In honor of meeting Mr. Billy Collins (the former US poet Laureate and the first poet I fell in love with who wasn't dead) last night, and especially because I have dedicated my last three weeks to studying for the GRE; I felt like it was time to post a poem a bit lighter than the heavy academic world. I wrote this poem for my last professor. My last class before I graduated was Russian Lit and along with my last paper, I slipped this under the stack of papers. I welcome comments on this one because I have been told this poem might be offensive to a professor. I prefer to believe anyone with a sense of humor would appreciate it.
English Professor
He’s herded us through
fifteen weeks of communist ideology,
and six Russian novels
totaling 1,849 pages together.
We’ve compared each protagonist’s
mental state to Freud’s
theory of the Ego
and looked for phallic symbols
among Joseph Cambell’s archetypes.
He’s suggested we read
books like Lolita
and A Woman in Amber
sometime before we die.
We’ve analyzed the proletariat,
the theory of Animism,
and the Catholic Church
by the end of class,
and stayed ten minutes extra
as he explained the role
of excrement in a novel.
By the time we reach
Voinovich’s satire,
we’ve lost our
sense of humor.
But as he lectures
on a scene between
Gladishev and a horse,
he laughs and
wipes his mouth
like he’s just finished
a plate of ribs.
He’s herded us through
fifteen weeks of communist ideology,
and six Russian novels
totaling 1,849 pages together.
We’ve compared each protagonist’s
mental state to Freud’s
theory of the Ego
and looked for phallic symbols
among Joseph Cambell’s archetypes.
He’s suggested we read
books like Lolita
and A Woman in Amber
sometime before we die.
We’ve analyzed the proletariat,
the theory of Animism,
and the Catholic Church
by the end of class,
and stayed ten minutes extra
as he explained the role
of excrement in a novel.
By the time we reach
Voinovich’s satire,
we’ve lost our
sense of humor.
But as he lectures
on a scene between
Gladishev and a horse,
he laughs and
wipes his mouth
like he’s just finished
a plate of ribs.
2 comments:
Hey,
I really do like this poem quite a bit. I imagine there might be a few teachers out there that take themselves too seriously to appreciate it, but in the long run I think we'll have to learn that some people will be offended by what we do even if we had no intention of doing it whatsoever. This is probably one of those cases.
Did I also tell you that the book I teach 1010 out of has some of Collins' poems? I just noticed it last night.
Nice work, Kate. Anyone who doesn't appreciate the finer points of humor (and does humor get any better when it involves those depressive Russkies? Especially involving excrement? I say not. Did you hear the one about Putin and the preserved body of Lenin? ...) Keep it up - which means post more - it's always appreciated.
Offend in every way. Jack White said that.
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