Picture Poems, and How Learning HTML Under Duress Helped Me Lead a More Creative Life, or, Thank You, Al Filreis

I came upon this “picture poem” by Kenneth Patchen on the website of my former English professor, Al Filreis. I love Patchen’s story (which Al tells) because he didn’t let physical limitations keep him from creating. Hearing stories about people with that much determination to create inspires me, and and reminds me that sometimes our limits push us to express ourselves in unexpected and beautiful ways.

Incidentally, Al is the reason I learned HTML, despite ardent protestations at the time. I was in his Literature of Community class, and our final assignment was to create a website reflecting our definition of community. “But we don’t know HTML!,” half of us protested. This was in ‘97. “Figure it out,” he told us.

Knowing HTML got me in the door at my first job as an online content producer — which, despite my technophobia, allowed me to do far more interesting work at the age of 22 than I could have done in most other industries. That job led to another, and so on and so forth, which led to me being able to work for myself at the age of 31, and lead a creative life with space for all kinds of projects and passions… so -

Thanks, Al.

UPDATE
Read Al’s response to finding this post.

Tagged as: poetry, technology