Did I Miss Anything?

Among Tom Wayman’s most widely-known works of poetry, “Did I Miss Anything” is particularly notable for articulating the invisible labor – and rage - of educators. Published in 1993 in the anthology Did I Miss Anything? Selected Poems 1973-1993, the deeply ironic and conversational poem continues to strike a chord with teachers around the globe. According to Wayman, “the poem has been in countless teachers’ newsletters, and on innumerable course outlines, and posted on office doors, office walls, and teachers’ staffrooms.” “Did I Miss Anything” straddles the line between lyrical and narrative poetry, both lyrically expressing the speaker’s thoughts and feelings while retaining a clear narrative structure throughout.

Framed as different answers to a question frequently asked by students who have been absent from a class, the free-verse poem is narrated by the persona of a teacher. In turns sarcastic, angry, and sincere, the answers reflect the teacher’s frustration with students who - consciously or otherwise – dismiss the teacher’s work. The poem derives its power from the visceral emotions informing its plainspoken diction. Critics place “Did I Miss Anything” in the tradition of “work poetry” or poems which center around the raw realities and everyday issues of work and labor. Wayman is one of the major proponents of this school of poetry, exploring how work informs the way people think, feel, and act. According to Wayman, poetry often tends to regard mundane work as boring, whereas the truth is work can be as uplifting and enlightening as any other aspect of experience.

Poet Biography

Born in 1945, Tom Wayman is one of Canada’s most prolific poets with a career spanning four decades. Wayman has lived in his birthplace, Canada’s British Columbia district, for most of his life. After moving to Vancouver with his father, a pulp mill chemist, and his mother, a social worker, Wayman studied English at the University of British Columbia. In 1966, he won a Woodrow Wilson fellowship and moved to the University of California, Irvine for a Masters in Creative Writing. In California, Wayman held various manual and teaching jobs to support himself and participated in social activism. On his return to Canada in 1969, Wayman began a long teaching career, largely at British Columbia’s community colleges. His first book of poems, Waiting for Wayman, was published in 1973. Since then, he has published 20 anthologies of poetry, including My Father’s Cup in 2002, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and 2013’s Winter’s Skin, shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Award. In addition to writing poetry, Wayman has also published books of critical essays such as If You’re Not Free At Work, Where Are You Free?: Literature and Social Change (2018).

Influenced by poets as diverse as Canadian writer Al Purdy (1918-2000) and Chilean bard Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), Wayman has crafted a distinctive, plainspoken poetic style designed to be spoken out loud. Wayman’s poems and essays are straightforward in narration and explicitly express his thematic concerns, such as fighting for worker rights. This has led some academic critics to assume his poems are too plain; however, the simplicity of his poems can be deceptive as his straightforward poems often contain a wealth of meaning. For Wayman, straightforward speech is important since his intention in writing poetry is to engage with readers and influence social change.

Poem Text

Wayman, Tom. “Did I Miss Anything?” 1993. Library of Congress.

Summary

The title of the poem alludes to a question that students who have been absent from a class often ask teachers. In the body of the poem, the teacher, who is the speaker of the poem, attempts to answer this question. The speaker provides two hyperbolic sets of answers: one set of answers begin with “Everything,” with one exception, and the other set always begin with “Nothing.” The style and tone of the poem suggests that the teacher is not actually answering the students out loud but mulling over possible answers in their head.

The speaker tells the students that they have missed nothing. In the absence of the students, the entire class just sat still, frozen in time.

On the other hand, the students missed everything. This “everything” includes an exam that was worth 40% of the grade for the term. The students also missed an assigned reading on which the class is about to be quizzed extensively.

Yet the speaker tells the students that in a way they missed nothing, because the course and its contents hold little value for them. Since in the larger scheme of things all activities are pointless, the students can keep missing classes. In the end no one learns anything anyway.

Alternately, the students did miss out on something extraordinary. The speaker tells the students that while they were away, a shaft of light opened up straight from the heavens in their classroom. An angel, or some other heavenly being, descended in the class to tell them what each man and woman on earth must do to fulfill their purpose in life and beyond. Now that the class possesses the sum of all knowledge, there is no point of classes or learning anymore. They will disperse to disseminate this crucial information to the rest of the world.

But still, the teacher muses, how could anything of significance occur in class when the students were away. Therefore, the students missed nothing.

In the final stanza of the poem the teacher’s answer comes closest to the truth. The students did miss everything because they weren’t present in the moment. The class constituted “a microcosm of human experience/assembled for you to query and examine and ponder” (Lines 26-27) and the students failed to seize the opportunity. Such a moment will not occur again. Though the students may be present in a different class, the particulars of the class they missed are lost to them forever. Thus, the speaker highlights the importance of living and being present through every experience.