Poetry as a Theorem

In 1967, when I was seventeen, I had been writing poetry for a year or so. 

One of my teachers, Reva Chrisman, encouraged me to continue writing poems, and one day I gave her a poem about the final moments in the life of the gangster, John Dillinger. I remember the poem focused on the point of betrayal where JD, his girlfriend and another woman arrived at the cinema, where a nod from the woman to FBI agents, waiting nearby, began the last, inevitable death spiral of the bankrobber.

Reva was impressed. So much so that she decided to 'fly it blind' to our English Language class. She gave them the Dillinger poem, and also a poem by a well-known contemporary poet, both uncredited, and led a discussion of the poems' merits. As the class ended, she asked them to vote, based on their discussion, on the poem they preferred. Their preference was for the Dillinger poem; it was then that she revealed that the poem was mine. Silence, followed by a few quips, at which point everyone left for their next class.

Now, as a result of this exercise, the best-looking girl in the class (Candice, nicknamed Candy) didn't offer to introduce me to the wonders of sexual experience. Neither did the most popular guy in the class (Marsh) offer to include me as one of the Chosen Few who were from time to time invited to parties at his swanky house (we were poor). 

What did happen, however, is that the geekiest girl in the whole school, Ann, who was obsessed by Lord of the Rings, and could write the faux language of Middle Earth in longhand, page upon page upon page, and who was also something of a whizz at Maths, offered to assist me with my Algebra homework, which had suffered in my poetic pursuit of America's Most Wanted.

Poetry, like pi, is a long game.