Dear Professor,

Allow me to tell you a story.  Once there was a kid, a sophomore, taking a class in Elizabethan poetry.  The first paper was on a Donne poem, which began with the lines, 'some man, unworthy to be possessor,/ of old or new love,' which has a fine moment 'whoe'er rigged fair ships to lie in harbors,' enticing a lover.  He got his paper in late, but the professor gave him an A minus and wrote, by lines comparing the poet to a fine carpenter showing his skill, a generous and humorous comment that simply said, 'touché!'   The final paper, after the student had enjoyed a season of poetry with avid thirst, was on a particular passage from Paradise Lost, wherein Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden for their transgression, and the 'Levant and Ponent Winds did blow...' and Adam is left standing there dumb.  The school year ended, and most everyone but the seniors had gone home, and the young student still couldn't get the paper written, as he might have seen something in his mind's eye, something serious, solving the problem of analysis, but as of yet unarticulated for its vastness, its mute obviousness, the plainness of it being right there in front of you.  The kid went home, and promised to, and knew he would, write that paper, even if it had gone too long and there was a matter of an incomplete being factored into his grade.  And finally, probably in July, the answer came to him, in a moment of epiphany.  It was words, words themselves.  That was what Adam turns to when he gets kicked out.  For that was what the student himself had turned to that summer, as a house was getting readied to be packed up.  And so, because of that event, in its totality, which included a poor grade, an adjustment of attitude on his own part about how he would be scholarly if ever allowed to be again, dawning now as different from the accepted mainstream which would of course write papers and hand them in on time and not go into such poetic explorations, contributed to a divergence from a path.  It would largely represent a fall from academic grace, which resulted in depression and confusion, confidence affected.

Unfinished:  how do you teach?  what do you teach, and where?  what is the credential, the qualification?  what, or how to be useful to other minds?

That small part of me up in the pineal gland asks how to approach poetry from the inside as a poet rather than a scholar?

Then there was the whole bringing flowers to the beautiful girl incident.  Inside, I cried and I cried about that.  Women are more egoless then men, and if they frown upon you, means you're a jerk.



But I suppose the solution is finally obvious, after one tries a lot of other things.  The answer is to write poetry, poetry as you know it, and in that way build up a haven, a sanctuary, protection for yourself, so you won't get confused.