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# My Teacher, Strict in Form and Measure
- URL: https://www.hawkword.com/poetry/my-teacher-strict-in-form-and-measure/
- Published: 2022-06-26T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2022-06-26T12:00:00.000Z
- Description: "Make sure your poem has a meter", the teacher said in English class, and claimed: if it is to be literature it must be written thus. A poem's not a game of inches; it stretches, shrinks, offends and pinches, though i...
- Author: A. Gee
- Tags: Poetry, Sonnet, Allpoetry Import, #Import 2026-04-25 19:56

"Make sure your poem has a meter",  
the teacher said in English class,  
and claimed: if it is to be literature  
it must be written thus.  
A poem's not a game of inches;  
it stretches, shrinks, offends and pinches,  
though it is easier to perform  
if it conforms to proper norm.  
The good news? I don't need a ruler.  
My telephone can measure length,  
requiring no skill or strength.  
So let him call out, Bueller, Bueller.  
He'll get a poem, one of mine,  
and ending on the fourteenth line.

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**Author notes:** Pushkin style sonnet. The entry to Eugene Onegin is "My Uncle, of the strictest morals"