Writing, Im convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

As long as my sixth graders showed an average improvement of five years, the principal and district pretty much left me alone to create my own curriculum and teach whatever I wanted

Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

It's odd how violence and humor so often go together, isn't it?

It started 25 years ago, when I was teaching elementary school in a small town in Missouri

There is a certain solipsism to serious illness which claims all of one's attention as certainly as an astronomical black hole seizes anything unlucky enough to fall within its critical radius.

The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.