Thought we were banished from poetry in this class...

Yeah, I know, it's not a poem. The style and word play and random, vivid imagery conjures thoughts and feels of poetry throughout; it is one long poet's monologue. But, despite it's heavy poetic feel, this story is still a story.

I don't get it. I tried. I think a sense of time would have helped. I'm not sure if this is his token "this whole thing was my own sick joke, now get out of here and go fuck yourselves if this is the first time you're catching on" speech that he gives on the last day of every class, or if this his own goodbye to his teaching career and this is how he chooses to go out. I'm not sure if the various faculty (The Creep, The Quince, Bullo, etc.) and students (Eulalea Mae, Patricia Jane, Hell-for-Stuff, etc.) are the categories into which he has placed individuals over the course of the semester or his career, or if they are specific individuals, as he refers to them with gender-specific pronouns. I never had a sense of the "when," and that bothered me.

On the one hand, I feel like the man's (I'm assuming the teacher in question is a man) lambasting his class openly for the first time in a way that he has been subtly for the duration of the time he has spent with both his students and his faculty peers. He talks about everyone's potential to have caught "some sly generous hint from the unconcious...from the side of my mouth," implying that despite what he was trying to do, something true, or at least genuine, slipped in there. Perhaps this is his own assault on the requirements of teaching a specific part of a specific curriculum to a specific sect of students? So perhaps he's saying "It's all bullshit. If you didn't catch it before now, you're an idiot. And if you didn't think I knew you were trying to play me, you're an idiot." It feels like the guy has a lot of bottled up malice and he finally explodes.

On the other hand, I get a sense of feelings of meaninglessness and worthlessness, that he's taught what he wanted and how he knew to the best of his abilities, but in his mind in never came out quite right, and was always received wrong. Perhaps, every once in awhile, someone was able to see the forest for the trees, to understand that a discussion and exploration of a long-ago-published sonnet can be the exact same as breaking down and understanding the self. But he can't openly say that. And I feel like maybe he wants to, maybe he's tortured and self-loathing for his refusal or fear or inability to do so, but regardless, he can't and this is only chance at a safe outlet.

This was a bitch to read. The playful, lyrical tone made me feel like I was constantly missing one thing for trying to remain focused on the image of something just-mentioned and then long-gone. But I liked it. The wit. The snarkiness. The repressed anger. The holier-than-thou attitude and judgement. He combined all of these human elements with the occasional concrete, vivid description, and despite the fact that we don't get any real scene, we still see something (albeit likely entirely different from one of us to the next) in our own heads. I thought it was an interesting approach.