For eight years, Kathleen Monahan taught English literature and composition at Saint Peter's College satellite campus at Newark Airport. Her students were Port Authority employees--police officers, mechanics, bridge painters--trying to wedge an education into lives criss-crossed by split shifts, swing shifts, and double overtime. On the first evening of one Survey of English Literature course, Dominic introduced himself, adding by way of further identification, "I was never any good at English, and I hate poems." He didn't intend to be hostile; he was just an honest man who didn't want his instructor to have any illusions about him. On the third night of class, Dominic showed he connected with Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" when he relates his experience in the Navy blowing up icebergs before they drift into the sea lanes to the section of the poem in which the luckless sailor finds himself floating through a sea of ice. Monahan reflects on this teaching experience and expresses her gratefulness for the occasional reminder that much of what she wants her students to know is planted firmly in human experience.