Things rapidly became personal. Lewis shot back in the press: “Catweazel lookalike Michael Horovitz fills me with an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm. I don’t think his brand of stupidness is harmless or charming? He is the biggest bore unhung. Let’s hope he croaks by swallowing his kazoo.” (A reference to Horovitz’s “Anglosaxophone” which he likes to play at poetry recitals.)

Barely graduating high school I tell my parents I don’t want to go to college. I tell them I want to write poetry and that I don’t need college to write poetry. I’m reading Charles Bukowski and thinking that anything is possible, even nothing. I have read the French and I have read the English. My mother begs me to take a couple classes at Erie Community College, and since my aunt teaches there I am able to get a creative writing class only offered to second year students. At 9:25 on a Tuesday morning a woman, short, plump and old hobbles into the classroom in elastic waist corduroy pants, a sweater and the largest bifocals I have ever seen. She stands there at the desk telling us about how when she was a child her parents thought she was retarded, until they discovered she was deaf with an IQ of 151. I look at her. Then I look at the clock. It is 9:28 a.m. Then she looks at us and says, “What is poetry?” A guy in the back shouts, “a waste of time”. A young girl in tiger print spandex says, “An expression of beauty”. Nobody else answers. Miss Erbes drags her handle bag from the floor and empties it onto her desk. I’ve never seen a teacher empty her handbag so frivolously. In fact that semester I have a teacher who opens a philosophy class by telling us that “you don’t take a metallurgy course without knowing a good god damn about metallurgy”.and a Nutrition teacher who talks about nothing but her ex-husband.  This is my introduction to college.  Every thirty seconds Erbes lifts something new from the pile and begins reading it: Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, there will be an answer let it be; Thinking of skipping breakfast? Consider the benefits you’re missing; Let us go then, you and I when the evening is spread out against the sky; I’m glad you shopped here today—Your Cashier – Justin; When will I rub my come on your tits, tug at the hair of your snatch; Payments received by ISL for this loan(s) on or after the date of transfer will be forwarded to Vista for a period of 60 days; Un soir, j’ai assis la Beaute fur mes genoux; When using this product, avoid contact with eyes. In case of contact, flush eyes with water. After she finishes she drops the anti-bacterial soap onto the desk with the other disheveled objects and asks again, “What is poetry?”, throwing her hands in the air, resembling a scarecrow with pumpkin head.