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I'm going to read from
my memoir, My Dyslexia.

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Just a few pages.

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I should add that the writing
of this book was not my idea.

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An editor whose son is
dyslexic heard a talk

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I gave at a school for
learning-disabled students

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and asked me to write the book.

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And I very reluctantly
did it, because the idea

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of looking at how my
brain works or doesn't

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was very intimidating.

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But I finally did write
it, and I'm glad I did.

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"The life of an artist
is, in many ways,

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similar to the life
of the dyslexic.

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Both are essentially
dysfunctional systems

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that produce, in
each individual,

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volumes of anxiety,
perseverance, and rejection, as

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well as creative
compensatory thinking.

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Each, by their very nature,
makes a victim of its creator,

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turning him into an
outsider and misfit.

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It's true of all
artists, I think,

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at every level of success--

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the more gifted, the
greater and riskier

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the anxiety and struggle.

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Each must, without
appeal, strive

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to tolerate its own
forms of self-definition,

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creative excitement,
and lack of forgiveness.

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My poetry, like my
dyslexia, serves

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as a giant filter for my
darkest feelings and ideas.

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Sooner or later,
everything of consequence

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passes through this filter.

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Everyone who suffers mild
or seriously debilitating

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non-verbal or language
learning disabilities

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has trouble comprehending
the big picture.

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The big picture.

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Doubt is its silent
partner, its secret sharer.

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There's no little
irony in the fact

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that the very
things I couldn't do

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have helped provide me with a
profession and means of knowing

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myself, that I chose to
master the very thing that

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once hindered and mastered
me, to own what once owned me.

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People often ask me when
and how I knew I was a poet.

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There are several fancy
responses and explanations,

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but one certainly has to do
with my longing for solitude.

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I can spend inordinate amounts
of time alone in a room,

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living entirely in my
thoughts and feelings.

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I staved off boredom as a child
by telling my grandma stories

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as my mother listened
from the dining room,

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where she counted coins from
my father's vending machines.

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We'd sit on a tiny blue sofa
in the living room, which

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she used as a bed, and my
grandma would listen intently,

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smiling and nodding as
my dreamy stories took us

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far away from our unhappy house
in Rochester's inner city.

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I can still see them in their
peasant dresses, surrounded

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by the drabness of the
furniture and peeling wallpaper,

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and myself, in their eyes--

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where to them, I was more than
what my performance in school

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described, more than what my
teachers believed I was capable

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of, more than what
I knew and didn't

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know about the real world.

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They knew who I
was from my stories

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and from the love
they felt for me.

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There are times while
giving a reading when

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I will catch myself looking for
their faces in the audience.

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I am looking for the comfort and
encouragement memory provides,

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and the nostalgia
of reclamation.

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We are the stories we tell, the
things we make up and invent.

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We are more than the answers
we give to questions, more even

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than our limitations.

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We are the cantankerous,
infinitely mysterious dreams

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we somehow find the courage
to imagine and sometimes

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to tell others.

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Writers are archaeologists
of their own souls.

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We dig until we hit
bottom, only to find

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there was another
bottom underneath,

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and another after that.

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We are capable of great
harm and great sacrifice.

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But the point of this
struggle must have something

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to do with not giving up.

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For a long time I couldn't
imagine my life amounting

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to anything anyone
else would view

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with respect and affection.

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I didn't know there was
something wrong or different

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about how my brain processed
information and language.

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I believed there was
something wrong with me.

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I still, on occasion,
believe this.

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Perhaps I always will.

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But even when the entire world
seemed to be ganging up on me,

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some persisting sense of
myself argued on my behalf.

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I can't say why, exactly,
though I've always

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believed what Saint
Augustine said to be true--

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everything that is,
insofar as it is, is good.

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And what is good is
worthwhile and prevailing.

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No matter how rich or powerful
or intelligent or wise we are,

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we are all so small and
inconsequential and of no worth

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at all.

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Everyone knows
this, but we endure.

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My son is special not despite
but because of his dyslexia.

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He is learning he is
good and capable the way

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an archaeologist learns
the history of the Earth--

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inch by deliberate and
all-consuming inch,

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the way we all
learn to love what

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is weakest and most
confounding about ourselves,

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because and despite
and in deference

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to what is essential about us."