Survey of Literary Masterpieces II, Benjamin Myers (March 2026)

 

Survey of Literary Masterpieces II

I’ve lost another student in the fog
and haunted trees of this darn survey course:
the long, long slog from Hamlet to Herzog. 
 
It’s all a little off but could be worse,
I guess. If last semester he had bailed,
I might have left him stuffed in some stone purse
 
of Dante’s eighth. As is, he’s simply failed.
(He ceased to read somewhere before the whale
but after Caesar’s countrymen were hailed.)
 
The empty seat he’s left will tell the tale,
while he drifts further toward the sea’s curved line
where sky comes down, till we see just his sail
 
and then nothing. But all of this is fine.
Indeed, not all of them can reach the shore
of credit hours secured. The fault’s not mine
 
if Junior thinks that Milton is a bore,
protests that Mrs. Browning is too twee,
her husband’s work a towering chore.
 
You can’t blame me. Oh no, you can’t blame me.
What lightning lies on pages I unfurled
as best I could. I cannot make them see
 
behind the page the thunder-stricken world
inflamed by language, burned by metaphor,
shocked deep with thought, by searing beauty whirled.
 
I’ve missed it all myself at times before
and watched the clock above the classroom door.