It's April of 1965 and I was not yet 21......had just entered a pre-med Program at Vanderbilt University......thinking I would become either an experimental psychologist or a psychiatrist.....eventually.....Having spent the previous 2 summers working as a Spam Card Data Entry 'Person' for The Army Ballistics Administration, then...the next summer....as a courier for Nasa's Aero-Astrophysics Laboratory.....I had been 'primed' for a 'career' either as a Technical Writer or "Human Factors' engineer......But spent most of my 'free' time writing and drawing......even some 'mechanical' drawing.....but was hardly a 'Leonardo'.....The Cast of Characters.....aging Agrarian poets and novelists began to reward me for my writing, which led me farther and further from numbers, statistics and Science as I leaned closer and closer to words and pictures....without graphs, equations or formulas.......'safe' places.....into the 'terrible' world of Art and Literature.... I dug this old, decomposing sheet of cheap paper that I had typed out 'my poem' with my ancient Underwood Typewriter.....the one with round keys and fading 'characters' covered with yellowing plastic....at the bottom, was all the encouragement that I needed to change course, completely.....two words, 'your best', written by Dr. John Aden or Alan Tate or John Crowe Ransom or Robert Penn Warren.....I don't remember which......The next day, I 'dropped' Physics for Engineering Students (!) and Statistics & Probabilities II....just in time to substitute History Of The English Language and History of Modern Art.......An overdose of sleeping pills, washed down with a glass of Jack Daniels, may have been another catalyst in this Evolution.....the Drawing and Painting 'Lab' was far more satisfying than the Cat dissection Lab......This poem is certainly no 'masterpiece', but it was far better than my performance in that 'dropped' Statistics Class! I would have missed making those "drawings from the microscope" in Dr. Nunnaly's Genetics, Morphology & Embryology Class, however......I stuck 'that one' out.......Then, it was 'catch up' time.....21 semester hours for 2 years.......of plays, novels and poetry......to get my 'useless' degree, with a 'specialty area of concentration' in 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry......The 'Diploma' is hanging on a nail in the basement, next to a set of Tibetan Bells........go figure!
