Arts & Entertainment
'My First Muse'
In a new memoir, writer Susan Shapiro reminds us to be thankful
for those who make a difference in our lives.
Susan Shapiro
Special to the Jewish News
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very September, when I resume
teaching my fall writing courses,
I think of my early inspirations
— some that I didn't fully appreciate until
decades later.
"I need you to help me type some
poems:' Mr. Zucker had said, surprising me
after my first 10th-grade modern litera-
ture class at the Roeper City and Country
School, handing me an anthology open to
The Love Song ofj. Alfred Prufrock.
I was tall and lonely at 15 and could pass
for the "19" it said on my fake Michigan
driver's license. At 5-foot-7, 125 pounds,
I was about the size of my new English
teacher, a rumpled nerdball in khakis and
white shirt. With wavy hair and baby face,
he looked younger than his 40 years. We
both seemed stuck in the wrong age.
That night I wrote a poem about a girl
with false identification in her purse; in
case of an accident, nobody would know
who she really was. Then I typed the work
for my teacher on the IBM Selectric my
father had brought home from his office.
I became interested in Prufrock, the
geeky, self-conscious anti-hero who — like
me — was socially awkward and feared he
was wearing uncool clothes. "Should I, after
tea and cakes and ices, / have the strength
to force the moment to its crisis?" he asked.
I could relate.
I'd forced my own crisis five years earlier
by begging my parents to let me quit the
hall-monitored-bells-ringing-at-seven-
thirty-in-the-morning public school in our
area, where I was lost, friendless and flunk-
ing. I felt I'd do better at Roeper, the most
artistic and radical private educational
institution in the Midwest, which was half-
filled with minority scholarship kids bused
in from Detroit and Flint.
The headmaster, George Roeper, had a
thick German accent and resembled a cross
between Sigmund Freud and Grandpa on
The Munsters. He belonged to Amnesty
International and convened assemblies by
beating an African drum.
His experimental "learning laboratory"
was housed in a dilapidated mansion in
Birmingham. It had no bells, hall monitors,
lockers, dress codes, gymnasium, few desks
or chairs. Students wore gorilla, Army and
monk costumes and called teachers by first
dlo November 22 2007
Only as Good
as Your Word
WRITING
LESSONS
FROM MY
FAVORITE
LITERARY
GURUS
SUSAN SHAPIRO
In a chapter titled "My First Muse," author Susan Shapiro, formerly of West
Bloomfield, writes about two of her heroes.
names. My West Bloomfield Republican
doctor father was skeptical.
But I soon aced college-level classes,
made friends of all backgrounds and
felt much better. I later realized that was
because Roeper began at 10:30, so I was
functioning on three hours more sleep.
Also Woodward Avenue was on my father's
route to the hospital, so he drove me to
school every day, giving us rare time alone.
As his silver Cadillac raced down the
20-mile-an-hour zone on Lahser Road,
the same redneck cop gave him speeding
tickets. "Don't tell your mother',' he'd say. I
never told.
"My teacher says T.S. Eliot is the centu-
ry's best poet. Do you know his work?" I
asked dad over dinner one night, expecting
the same gagging gesture he'd made when
I mentioned Sylvia Plath, my three science-
brain brothers running to the stove, taking
turns sticking their heads inside.
"Shantih shantih shantih," my father said.
I didn't know what that meant — until he
invited me into his den, where amid the
hardcover medical tomes, he pulled out a
facsimile edition of corrections Ezra Pound
made on Eliot's The Waste Land.
I was amazed that this Lower East Side
street kid turned conservative doctor, who
called my school "a kooky communist
country club , ) ' had this obscure poetry
book on his shelves. I'd forgotten he was
the one who'd first taught me poems, sing-
ing me stanzas in lieu of lullabies.
"What's your teacher's name?"
"Zucker."
He'd never asked about my teachers
before. "First name, Jack, like yours:' They
were both from poor New York Jewish
immigrant families. If we choose mentors
to mirror parental figures, I'd stuck pretty
close to the gene pool.
My teacher Jack showed the class my
father's book. He said he needed me to
keep typing for him on a regular basis, sev-
eral poems on one page, to save paper.
Jack showed me his own poems
— funny, colloquial chronicles of the
crazy Yiddish-speaking clan he'd left back
East. I trusted him with my rough drafts.
Like Pound to Eliot, he'd slash my words,
marking combative notes in the margins,
as if writing were not a solitary art but a
competitive sport, like boxing with a lesser
opponent who could cream you.
At first his criticism stung. But then my
words began to get better, tighter, more
succinct and clear. Jack taught me the
secret to good writing was rewriting.
By 16, I'd taken every English class
Roeper offered and wanted to go to col-
lege the next fall. Meetings were hastily
arranged between my eccentric headmas-
ter; my stoic adviser, who said, "Susan,
you're not emotionally mature enough
for college"; and the dueling Jacks. I
waited in the tree house, reciting Ariel for
luck, French inhaling menthol cigarettes
between stanzas, awaiting bad news. Yet
when my father emerged, he said I could
graduate two years early, at 16, the young-
est in my class.
I earned my B.A. at the University of
Michigan and my master's degree in cre-
ative writing at NYU. Eventually I gave
up poetry for prose, but I never gave up
my deep connection to Jack. He remained
my good friend, adviser and critic. He
even published some of my poems in The
Bridge, a Michigan literary magazine he
wound up editing.
I was a 40-year-old married memoir-
ist visiting my family's home in West
Bloomfield when I learned that Jack had
died of pneumonia at 67. My father offered
to accompany me to the memorial service,
which seemed appropriately meshugge for
Jack, a Reform Jew who wrote poetry like
Isaac B. Singer.
It was held at the Birmingham Unitarian
Church, led by a minister, while an old
boyfriend's opera-singing mother crooned
songs in Hebrew. Jack's daughters recited
his poems, told how Jack had come from
an emotionally abusive Yiddish-speak-
ing clan and had been a gifted chemistry
student at Bronx Science, which I'd never
known.
I feared my staid father would make fun
of the poetry and the psychobabble. Yet on
the ride home, he admitted his family had
been as difficult as Jack's and shocked me
by saying that he too used to write poetry.
As a gifted science student at Stuyvesant,
my father — like my teacher — also had
to choose between English or science.
Deciding on poetry, Jack sentenced himself
to little money. By studying medicine, my
father was rarely home. Yet ultimately he
prospered with a higher salary and a bigger
house with more children.
The difference between them suddenly
seemed pegged to which major they'd
picked. Instead of Sophie's Choice, it was
both Jacks' Choice.
"Jack took my side about graduating
early, remember?" I told my dad. "They said
I couldn't emotionally handle college."
"That wasn't really the issue,' my father
mumbled.