High Praise Indeed!

My English class is done for the night. My professor, the esteemed Dr. Hooper, handed back our midterm exams and our literary essays. I got A's on both. I also received a profound compliment. Dr. Hooper told me I was an excellent writer. How cool is that? I have been writing for many, many years, laboring in obscurity under the yoke of my own haphazardness. I have too many interests, and so all of them suffer. I have won writing contests, I have won poetry contests. I feel like I owe it to myself to write more -hence this blog. I am really honored that a Ph. D in letters would find my humble offerings to be excellent. The pedigree of the compliment is born on the standing of the one who declares it. Hot dog, I may just carry this thing to its appointed end! I have courage to continue on. In my 8th grade yearbook, a girl named Paula, who I believe was the only other Black person in the school's gifted English class, wrote "To a boy who can write his ASS off." I have known that I possessed the requisite tools, even as a young child, to be a good writer, but it never turned out like that. Life happened. In my junior year, my gifted English techer had me stand tall in front of the principal and explain how a poor Black boy could write such a staggeringly insightful literary criticism on Shakespeare's MacBeth. "I mean really -why don't you tell us where you copied this from so we can suspend you and go home." "Define the word 'macrocosm', if you can." This paper is too good too have come from you, that was the point. But I knew better, and I exonerated myself. I went of the U of I majoring in English, then abandoned it because of the rampant racism there and my own immaturity. Then, a long drought. Hmmm.

Years later, I am told that I have a gift (still). I feel my muse gently prodding, I hear destiny whispering. I grow intrigued with the possibilities.