Filed under: mentors
I know there are people out there to whom you’re indebted – I should know since this evening I had the pleasure of catching up with my mentor, an old teacher from middle school. I’ve known him since I was in the 7th grade, a 14-year-old nobody whose friends consisted of composition books made into journals and Pilot pens.
We’re both older now. I can’t believe he’s 30, nor how much time has elapsed since I left my little middle school, passed high school and am now at least half-way done with college. I thought about the past and I’m truly grateful for having met this man and giving me the chance to write. Well, I’ve always had the chance, sure, but he was the first spark, the first one to notice, to care about what I had to write or say.
We exchanged poetry at a Starbucks and talked about writing. He gave me two books to read – Marianne Moore (the mother, figuratively, of Elizabeth Bishop) and another called Eight American Poets; features Bishop, Merrill, Plath, Ginsberg, Roethke, Berryman, Sexton and Lowell. I’m terribly excited to curl up with these authors. More material for this blog, hopefully, as well as my other one for my school paper’s website.
I’ve figured out my true priorities. They’re not in essays, or assigned readings, or internships – they’re in people. Wonderful people you can’t give up, live without, or avoid.
They’re the soul-mates of the world, the ones who give light when it’s needed most.
