Did I Miss Anything?

“Did I Miss Anything” is arguably the most popular poem of Tom Wayman’s long career, a work which he acknowledges has assumed a life of its own through the ubiquity of a newsletter text or Internet meme. Immensely popular with teachers around the world, the poem evokes an emotional response because of its universal themes, savage humor, and no-nonsense diction. These qualities are typical of Wayman’s work; he often places himself in the literary tradition of the people’s poet, a writer who chronicles everyday life in accessible language. Like “Did I Miss Anything,” Wayman’s poems are often written in blank verse and enjambed lines to capture the rhythm of thoughts and conversations. While his style is distinctly modernist, his work is also layered and lyrical. Wayman frequently experiments with diction, irony, and line arrangement to construct poems with an internal rhythm and layers of complexity.

Wayman’s poetic style is marked by a fierce individualism and a refusal to ally with any particular literary school. However, because work and workers remain the subjects of his poems, literary experts often characterize his style as “work poetry,” which captures the lived reality of daily work, is anti-elitist, and easy to read.