Nelson Bentley (1918-1990), a poet and UW faculty member, was one of those professors I wish I had studied with. A website with some of his Bentleyisms recently came to my attention. Some samples:

Northwest poetry is generally seething with slugs.

Humorous gloom is one of the specialties of the Northwest.

If there’s not a little moss and a few mushrooms growing out of the poem, you haven’t gotten into the spirit of the Northwest.

Critics have a terrible fear of laughing.

There’s a huge, underground anti-apostrophe movement in the United States... caused by the neon sign industry.

“Sylvan” is a rather archaic word about woods. It’s only used by realtors now.

The bad kinds of pathetic fallacies are the ones where the sun is giggling and chuckling and waving hello and eating ham sandwiches. All amateur poets have a ghastly tendency to anthropomorphize everything. It’s like Walt Disney everywhere.

I have a theory that every town has its poet. Sometimes I have to wait for decades. But the poet of Dosewallips has not yet appeared.

I was almost crushed on the New York subway by Arthur Miller’s cousin Oscar.

Roethke’s last words to me: “Beefeater all right?”

A faculty party is a massive tangle of 50 egos, each trying to impress the other 49.

And there's more.