“Teaching and writing have tended to proceed on parallel lines, but there have been times when there was indeed carry-over from the classroom to the creative work.”

So how can a poet-an intelligent, serious poet-write mystical verse now?

The traffic, however, was usually the other way.

My teaching was animated by what I was reading and being excited by as a poet.

Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word “myth” only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.

Which led me into a new appreciation of middle [William Butler ] Yeats, of the short three-beat line and forward-driving syntax, and that paid in, in turn to a poem like Casualty in Field Work.

With luck, a writer capable of producing both Slouching Towards Kalamazoo and The Blood of the Lamb will not remain unappreciated for long.

The poetry of Adam Zagajewski provides the beginning of an answer to this question.

In the 1970s, for example, I found myself learning to relish the poetry of Andrew Marvell and Sir Thomas Wyatt, and getting a handle on poetry of plainer speech than I had dwelt with heretofore.

The unadmitted reason why traditional readers are hostile to e-books is that we still hold the superstitious idea that a book is like a soul, and that every soul should have its own body.

I believe we should have no higher priority than investing in our children’s classrooms and in their future.

The Next Chapter in the Book of Hope: “Gaining New Hope Hearing Aids” As I was with the Lord in the “Classroom of Useful Information,”

I had a bad time in school in the first grade. Because I had been a rather lonely child on a farm, but I was free and wild and to be shut up in a classroom – there were 40 children on those days in the classroom, and it was quite a shock.

Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised – so it’s no longer “in the closet,” as it were. It’s part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature.

I’m a teacher still, but with a much larger classroom.

Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom.

The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.

Since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.