Introduction

English aficionados, I present to you the all of me that I find most comprehensive and appealing. My writing.

I loved to write as a kid, as so many did.
Newspapers, short comics, and the like.

I used to draw monsters and aliens, and always came up with stories behind them. One of them was called a "Moo-Och," and a friend of my mother's gave me 25.00 to draw him one and write a short story about its alien planet.

I endured the "painful realization of my pitiful existence" in 9th grade and wrote my depressive episodes. It was a nice catharsis and I was very emo.

I fell in love in 10th grade with a girl who recognized "we have the same shoes!," poking my converse adjacent to hers. I ignored her lacking prowess in gym class-badmitten with smiley you can do its. She served as catalyst for my decision to write in composition notebooks for the rest of my natural, but certainly not normal, life. I'm currently (Summer 2008) on Notebook #11.

For a while, I heavily influenced my work with the seemingly arbitrary abstractions in lyrics from the likes of At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta (Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala precisely), and experimented with archaics like thees and thous and shalts, but that all ended when I realized I was focusing muchtoomuch on sound and aesthetic than on substance and content.

Upon that realization, I set out to ameliorate my writings so as to cater to both aesthetic and substance, beauty and meaning.

When I was 19, I thought I had found "my voice." I hadn't. But I'm still trying.

My influences are few but powerful, and-for the harshest critics-blatant. E. E. Cummings. T.S. Eliot. William Carlos Williams. E.A. Robinson. W. H. Auden. Lucille Clifton. Charles Bukowski. Taylor Mali.
If you see anyone else in my work, I can't remember them now, or I haven't read them, and I haven't read a lot. Teach me.

I am an English Teacher in New York City, my dream, and I will never have time to seek publication. This is my tech-savvy alternative.

I recently alluded to this entry as an example for my seniors to write a story or several poems based on the following question:

"How does one's sex, age, race, environment, cultural traditions, social status, et al. affect or influence How and What they write about in personal writing?"

The following is an elaboration of my introduction as a means of more explicitly addressing these particular factors of my personal writing.

I grew up in the suburbs, and so I write about both the natural world--the trees, the moon, the rain-- as well as the relationships and experiences that can only spawn from the walls and windows of granite, steel, glass that span such great heights. How depressing it is to miss the sunset because I was traveling subterranean on different colors and numbers and letters.

I started writing when I was young, and have come to realize that each time I write--no matter what my age--, I include what I've learned, what wisdom I've come to understand, into my perception of the world. My language changes with each new word that joins my lexicon, my style changes with each new urge to experiment on the page.

I'm Italian and English with a Jewish stepfamily, and so attempt to include the cultural traditions I'm familiar with in my personal writing. Sunday Dinner @ 2pm @ Grandma's House. Dad trying to teach me golf. Learning what "Oy Kevalt" really means.

Being a man who has often questioned what it means to be a man, I've written a great deal on those pontifications. How did the phrase "boys don't cry?" come to exist? Why are men so fascinated with cars and football and chili dogs? How would I be a different person if I was closer with my father instead of my mother?

I have experienced both poverty and the white collar lifestyle. Where my father often enjoyed spending his money and indulging in boat trips on Lake Ontario, and little Toblerone chocolates when he would return from working overseas, my mother made sure that whatever she'd cook Sunday lasted her, my sister and I all week for dinner and going to the dollar theatre once a month was "reasonable." When I lived on my own during college, one meal a day and wrapping in blankets and scarves instead of turning on heaters gave me a more mature understanding of poverty.

Having endured the poisons and ecstasies of relationships, I have also written about how my mother knows exactly what to say to make me cry, the uber-intelligent, multi-lingual artsy fartsy types of girls I'm into, and, thanks to Paul, Jenn, Anastasiya, and Chantal, the true meaning of a friend.