In the fall semester I offered an on-line course in writing poetry for Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California--one of the first two courses offered on-line at my institution. This course was the result of investigations on a sabbatical leave and of believe that the workshop method of teaching of poetry could be easily adapted to on-line teaching. The design of the course was fairly simple. Nevertheless, the course was an adventure, and to some extent confirmed my belief that machines, like dogs, attack when they sense fear. Not only did the server and mainframe go down at numerous inconvenient times, but the entire campus voice-mail system crashed during the first few weeks of the course. Yet the course seemed to be a success, both for me and for my students. I was able to teach more poetry than I ordinarily would have had the opportunity to teach, and I was able to work closely with people from more technological disciplines that I might not have gotten to know otherwise. The course had the same retention as my own campus course normally does, but the students tended to me more non-traditional. Moreover, they reported that they felt less inhibited than they would have felt in an on-campus class. There also seemed to be some of the "decentering" effect that I've heard attributed to distance learning. I am hardly an expert on technology. I think, therefore, that my experience shows that distance learning need not be confined to experts, or to highly technical presentations. Its strength, as in any approach to teaching, should be in its flexibility.