Oh Noetry

English majors run the risk of literary overload, while English majors with a creative writing emphasis run the risk of facing the remedial path to a degree. The CW track leans heavily on peer evaluation of writing, which can get ugly when nobody tries, cares, or is any good. Even still, one would think that, after reaching English 383, the Craft of Verse, the following poem would not make it to the classroom:

I Have A Fever

I have a fever
And for this fever there is no medicine
No Excedrin
No Tylenol
No Aspirin
There is only one prescription
And that prescription is you
Your smooth metallic surface
Your rectangular shape
The sound you make when I strike you with a stick
Dong dong dong
Or is it clang clang clang?
Maybe it’s a bit of both
Together we explore the space
You clonging away
Me dancing to your rhythmic beat
I put my pants on like everyone else
One leg at a time
Except when my pants are on
I play my cowbell.

Before too long, that one guy in the class that talks the most and gets some giggles for doing so told the professor the whole story behind the source of this poem (praising the poet for picking such a topic), to the professor responded "well that ruins it for me." I couldn't believe it. I underlined a few parts and noted "this is plagiarism" on my copy, crossed my arms, and waited for the "critique" to end.

It was followed by this next poem, which was authored by the student who sits right next to the professor, part in his straight brown hair, glasses, polo shirt buttoned all the way up and tucked in, remarkably large hairy arms, and the same smirky smile on his face at all times, same condescending analysis of every poem spread over the class as if he and our professor had worked this all out beforehand. As we read and critiqued, he leaned back with his arms behind his head and just smirked.

Reflections on Dasani

Destruction brought down upon the halls of
Atlantis; Rome, poisoning itself, cowed
Silently; innovation, ever loved
Above nature, neither questioned nor bowed.
Nimble kopis and Spartan shields dance ‘round
In shallow mockery of gourded life,
Welling – not from beneath the blood-bathed ground –
And distilled by the iron of the knife.
Teal distortions ripple ‘neath crystal lines
Enwrapped as if in padded leather vest,
Releasing, in twist, the dull crack of spines:
Slick and cool in death, life drains from your breast.
Remains of the past, burnt new for your shell
While I, the new modern, drink deep of your well.

He's still smirking, but he gradually explains all the historical references to the class, nice and slowly. The general feedback I wrote for him was "don't make the reader work hard to find your topic." If he would just put the water first and the encyclopedia of empires second, it wouldn't be so bad. Obnoxious, yes, but not bad. Then someone catches it. He has made this simple observation exercise (so all of his allusions are superfluous as it is) into an ACROSTIC. Read the letters down the left side, the ones that start each line: "Dasani Waters". Now he's downright grinning. We found it. Good for us. Good job.

I am compelled to make a good poem, finally. I want to hit the new modern with it.