Selected Excerpts from Student Comments About My Poetry Course

The professor’s comments are difficult to read, and, I suspect, in another language.

The professor scrunches up her nose when I write about daisies. As she does this I can see her top row of teeth which are both brittle and sharp.

The professor refuses to recognize that I have levels. Levels within levels.

The professor laughs loudly and frequently at nothing. Her laughter is like plates breaking on the floor of an infrequently used garage.

The professor stares at me like she knows where I live.

The professor suggested that if I wanted to be a poet I should take up truck driving and/or prostitution.

The professor is silent and lays her head on her desk for long moments in class.

The professor asked me to eat my pen.

The professor asks us to use our imaginations, when she knows I am disabled and don’t have one.

The professor often dresses from head to toe in a single, loathsome color.

Sometimes the professor repeats one word over and over for nearly the entire class. I am unsure if this is a form of stutter or experimental poetry. Once when the word was
“brackish” several students left the room and never came back.

The professor encourages students to jump out the window.

The professor has made me cry on several occasions when she was not even in the room.

I signed up for intro chem.

The professor offers us pieces of chocolate which are possibly poisoned.

I have never met the professor.

The professor sometimes claims to hear an alarm bell and rushes the class from the building, then disappears in the shrubbery.

I suspect the professor’s intentions are impure.