anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did

Those lines still ring clearly in my head. I was thirteen, almost fourteen, awkward. A seventh-almost-eighth grader with six inches worth of height I had gained in a year and didn’t know what to do with, I walked into almost everything I could see in a room. I had hands bigger than my face and shoulders that could not hold themselves up no matter what I tried. I wore that tall girl slouch like it was my favorite coat or favorite oversized sweater, maybe…I had just given up wearing velvet drawstring pants and clogs.

I loved to read, though, and some other kids around me thankfully did too. I had written a 120 page novella to which I couldn’t find the perfect ending, a spiraling sci-fi story of two friends that fall in love and must make it through an alternate world once there is a major power shift from human to alien-slash-robot. Half of the dialogue is in French, and I handled the translation entirely on Google Translate.

My middle school English teacher, Zachary Roberts, who is to this day one of the best teachers I have ever had, read my entire novella cover to shittily illustrated cover. He gave me notes, encouraged me to send my short stories out to literary magazines, and continued reading even when it looked like there was no chance of the story ending. As it spiraled into future worlds, more Google Translate (this time, German), and the tragic death of Heroine A, he continued reading.

Something else that Zaq (the hippie Montessori elementary school I went to allowed us to call teachers by their first names, and yes, he did spell his first name abbreviated with a “q”) did for me was made me memorize poetry. A recent thread on the Poetry Genius forums got me thinking about this again: What poems do you know by heart? Did you choose to learn them, or did someone make you? Should teachers force students to memorize poems?

My answer: yes. My answer: Thank you Zaq.

I was in middle school when I discovered all the poetry books my moms kept stacked in peeling books on bookshelves that always seemed “too adult” for me, and I stole an E. E. Cummings book that I kept by my bed. He did things with language that I did not know you were allowed to do. He made words fit in the wrong places, injected meaning into vague pronouns and crafted them to comprise a makeshift world of love, loneliness, and routine, and I, twelve thirteen fourteen, was astonished. I read them out loud to myself over and over again, trying to hit the right emphasis points where he used words like I had never seen them used.

“anyone lived in a pretty how town” was my absolute favorite. It was lonely, but it was romantic in its loneliness, and I understood that. I felt that maybe I too was like anyone without noone – for a while, I pronounced “noone” like “noon” because I wanted her to have a “real” name.

Zaq was a tough English teacher. He gave a grammar test to us at the end of seventh grade that all but ten students failed; he often called out students in class that were not paying attention or dozing off. He also had a major assignment every week in which a few students would pick a poem to memorize and recite in front of the class. You would be graded on the difficulty of the poem, your ability to memorize it, and your performance. We had a weird little classroom with steps cut into the walls like an amphitheater. This is where it went down.

Half of the school was packed into that little room. One of my best friends, a tallish girl with a powerful voice, had just recited Shel Silverstein’s “Sick” and killed it, inciting a booming round of laughs from the kids. Then it was my turn. My face shining bright red, I was forced to overcome my shyness and provide a voice to a type of writing I was just beginning to understand. I was able to feel like a part of Cummings’ form, a cog in the creative machine, participating in a large part of what made his work accessible to the ears and minds of my classmates. I tried to pronounce “anyone” like it was distinct, “isn’t” with the rounded edges of a noun, “same” with the power of something specific…

cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

Without being able to memorize and perform poems as Zaq made us do in middle school, I wouldn’t think about writing the way I do today.

After all, almost every English teacher I’ve ever had says the same thing: “You can’t get better at writing without reading!” I'm going to go ahead and argue the same can be said of reading out loud...