The story of my life . . . so far.
I didn’t start out to be a writer. I started out as a kid in New Jersey who had two major goals in life: (1) survive one more year of delivering newspapers without being attacked by Ike, the one-eyed, crazed cur that lurked in the forsythia bushes at the top of the hill; and (2) become more than a weak-hitting, third string catcher on our sorry Little League team. I failed at both.
Had I announced at the dinner table, “Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to be a poet,” my parents—especially my mother--would have been thrilled. In truth, they would have been thrilled that I’d decided to be anything other than the Top 40 disc jockey, Edsel salesman, or bullpen catcher I constantly talked about becoming in junior high. But at that point in my life, poetry—and school, in general, for that matter--meant no more to me than gerunds, the Belgian Congo, or George Washington’s wooden teeth. I was only “gifted” on Christmas and my birthday.
Poet at three
I didn’t like school. I did as little homework as possible. I participated in class only under duress from the nuns. Before sixth grade, I wasn’t even much of a reader. My reading was limited largely to baseball magazines, the daily sports page—usually carefully read over a chocolate egg cream in the local candy store—and the backs of baseball cards old and new. I was captivated by those color pictures of men wearing five o’clock shadows and baggy pants. Luckily for me, however, I discovered the Hardy Boys. Frank and Joe set me straight about the joys of reading.
College grad
Somehow I made it through high school and I even found one college that would take me. That’s when my life changed. During college I was with kids who had read books I hadn’t read, knew about plays that I’d never heard of, and could talk about music, literature, and the arts. That was when I realized how much time I had wasted in high school. That’s when it dawned on me that it was time for me to start learning.
After college, where I actually did quite well, I headed to graduate school and then started teaching. I taught high school English for 22 years in Ohio, Massachusetts, and Maine. In 1990, two things happened that changed my life in countless wonderful ways. My daughter, Emma, was born and I decided that I had to leave the classroom so I could have more time to write and work as a visiting poet. And take care of Emma. And that’s exactly what I did.
With Emma &
World Series
trophy
Since that time, my daughter has grown into a neat 17-year-old
kid, and I’ve published over 40 books and visited a few hundred
schools from Maine to Alaska and even in Europe. When I’m not visiting
schools, I’m
usually in my office working on books. I live in western Maine with my
wife—who is Senior Policy Associate at the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine—and daughter. And
Rosie, our white (and, oh, so neurotic) standard poodle.
10 THINGS A LOT OF PEOPLE DON’T KNOW
ABOUT ME