I may have mentioned before that I had an absolutely fantastic eleventh grade English teacher. Seriously, she was amazing. Mix a dancer’s grace with a sailor’s mouth and a steel-gray Jamie Lee Curtis haircut and the insanely creative mind of John Keating {of Dead Poets Society fame} and you’ve got my English teacher. She yelled at me a few times for reading too much in the back of the class and arguing with me about Stephen King being high quality literature {she has since read On Writing, Gerald’s Game, and 11/22/63 and we no longer have to argue about Stephen King being awesome}, and while she had the rest of the class terrorized, I thrived on it. I loved having someone who gave a damn enough about what she was doing to challenge me creatively, and she did. She threw down gauntlet after gauntlet in front of me, daring me to do something amazing. When I graduated, she pointed a finger at me and said, “I want a sighed first edition!” Yeah, I’m still working on that. I sold a short novella maybe six years ago and I have 150 pages on file…each…for three different books.
She also introduced me to some amazing creative talents. Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Mark Twain, William Faulkner. Poets, writers, dreamers. We were eclectic. Although a few of them have just stuck with me, and every once in a while, especially when I’m dropping my husband off at the train station, this poem creeps into my head.
I’m not what I’d call a poetic spirit {seriously, I’m a photographer – words are limited media}, but this one resonates, and I just felt like sharing it with you. If you haven’t read the full poem, you can see it over here.
