20 pages • 40 minutes read
Tom WaymanDid I Miss Anything?
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The importance of being present
At the heart of “Did I Miss Anything” is a what-if question: what would have happened if the students had been present in the class they missed? The speaker attempts to answer this question in different ways, sometimes saying the opposite of what he means, and at other moments giving the sort of canned replies the students will understand. It is only towards the end of the poem that it becomes clear what exactly the students have missed. It isn’t the angelic revelation of Stanza 4 or even the exam which will be included towards their grade (Stanza 2). The “everything” the students have missed is the quality of attention. They have missed out on engaging with the particular class the teacher prepared, the exchange of ideas that took place between teacher and student, and the spirit of open, critical enquiry itself. Thus, their absence has been not just from the class but from an opportunity for growth and therefore from their own selves. The speaker’s truthful answer for everything is rooted in an ordinary, every day experience: a class in progress. The juxtaposition of the barebones “everything” with the “everything” that the angels conveyed is deliberate and proves the poem’s central theme: revelations, epiphanies, and the like don’t strike out of the blue—they occur when people are immersed in their work. The poem’s theme extends beyond the classroom and applies to life in general, calling into question what it takes to live a life of quality and meaning. At one level, being absent from a class or meeting or even a walk with one’s dog means nothing; at another level it means everything. It means being present in the moment and in life.
Knowledge and labor
As a work poet, examining the experience of labor is one of Wayman’s most important themes. Since “Did I Miss Anything” is an exploration of the teacher-student dynamic, it is fitting that Wayman’s theme of labor is intertwined with themes of learning and knowledge. Learning does not occur in a vacuum; it is always the fruit of labor and an expertise earned through experience. To establish learning in the context of work, the speaker of the poem frequently juxtaposes the motifs of “nothing” against “everything.” In Lines 13-14, the teacher sarcastically tells the students that the missed lessons “will not matter either to you or me/and are without purpose.” The emphatic use of negatives in these lines is ironic but also factual: if the students aren’t committed to being present in class, then the contents of the course will indeed not matter to them. Thus, the students themselves create a state of purposelessness by avoiding work. Similarly in Stanza 5, the speaker ironically notes “Nothing. When you are not present/how could something significant occur?” (Lines 23-24), but their tone is also deadly serious. As far as the students are concerned, nothing significant occurred because they did not create that significance; the teacher situates the choice and responsibility of learning on the students.
Since the students are likely college undergraduates, they are either adults or close to adulthood; given the context it becomes all the more necessary that they actively choose to learn. In his introduction to Wayman’s anthology The Order in Which We Do Things, professor Owen Percy notes that Wayman is a poet whose “craft is poïesis (from the Ancient Greek “to make”)—making things happen, making a change, making a difference, making a ruckus, making the most of our time.” “Did I Miss Anything” is informed with this same sense of the importance of making things – in this case, learning – happen. The allegory of the angel establishes that instant learning is a kind of fantasy and can occur only in a mythological space. In the physical and temporal world of the classroom, learning is acquired through work and attention. Thus, the teacher preempts the students’ response that since nothing earth-shattering happened in class, they didn’t miss anything. The teacher’s point is that nothing earth-shattering ever happens in a single class, but the cumulative work of learning can lead to earth-shattering epiphanies.
The invisible struggle of teachers
Popular culture and poetry often portray students as the center of non-conformist and rebellious attitudes that disrupt the status quo. In this model, teachers are old-fashioned and dull upholders of a bygone order. “Did I Miss Anything” subverts all of these clichés. The teacher and speaker of the poem is full of exasperation, biting sarcasm, and blunted hopelessness, and makes no bones about hiding these emotions. The teacher is tired of the banal aggression of the question absentee students ask: “did I miss anything.” The very fact that students pose the question in a manner which presupposes that they, in fact, did not miss anything infuriates the teacher till the teacher drolly explodes “Nothing. When we realized you weren't here/we sat with our hands folded on our desks in silence, / for the full two hours.” (Lines 1-3). These discomfiting lines have a peculiar effect on readers: they make them see the class from the point of view of the teacher. In illustrating the teacher’s perspective, Wayman humanizes them, allowing the reader to identify with the teacher in a way which is eye-opening. The reader is immediately able to grasp the anger teachers feel when their painstaking work and dedication is undervalued and unrecognized.
The ire of teachers is often villainized in popular works such as Roald Dahl’s Matilda (1988), while other texts extol the exemplary patience of educators. Wayman’s teacher is located somewhere between the two extremes, occupying a space that is more authentically human. The teacher’s anger is triggered not by the insubordination but the insensitivity of the students. Thus, the poem posits that students, especially adult students, can be unintentional antagonists too. In refusing to acknowledge the labor of the teacher or even their humanity, the students commit an act of passive aggression. These thematic concerns allude to the tendency of students to view the teacher as figurehead, shorn of complex feelings, as well as the well-documented tendency of classes to assume that the teacher views them as a monolith. The poem flips this perspective, making it clear that the teacher sees each student as an individual who, while not the center of the universe, is nonetheless an integral and important member of the group. The work of the teacher involves gauging the reaction of each student so they can keep them engaged. Given the care a good teacher puts in their work, the insensitivity of students in viewing teachers as an impersonal, monolithic group can cause great pain, which Wayman carefully articulates in “Did I Miss Anything.”
