Advanced Composition?

So I've been dejunking. Today I went through a box of keepsakes from --gasp!-- college days. Friends, I entered Seton Hill College in Greensburg, PA (as one of the few non-Catholic girls) in 1983. That's right: last century. Some of my readers were not yet conceived back then, but trust me when I say the automobile had been around a few years.

Not knowing whether I wanted to be a marine biologist or a writer for Time magazine, I started with a double major of biology and English. Two weeks into Sister Ann's Biology 101 class, my decision was as firm as cement: I would major in English. Besides, I hate jellyfish and really deep water.

While going through this box of college notebooks, papers, yearbooks, and letters from home, I found a piece of notebook paper with the heading "Adv. Comp, Dr. Lynn Conroy, Nov. 5, 1984." I was a sophomore. That's the year in one's college experience when her intellect bursts forth in her writing, when the larvae of lame literacy emerges into a butterfly of bucolic beauty. The simple becomes profound. She trades red ribbons for Pulitzer prizes.


Take this poem, for example. All I can surmise from the title "Modeling" is that the assignment probably asked the student (me) to imitate the style of a famous author.

Here is unparalleled writing, folks:

I had sound but no words,
phrases but no sentences,
beginnings but no ends.

I had prisons but no bars,
walls but no doors,
masks but no faces.

I had rhythm but had no drum,
notes but had no melody,
performance but had no audience.

I had something to say, but rubber clods
lodged in my throat,
something to see, but pencil leads
poked in my eyes,
something to hear, but tennis balls
stuck in my ears.

-zmd