I’m not the one who’s

supposed to serve detention, but I’m

Connor’s proxy today. He has to work

a baseball game. He’s one of the lucky

ones who got a job with the Royals.

He’s been busy looking up sources

for hemp for his research paper. Your

class is one of the few he attends. He wants

that college credit even though he’s late.

After all, it’s first hour. He has a to

of excuses for missing other classes. . .”

“Brian Baker Dishes Out”

“Do you wonder at all why I hide in the hall

or want passes to the bathroom? I hate

working in groups. They hand me questions

and say, You’re the one, man, like that’s going

to make me wanna help them. Anything I say

hangs in the air like a comic bubble. I’m

in the wrong place. I like to read Aristotle,

and everyone looks at me like I’m trying

to suck up. Who would I be sucking up to?

You never assigned Aristotle. I read

Homer and Shakespeare, too, and I don’t

need your help. You should leave me alone

and be happy that I am busy learning. . .”

“Carlos Martinez Has His Say in Detention”

“Some teachers overlook little things,

like talking or not having homework. I laugh

in the face of homework, and I’m not giving

back this pencil I borrowed because you gave me

detention, It’s mine now. You expect too much,

and those emails you send my mom do no good.

She shows them to me, and we laugh. . .”

Finally, as another teacher (albeit, never for high school), I can especially

relate to one of the poems Maryfrances Wagner wrote in the final section of Backstories, entitled, “Grading,” from which I included most lines—not all—to avoid violating copyright laws:

“We’ve watched

the moon sag

into tomorrow,

ready to set down

our pens. . .

They argued

their case,

we ours—

more detail,

another example,

better verbs. . .

Ink glides its

well-oiled

ball bearings,

eager to praise

a phrase,

to find

a moment

of thought.

Along with serving as Missouri’s Sixth Poet Laureate from 2021-2023, Maryfrances Wagner was the 2020 Missouri Individual Artist of the Year. She serves as a co-editor of I-70 Review and as president of The Writers Place board and programming chair. He poetry collection Red Silk, recently re-issued by BookMark Press. Won the Thorpe Menn book award and was first runner up in the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award 2024 and short-listed for the Grand Prize Poetry. Her poems have appeared in many notable poetry journals nationwide, including New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, Main Street Rag, Rattle, Voices in Italian Americana, and Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin). More than nineof her poetry collections have been released by various publishers.

Thank you, Maryfrances Wagner, for penning such an engaging collection.

—Lindsey Martin-Bowen

About Lindsey Martin-Bowen

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