Word: poems
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...Education A young scholar from Kansas claims to have found a long-buried poem by Shakespeare, but other experts have their doubts...
...This is a second-rate, hack work," countered Columbia's Edward W. Tayler. "It's clumsy, inept. It's a clunker. It's quite clear to anyone who doesn't have a zinc ear that this is not a poem written by Shakespeare...
Professor Crouch discovered I was writing poetry on the sly. One day he read one of my poems and said, "Jim, this poem is too good for you to have written. So to prove you wrote it, get up in front of the class and say it by heart, out loud." And I did. I wanted to prove that I wasn't a plagiarist...
...poem was called "Ode to Grapefruit." It no longer exists, even in my memory. But I do remember that the last line was written in the cadence of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "and-my-bel-ly-full-of-grape-fruit." I don't know whether Professor Crouch did it as a trick, but he got me to talk. He had a conviction that if you like words, you should be able to say them out loud. Reading my poems out loud helped me to speak and to deal with my stutter...
While I was mute, I became a better listener. But mainly I appreciated wonderful things that could be said. I still read the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" every night before I go onstage. I know it by heart now. In the last lines I see a tribute to my father, who's still with us: "And you, my father, there on the sad height,/ Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray." --As told to Kate Novack