The Greatest Poem There Ever Was A.K.A "I Hate Math"

Today we’re gonna chat about me being responsible for the universe’s best poem (yet still I await my Pulitzer)! I may have opened with some tongue-in-cheek hyperbole there, so let’s get into it before I spout any more grandiose ~~lies~~ claims.

A History of Mathematics

It’s 1992. I’m in third grade, and I hate math. Nine-year-old me must’ve figured that it would plague me throughout my school career. Though I had always done very well academically with minimal effort, I really had to try hard when it came to math.

(Ninth-grade pre-algebra proved to be my biggest struggle, taught by a scowling skeleton of a woman. Though ultimately I wound up with something like a B or B-minus for the year, it was no easy A like everything else was, and thus it irrationally/disproportionately left me feeling dumb. Cut to now: I’m in charge of the household finances and I’m kicking ass. I don’t use a lick of algebra. I can’t even tell you what even happens in trigonometry. And so: There is light at the end of the tunnel, fellow math haters!)

Words Are Dope!

Though I hated math, it probably goes without saying that I loved art and writing. (Example: It was around this time that I was penning scrapbooks while masquerading as Minnie Mouse.) Creating and illustrating stories and songs has always been my way of preserving playtime, so I found these activities pretty effortless in a school setting.

Back to 1992: The teacher instructs the class to write poems. She submits them all for consideration in a poetry anthology of fellow young poets, and mine gets accepted! Once the excitement of being a published poet and seeing my name in print (and on a page all by myself!) wore off, I promptly forgot about it—until now. Now I’m gonna pick it and this anthology apart!

The Anthology

The book’s title is Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans: 1993 Edition (ISBN: 1-883931-002). I found the organization’s website, which claims it accepts fifty-five percent of submissions. That had to be much, much higher in the early ’90s, because most of the included poetry seems, well… Let me just say that most lack rhyme and rhythm, and some are just sentences stacked on top of each other. Sure, poetry is subjective, and poetry isn’t my strong suit, and you could argue that a poem without rhyme and rhythm that’s just stacked sentence is indeed a good poem, and to that, I say FUCK POETRY but whatver.

I remember that it was autumn when my class was instructed to write the poems, which makes sense in reading this anthology; there are heaps of fall-themed poems in here. We’ve got lots of references to Thanksgiving, Halloween, and even Election Day. There’s nary a single pool party or beach trip mention, yet there are roughly 532 poems about owning a turkey. Ugh, and there are so many sports poems! In fact, I’m going to write my own sports poem using the first line of all the sports poems in this book, but I’ll save that as a little treat at the end.

The Poems in This Collection

Some poems have actual emotion behind them:

This was written by a twelve-year-old we should probably check up on. (My nine-year-old self underlined that grown-up word!)

This one is legit fun:

It’s got that Shel Silverstein quality that I firmly support.

And this one has me realizing that I may not, in fact, know what a “top cat” is:

There’s a curveball at the end of this poem! Oh man! I feel like I should Google some of these poets to make sure they’re okay now!

Here is a true time capsule of a poem, and I really like the straight-forwardness of the title:

I want to write a wacky short story with this title and it will have nothing to do with Bill Clinton. (That’s how you know it’s a *literary* short story.)

What is even happening in this next one?

I should definitely look up this kid (who is now forty) to make sure he’s eating properly. I really hope he’s a nutritionist now and this hangs on his office wall.

This is another poem that is just the most 1992 thing you’ll see today:

Would you say this next one is flirting with plagiary or some poetic equivalent of fan fiction or just laziness or…? (PS. For a long time, I did picture the one star-spangled line being “by the dawnzerly light.” And I have to admit, “dawnzerly light” makes sense to me even now. Just feels right.)

What a whirlwind of events:

And now another memory from the early ’90s!

Remember when Bugle Boy was a thing??? You know you forgot all about this brand!

And in conclusion, this poem that I start to understand before realizing I don’t understand any of it:

The Best Poem Ever!

But now let’s chat about my poem, gang! This is where all the backstory about math finally comes into play, because it’s titled “I Hate Math!” That’s right, with an exclamation mark! That’s how you know I’m done playin’!

I shall now present the poem in full, and then there will be a discussion:

My thoughts:

That opening couplet! I’m like, referencing Shakespeare! This poem is clearly genius, if the exclamation point in the title didn’t already give it away.
Chopping fractions right in half—I should’ve stuck with this imagery and committed more violence against math things with puns and wordplay.
Not sure if it comes across or not, but the final four couplets are me striking deals with the Math Lord in exchange for not making me math no mo’. Please, please! I’ll let Mom wash behind my ears! I’ll let my Dad blather on about the Old Testament! Heck, I’ll be nice to my brother! Aunt Cranky, even! (My aunt, Sue, had questions when she first read this: “Who’s Aunt Cranky? Am I Aunt Cranky?!”)
I love the wail of “OH!” preceding every declaration of math hate. It makes this feel more like a song (specifically “Sailor’s Hornpipe” as sung by the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland), which is just the effect young me was going for.

Think of all the untapped rhymes and near rhymes I could’ve used to express my derision! My current favorite: “On my lap, I’ll let Howard Taft! OH! I hate math!” Please feel free to submit your own suggestions in the comments below.

Stephanie’s Special Sports Poem

And now for that sports poem I promised:

Nervous, afraid
Gripping the bat, digging your cleats into the mud.
Basketball
Bases
Scoring
Larry, on my soccer team,
Going down the ski slope,
Football is my favorite game.
I like soccer,
Baseball
Chicago Bulls
The coach calls me up
I can do that too.
Bruises
Jamming
Ball on its axis
Fun
Baseball
There are corners, passes, and goals.
Michael Jordan

What would an early ’90s poem about sports be without a Michael Jordan reference? I feel like the poem took a sinister turn in the middle with “coach,” “bruises,” and “jamming,” but maybe we should leave that piece unexplored. Otherwise, I feel like this poem sufficiently tells you everything about the actual sports poems in the book. (Such scorn! Should my next poem be “OH! I Hate Sports”? Or did I just write that above? Discuss!)

And in conclusion: OH! I hate math!

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