Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen a lot of them will.
But if you read Jane Austen you know that she had a wicked sense of humor. Not only was she funny but her early writing was very dark and had a gothic tone to it.
I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.
Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing primal anxiety that often afflicts women.