I asked a number of friends to help me with this 17-syllable exercise, using the traditional 3-line, 5-7-5 syllable haiku form to describe our feelings about beginning a new semester. Working inside a strong structure permits freedom, recognition, realization and a special kind of awakening to language and image. Because more people responded than I imagined, I've thrown (with permission) everybody into one batch. What started out as a way to playfully welcome the new term became far more than that, and ended up making more sense than nonsense-- as so often happens when we play.
Wake with teeth grinding
Broken printers in my dreams
Is it due today?
…
Wonderfully does
The cheating kid sit beside
The foreign student.
…
Capture my fresh thought
Embrace the joy of learning
Oops! There is no place to park.
…
Why teach before dawn?
The schedule I have now
Might kill me outright.
…
Happy instructor!
Brilliant students come to learn!
Brooklyn Bridge for Sale!
…
Cynical teachers
Make empty nests of classrooms
No one fills the blanks.
…
See the patient desk
Where no writer sits today.
Teaching interferes.
…
My boyfriend is back
But my new colleague is cute.
Fulbright time again?
…
Yesterday’s lessons
Drawn from your grad school notebooks
Will not work today.
…
How can we have lunch?
I teach five classes a day.
Remember? Adjunct!
…
Anybody here?
A fly buzzes in reply.
Wrong room once again.
…
Professor X smells
Of Axe spray and baby poop.
Contradictory.
…
Canadian schools
Give faculty more support.
Count your blessings, eh?
…
No, you can’t get in.
The class is already full.
Yeah, well, tell it to the Dean.
…
Library closes
When you most need to go in.
You buy a Kindle.
…
Fine colleague retires.
Her absence makes you wonder:
Have you allies left?
…
See the pretty girl!
She is way too young for you.
Better believe it.
…
Twenty years teaching
And still no health insurance.
Too late for law school?
…
Submit the novel
Wait for the agent’s reply.
Is this a way out?
…
Turn your laptop off
And watch the sun cross the sky
Time has no cursor.
--
a version of this piece was first printed in The Chronicle of Higher Education