Did I Miss Anything?

The poem is written in blank verse in a straightforward, idiomatic style of speech. Its eight stanzas are of unequal lengths with the last two stanzas consisting of single lines. The length of the poetic line itself varies, such as seen in this comparison between Lines 9 and 10: “Nothing. None of the content of this course/has value or meaning.” Further, unlike poetic convention, new lines do not necessarily begin with an uppercase letter, nor do lines end with full stops. The use of punctuation is minimal and arbitrary. The poem also uses the literary devices of run-on sentences and enjambment, with thoughts spilling onto successive lines. A great example of enjambment is the five lines in Stanza 2, which are basically one sentence broken up into five parts:

“Everything. I gave an exam worth

40 per cent of the grade for this term

and assigned some reading due today

on which I'm about to hand out a quiz

worth 50 per cent (Lines 4-8)”

Cumulatively, these choices give the poem the quality of a fluid, in-the-moment internal dialogue. The speaker’s thoughts pour out of them in a rush and cannot be contained by the structure of formal verse.