THE WALKMAN

I was working for Component Products
My Dad's machine shop
And going to college
Only a day here or there
The work was
Repetitive
Making the same part
Over
And over
And over again
But I could listen to my Walkman

In college I was taking three English courses
Ancient English
17th Century Poetry
And
The Victorian Novel
Let's just say
I was in over my head
Just a bit
So I made a tape of me reading 2 hours worth of poems
And that's what I listened to
On my Walkman
While I worked
Making the same part
Over
And over again
For weeks

She walks in beauty
Like the night
Of cloudless climes 
And starry skies

and

In the rooms the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo

and

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds

and

Like gold to airy thinness beat

AND

Had we but world enough and time 
This coyness lady were no crime

I listened to them
Every time I worked
Two hours of poetry
Once or twice a week

I'm still struggling in class though
It's a lot
Completely skipped Middlemarch
Read the Cliff Notes
It is 904 pages long
So
Yeah

Ancient English
Learned a lot
Never would have taken it
But back then
You had to sign up for class
By phone
Starting at 7am
That didn't work for me
So I got the classes I got

But Ancient English
Was COOL
Really liked it but it was still hard
I was doing okay
Not great

FINAL DAY OF CLASS!


There is a Teacher's Assistant in charge
It's basically a do nothing day
All the work has been turned in
Tests taken
There is about 5 minutes of class left

So the T.A. for this Ancient English class offers a challenge
"For every quote I give and you can name the poem I will give you 1/10th of a point to your final grade. And for every quote you give me that I can't name and YOU can and it's VERIFIED I will give you a tenth of a point."
It's meant to be a fun game
A sort of Jeopardy of poetry
I was STOKED
All those hours of listening
And we're off

"Dream of the Rood!"
I answer

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
I answer

"Beowulf"
I answer

Then I rip out a slew of quotes
from
John Donne
Ben Johnson
Shakespeare
TS Eliot
Lord Byron

Let's just say
I scored a lot of points that day
Ended up with a pretty decent grade