When I was in the fifth grade, I was crazy about my English teacher Miss Presnell. She has horse hair clogs and played Jethro Tull’s Aqua Lung during class, handing out the lyrics for us to analyze.
Then, in the 12th grade, Myra Fassler. She was probably sixty, had a wardrobe of beige slacks and cardigans. She marched around the room in her crepe sole shoes with a poetry book in her hand. She nearly spit out “Daddy” as she circled the room. You do no do. You do not do.
One night a week, we were invited to her home. Only three of us ever showed. We’d sit around a coffee table that looked like an inverted drum, filled with poetry magazines and thin paperback poetry books. I loved sifting through them, listening to Myra read. When I won $100 for a writing prize at the end of the year, I spent the whole thing on poetry books. I didn’t even save some for a nickel bag.
Who were your teachers? Mentors?
Betsy Lerner 
I was madly in love with my fourth grade teacher (oh, fickle memory, her name eludes me), although she certainly wasn’t the most attentive teacher in the world. In fact, she spent most of her time in the hallway, flirting with the janitorial staff, which was comprised mostly of thick-mustached men named Bob. (Can that be right? Maybe there was just one mustached Bob, but he was BUSY.) Anyway, she had ironed-straight, shiny, chestnut hair and she drove a metallic gold Mustang Mach 1. She had a peacock feather roach clip hanging from her rearview mirror. So, clearly you can see the attraction.
In eighth grade, it was Mr. Shriver, my English teacher, who had a pockmarked face and a gin blossom nose and still managed to be thoroughly hot, even in his Sansabelt, powder blue slacks.
Then he started fucking my mom.
Ah, yes. Mrs. VanAntwerp, far-sighted high school English teacher. She saw and encouraged potential talent even when the immature little brat who possessed it did nothing to help it and everything to hinder it.
And nickel bags, oh yes! Because dime bags were for rich kids! lol
In 7th grade, Mr. Saunders, wearing black-framed bottle-thick glasses and Beatle thin jeans read the Raven by Poe and talked about repetition, how it rocks against your brain–nevermore, nevermore, nevermore–until it stays there and I was in love.
For our next assignment he asked the class to write a new ending to Great Expectations. I got so into it I wrote several and sold them to the slow girls who were too dumb to not narc me out.
So Mr. Saunders sent me to detention and that was the end of that school swoon.
I was a total shit in my school days (see my latest blog post for elaboration). But my sixth grade teacher, who sent me to the principal’s office countless numbers of times, also was my first and greatest influence in my life when it came to my writing career. She once wrote on one of my papers, “If you don’t do something with your writing talent, I’m going to come back and haunt you.”
She’s still alive, but every time I think about giving up on writing, her words come back to haunt me.
My seventh grade English teacher was the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs. Bushhorn (really). She told us that The Catcher in the Rye was dirty and that we all should go out and read it. I did immediately, don’t know about anyone else. One day, she announced in front of the whole class (pointing directly at me): “This young man knows more about diagramming sentences…than I do!” I turned bright red, but I’ll never forget her saying that.
Two of my favorite teachers in high school took us on trips, one time to go skiing for a week, another time to a monastery. 28 years later, I live 5000 miles away, and I’m still in touch with both of them. My English teacher is still teaching at my old high school.
I had an alcoholic, bearded, quiet English teacher my junior year of high school. He loved my writing in the journal I was required to keep for class but hated my fiction. Lo and behold – I can’t write fiction and can only write memoir and essays. But he hadn’t heard of first person so he’d look at my stuff and hem and haw and make awkward, alcohol-fumed suggestions about how to infuse my fiction with the voice from my journal. It was kind of good and kind of bad, all at the same time, to find out I could write, but I couldn’t write any kind of writing he’d heard of.
Mrs Hose, my 7th grade teacher was probably the first person who ever showed me any encouragement with anything. She let me spend free time at the back of the room writing, and she let me change some assignment requirements to fit in with this fabulous novel I was writing (oh yeah…. it was CRAP. Bless her heart).
That year coincided with me deciding I was going to be a writer. I still give her silent thanks to this day.
It’s quite amazing how just one person giving a tiny bit of encouragement can change someone’s life…
In second grade, our teacher assigned us to write and illustrate our own story. We had the choice of hand drawn or computer graphics. We then assembled our books in the elementary style of publishing and read our “books” to each other.
I thought, “Yeah. This is what I’m going to be when I grow up.”
Ever since that moment, I’ve been writing, and refining my craft.
Now here’s a seductive post, Betsy.
I loved Sister Dominic in the equivalent of my year nine, when I was fourteen years old. She took us for English and for Latin. I was good at English but so at Latin. I stuck with both. I was determined to endure Latin in order to be near Sister Dominic.
It was not love of learning but love of the woman herself that kept me there and yet she taught me things I needed to know about language and logic by default. she taught me to respect the grammar whether English or Latin and she taught me to love words.
I moved on from her to other things, including non celibacy and a love of men, but I will never forget her.
I had plenty of teachers who told me I could write, and how generally awesome I was at all things English. My tenth grade English teacher was the first one to tell me I ought to be published, so I guess that ranks her a special mention. However the teacher who made the biggest impression was my professor for College English 201. He told me my writing was crap, but that I had potential. For the rest of the semester, he proceeded to teach me how to tap that potential. He didn’t make me a writer, but he pointed the way. When I sat down to write seriously, some twenty years later, he was the first teacher I thought of.
The world lost Dr. Hruska a couple of years ago, but he’s still the ex-Marine in the back of my head–whispering when I don’t feel good enough and shouting when I’m feeling better than I should.
My third grade teacher, Mrs. Nichols is one of the reasons I became a writer. She asked us to write a story one day. I wrote about Martians coming to earth to knock over Fort Knox. Apparently Martains eat gold. She loved my story so much she asked me to go from classroom to classroom and read it. I fought my nerves and did it. By the time I returned to my class my pages were destroyed and smeared from my sweaty palms. Bu that was the day Mrs Nichols took my chin in her hand and said, “You have been gifted with words. Write.” And I did. Now I am a published novelist with one book making Library Journals best titles of 2009 list. I have three more novels coming. Thank you Mrs. Nichols.
Irving Katz, my American history professor in college. A delightful New York Jew and a stickler for diction, he handed out a hilarious, self-made guide to punctuation that I retain to this day. It described the use of parentheses as akin to whispering, and exclamation points as akin to shouting. “Shout too much, and people will stop listening to you,” it said. “Whisper too much, and they’ll become suspicious of you.” Also, he once corrected a student who pronounced Roosevelt in three syllables, saying, with pitch-perfect timing, “it’s Rose-velt. How do I know? Because Eleanor told me.”
The director of my local theater. He showed me this larger world of art and theater beyond my rural, southern community. I paid lip service to school, made decent enough grades to be left alone, and spent most of my time hanging around the theater, living in my imagination.
Mrs Gentry, my 11th grade Lit teacher. She was a lefty. Left-handed, I mean. Left-handed persons seem strange and wonderful to me. Intimidating. Gross smell of a smoker lingered around her in my memory. Seemed a wee bit agitated. Everyone was so scared of her at my high-school because Oh My God You Have To Write Papers in that class. But I found out that for me it wasn’t bad. In fact, it was the best part of my day by a mile.
Kip Fulbeck, media artist and writer. Changed the way I wrote poetry, helped me find my own meter and voice, instead of (gag) rhyming or attempting iambic pentameter.
My first poetry mentor, really a docent, a curator who opened the doors of the museum of contemporary poetry to me, was Janice Lauer, whose course in contemporary poetry I joined in the winter semester of my freshman year. It was a senior-level course, and I, a chemistry major desperate for relief, acting more out of naivete than defiance or cunning, had signed up without meeting any pre-requisites. Much to her credit, Dr. Lauer, the department chair, didn’t eject me immediately, but welcomed me to the small seminar class that met in a cozy parlor in Madame Cadillac Hall. There were only five or six of us (small college). Dr. Lauer wore a plum or maroon or copper jacket that complimented her rich auburn hair. I remember those afternoons as a portal to the world of living, breathing writers, as if Janice Lauer were introducing us to her circle of friends. There was an immediacy to those sessions I have never forgotten, though I have no memory at all of the rest of my freshman year’s academic work. We took on one or at most two poets each week, reading carefully and closely. I was introduced to Galway Kinnell, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and many others. I found my way to the poetry shelves in the stacks of the library and worked my way through the entire collection. I studied the photographs on the book jackets and in the anthologies, looking for signs, clues to the identifying marks of a poet, hoping against hope that I might carry them on my own spectacled visage one day.
I went to Amity (’71) as well, and I used to go to Arnold and Myra’s house at least once a week. Arnold had his SCSU students and Myra had her Amity students. Very important experience. I became good friends with Fran. Best,
Jim Brochin
I found your post in doing a search for Myra Fassler. She changed my life. 1979 MoPo. Modern Poetry. I see you caught the bug too. Myra rocks. Keep up the good work!