Getting Creative in 17 Syllables

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