I grew up as a working class kid in Yonkers, New York. My parents sent me to Catholic schools, where I learned equal doses of discipline and terror. I spent my third and fourth grade in public school where all of my friends were Jewish. My teacher, Mrs. Chachkes, came from a Jewish merchant family that lived in south Yonkers and sold furniture. She wore her blonde hair parted on the side in a soft wave that had the tendency to fall forward and cover her left eye. She told me that I could rhyme well and master long words with complex meanings. She told me I was a natural born writer.
By the time I returned to Catholic school, I had a nun instruct the class to write a poem without using the letter e. No one could do it except for me. After I turned in my poem,...