There are three times in my life when I have cried in front of people I wish I hadn't. Once, in eleventh grade, when a teacher refused to let me go on a fieldtrip with the literary magazine staff. Once, when I was a junior in college and went to court over a dispute with my landlord. And, once, when Rick Batson, the potential chair of my Master of Fine Arts thesis committee, yelled at me in front of my classmates.

Rick was in his late 40s, with graying brown hair. He was a good poetry professor, once I learned to ignore his lectures in which every example generated a story about an ex-girlfriend. He was a perpetual bachelor and had pushed the hiring committee to bring his old school chum, Stephen Carl, to be the senior poet on faculty.

My first year in the program, I really wondered what I was doing there. Stephen scared me to death. I was incredibly intimidated by him and repeatedly said stupid things like "I've read your work." He put up with me. He was an excellent poetry professor, incredibly detailed at critiquing poetry, and his lectures never referred to personal peccadilloes. I wanted Stephen to be the chair of my thesis committee and was days away from asking him when I called his house early one Saturday morning and Shirley, my classmate, answered his phone.