my life story, as falsified by an excess of accurate data shepard soules vita.doc · web view“my...

T E R R I L L S O U L E SI created this mega-resume in order to become an official teacher, which I finally

am. It’s nice to have all the dates recorded and in one place, but this is far more information than anyone would need or want. I haven’t touched this for two years.

During which time I learned my destiny: translate the Divine Comedy. I would have appreciated earlier notice. Qualifications, such as they are: I’m a poet, I speak a Romance language, I was a Classics major, I grew up to the sonorities of the King James Bible. And I find Dante inexhaustibly wonderful.

Today (winter 2004), I teach English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) at North Atlanta High School, all grades, eleven nationalities. I feel needed and that I’m doing some good. Being a known techie guy, I’ve been put in charge of North Atlanta’s pilot online-learning initiative, which should involve no more than sitting in a room where students attend the physics and world literature classes taking place on their computers.

I got my feet (soaking) wet teaching Language Arts, as a full-time substitute, to the sixth grade at Turner Middle School, January to May 2001. Then in the fall of 2001 I taught one class, Latin, at North Atlanta High School, adding a full-time ESOL load in January. I am at last provisionally certified, and, after five years, again have benefits. I have been teaching as a real teacher (as in the real boy Pinocchio longed to become), then, since August 11, 2003.

I was asked to read some of my poems at a High Museum Friday Jazz night about a year ago. One of the poems had a line about walking past photographs in a gallery “as though past Rothkos,” and I read not fifty feet from real Rothkos, so that was fun.

To go straight to my [official] poetic history, which appears some pages ahead, search for the phrase “chronology: publication.”

Last April (2003), I had the great privilege of being one of the readers at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the annual Maundy Thursday reading of the Inferno, reading my own translation of the second half the Canto 30 (translated for the occasion—otherwise I have translated only the first five cantos of Inferno, or, as I have it, the first five Songs of Hell.

I had another privilege: to read part of the Paolo and Francesca episode, from my translation, at the Friends of Emory Library Twelfth Night Gala, which traditionally includes the reading of poems, on January 10. The excerpt was well received. At least my delivery of it was.

I’m deeply in love with my wife, Foster.

OBJECTIVE:

TEACH I have two callings: poetry and teaching. It would follow that to teach creative writing would be my perfect occupation. This document shows three things: how far I have strayed

TERRILL SOULESfrom this ideal; how the need to teach keeps reasserting itself; and, I hope, how determined to teach I am now.

In past resumes I see a teacher trying to get out. Twenty-twenty hindsight reveals each OBJECTIVE as almost a bumper sticker that tells the world: I’D RATHER BE TEACHING. I believe the OBJECTIVES excerpted here, spanning more than a decade, bear this out. Couldn’t any one of them have come straight from the resume of a teacher ready to make a change—someone already within the profession?

“My work [whether in sales, marketing, journalism, freelance writing, or teaching software] has had a single set of objectives: make contact, instruct, convince.” (2000)

“Make the complex accessible. Make the familiar fresh.” (1994)

“. . . my need to share interesting information.” (1981) “. . . Exceptionally effective communication skills.” (1982) “An exceptional ability to communicate information with

words, whether written or delivered to an audience.” (1983)

“. . . the conversion of unfamiliar information to knowledge that is used.” (1986)

“A clarifier: someone trainees like, trust, and learn from.” (1988)

My OBJECTIVE, then, out in the open at last, is TEACH. No more marketing, no more sales. Teach writing, teach literature, teach word processing, teach the Web’s wealth of knowledge resources. Teach children, adolescents, or adults. But teach. In other, and fewer, words: OBJECTIVE: Teach.

CHRONOLOGY: WORK For Teaching Experience only, please see myconsolidated WORK CHRONOLOGY, Page 4.

2001 August Entered Georgia State University, towards an M.A. in English (in 2003).

2001 July WRITING Jones Design www.jonesdesign.com Atlanta, GA2001 February Contract Writer The three-word-theme I devised for a Fortune 500 company taught large potential

investors how this company sees itself. The new Jones Design website, written by me, teaches you what Jones Design does and how Jones Design does it.

2001 February WRITING WebTone www.webtonetech.com Atlanta, GA2000 October Contract Writer Press releases, company backgrounders, and five words that became a trademarked

component of the company logo.

2000 June WRITING Synesis www.synesiscorp.com Atlanta, GA2000 May Contract Writer Converted instructor-led training for corporate managers to WBT (Web-based Training).

2000 April MARKETING VerticalOne www.yodlee.com Atlanta, GA1999 October Contract Writer Primarily marketing copy for this Internet startup (since acquired by Yodlee). I rewrote

their online Help and planned, researched, and wrote the company brochure.

[2000 February JOURNALISM OutSite Magazine London, Ontario][2000 February Contract Writer,

PhotographerCover story on Atlanta home-improvement company. (A search for Atlanta freelance writers ]led the Canadian agency commissioning the story to my website, www.tsoules.com.)

1999 June WRITING iXL www.ixl.com Atlanta, GA1999 January Contract Writer Created interactive business-planning scenarios for entrepreneurs.

1998 December Substitute Wesleyan School www.wesleyanschool.org Norcross1998 September

TEACHING

Math, 11th/12th-grade Spanish (I speak Portuguese); Geography, 5th grade; World History, 11th grade

I loved substituting. Learning from the fifth-grade geography teacher that the next day’s subject was Pangaea, the prehistoric landmass whose slowly drifting pieces became our continents, I had an idea. I divided a paper Pangaea into its continental components, and cut each one out and attached it to a two-foot dowel—a geography wand! When the time came—all other work completed—I drew the

TERRILL SOULES, TEACHER (404) 352-9571 PAGE [email protected]

TERRILL SOULEScontinents on the blackboard as they are today. Then the kids granted wands bunched (very much envied) at the board in an expectant cluster, their adjacent wand-ends together forming Pangaea. Then, very slowly sliding their continents to their outlined destinations, they chanted, “Millions of years. Millions of years.” I can still hear them. In a way, isn’t every classroom a kind of Pangaea, breaking up at the end of every year, the one class becoming separate journeys to as many adulthoods?

CHRONOLOGY: WORK (CONTINUED)1998 December Substitute The Galloway School www.gallowayschool.org Atlanta1998 September

TEACHING

World History, 10th Grade; Biology, 10th Grade; Computer Lab, 11th GradeA Galloway memory: During a public-speaking study period, it had come out I was a poet. I was pressed to recite an example. They liked what they heard, then urged some freestyling—make up something then and there. Now, I don’t do that. But that day I took the risk. At that point one boy said he wanted me to be his class’s Commencement speaker! I replied that I was not . . . luminous. And he replied, “Hey, it’s our choice.” And that is the odd anecdote of the sub who was asked to speak at Commencement.

1998 June MARKETING Microsoft Corporation www.microsoft.com Atlanta, GA199719961995

Field Marketing Specialist II

Philanthropy. I became the District philanthropist, by far my most satisfying Microsoft work. I wrote successful grants, one that attracted the attention of both the United States government and Bill Gates. (Please see HONORS, AWARDS, RECOGNITION—June 1997.)

19941993199219911990

Field Marketing Specialist I

Marketing. Moving to Marketing marked my becoming a full-time employee. (Microsoft’s so-called part-time program nevertheless involved training trips to Seattle, National Sales Meetings in Toronto, New Orleans, San Diego, Hawaii, etc. etc.) Our small Marketing group was successful, with our manager being honored at the National Sales Meeting as Manager of the Year.

1988 EducationArea Sales

Representative

Higher-Education Sales. The Microsoft rep for higher-education institutions from Mississippi to South Carolina, including Georgia Tech and Georgia State.

1987January

AssociateSales

Representative

TEACHING

NOTE: During my part-time years with Microsoft, 1988 to 1993—I formed O’Clarity (see next company below), a software training company, and divided my time between being a Microsoft sales representative and a freelance software trainer.

Microsoft (wanting to sell Word in quantify) loaned me to Apple (wanting to sell Macintoshes in quantity) as a Word trainer at Coca-Cola headquarters. As a result, Apple made a large sale. At the end of the two weeks of training, my students, Coca-Cola employees, presented me with a big card, which they all had signed. Their comments are, I believe, what any teacher would like to hear. The comments selected are unedited.

Thanks for your help! Your classes were great. You were a great teacher. Enjoyed it much. Great class . . . I enjoyed learning! Thanks for all your help. It was a pleasure. Thanks for making it a fun experience! Wonderful learning experience. Thanks for all your wonderful instruction. Thanks to you, I’m a Mac Wiz (Ha Ha!) Thanks for your patience! Thanks for all the help. Now I feel like a pro. Your methods are great. Thanks. It was great. You were great. Thank you so much for all the “spice” you added to our class. Thanks for teaching all that great stuff. You were a big help to me. What great instructions! Enjoyed all the classes. I really enjoyed the training classes. Thanks for a wonderful class. Thanks for making a good change in my life!

Retail Sales. A (demanding) part-time position, part of a corporate strategy to greatly increase customer contact nationwide.

1993 June

Trainer(Software: Word,

Excel, PowerPoint) O’Clarity Atlanta, GA199219911990 TEACHING

Formed one-man training company, O’Clarity, training primarily for Appletree (today the much larger New Horizons Computer Learning Center). I got a lot of teaching experience and helped make Appletree’s first years prosperous.

Years as trainer: 5 Average number of classes taught per week: 2


TERRILL SOULES1989 Average size of class: 12 students [continued on next page]


TERRILL SOULES

CHRONOLOGY: WORK (CONTINUED)

1988 January

TEACHING

Duration of class: 6 hoursFive years; 350 classes; 3,500 students; 2,100 hours.

I believe I was a popular and effective teacher at Appletree, able to complete the day’s lesson plan while accommodating the invariable broad ability spectrum, from novice to proficient.

1987 January SALES Microsoft Corporation (Please see 1998 June, on the previous page.)

1986 December WRITING Bob Bodine Atlanta, GA1986 November Freelance Writer,

Computer-Based Training

Three-day instructor-led introduction to business fundamentals for AT&T salespeople. (Bob Bodine had been a CBTCorporation vice-president (see immediately below.)

1986 October WRITING CBTCorporation Atlanta, GA1986 February

Writer of Computer-Based-Training

Designed and wrote for AT&T an audiocassette, manual, and interactive sales training package. Also asked to write training manual for fellow writers, describing a way to automate proofreading.

1986 February SALES Computone Systems Atlanta, GA1985

1984 June

Salesperson, Vertical Sales Group

Senior Automation Specialist

Salesperson, Computer Store

Computone Systems (final name). Near bankruptcy disbands sales group.

Future Information Systems (second name)

Computer Center of the South (the business’s original name)

1984 March SALES Cable Atlanta Atlanta, GA1984

1983

Assistant to the Vice-President

of Marketing

Sales Manager

Trained salespeople.

1983 December Publication of my first book of poems, The Selectric Poems, in Atlanta, by Pynyon Press.

1982

1981 September

TEACHING

Salesperson

Trained Cable Atlanta salespeople.Wrote training manual for door-to-door salespeople.

Sold cable television door to door, in the wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods in Atlanta.

1981 June JOURNALISM Brown’s Guide to Georgia Atlanta, GA1980 September Esquire includes my article on Thomas Pynchon in their fall/college issue.

1980 June Staff Writer,Photographer

For list of articles written for Brown’s Guide articles, please see PUBLICATION—ARTICLES—STAFF, Page 9.

1980 March BUSINESS Memorygram Atlanta, GA1979 January Founder Created company that preserved reminiscences.

1978 September JOURNALISM American Building Supplies Atlanta, GA1977 June Assistant Editor,

PhotographerWrote, edited, proofed, laid out home-improvement product blurbs and articles.

1977 June POETRY I devote this year to my writing.1976 July

1976 June MANUAL LABOR Bekins Rogers Van and Storage Hadley, MA1976 May My first acceptance! I win third prize in San Jose State University’s Bicentennial Poetry Awards, and my

poem is published in the Discover America, Poems 1976 edition of San Jose Studies.1975 September I am a moving man.


TERRILL SOULES

CHRONOLOGY: WORK (CONTINUED)1974 August POETRY I devote this year to my writing.1974 August

1974 August RETAIL Walnut Book Store Philadelphia, PA19731972

1971 October

I work as a clerk. I write a great deal.

1971 September Teacher Head Start [Get Set] Philadelphia, PA1970 October

TEACHINGInner-city preschoolers. Vigorous, various kids. Excellent principal. I remember in particular the artist Tyrone. Smaller than his classmates, he spoke with a slight lisp. But what he could do with crayons! What a sense of color and composition Tyrone had!

1970 October Substitute Philadelphia Public Schools Philadelphia, PA1970 September

TEACHINGHigh-school English. I recall reading short stories from the New Yorker to rooms filled with the concentrated quiet of expectancy.

1970 June I graduate from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in Classical Studies.

1965 June Teacher Escola Natanael Cortez Crato, Ceará, Brazil1964 September

TEACHINGThe year between high school and college I returned to Brazil and lived with my parents, missionaries in Brazil’s northeastern interior. My Portuguese is fluent to this day. I was asked to teach a once-a-week English class at the Church school. There were some fifteen students in the class.

(CONSOLIDATED from overall work chronology, with the addition of teaching i volunteered.)CHRONOLOGY: TEACHING

FULL-TIME1971 September Teacher Head Start [Get Set] Philadelphia, PA1970 October

TEACHINGInner-city preschoolers. Vigorous, various kids. Excellent principal. I remember in particular the artist Tyrone. Smaller than his classmates, he spoke with a slight lisp. But what he could do with crayons! What a sense of color and composition Tyrone had!

SUBSTITUTE1998 December Substitute Wesleyan School www.wesleyanschool.org Norcross1998 September

TEACHING

Math, 11th/12th-grade Spanish (I speak Portuguese); Geography, 5th grade; World History, 11th grade

I loved substituting. Learning from the fifth-grade geography teacher that the next day’s subject was Pangaea, the prehistoric landmass whose slowly drifting pieces became our continents, I had an idea. I divided a paper Pangaea into its continental components, and cut each one out and attached it to a two-foot dowel—a geography wand! When the time came—all other work completed—I drew the continents on the blackboard as they are today. Then the kids granted wands bunched (very much envied) at the board in an expectant cluster, their adjacent wand-ends together forming Pangaea. Then, very slowly sliding their continents to their outlined destinations, they chanted, “Millions of years. Millions of years.” I can still hear them. In a way, isn’t every classroom a kind of Pangaea, breaking up at the end of every year, the one class becoming separate journeys to as many adulthoods?

1998 December Substitute The Galloway School www.gallowayschool.org Atlanta1998 September

TEACHING

World History, 10th Grade, Biology, 10th Grade, Computer Lab, 11th GradeA Galloway memory: During a public-speaking study period, it had come out I was a poet. I was pressed to recite an example. They liked what they heard, then urged some freestyling—make up something then and there. Now, I don’t do that. But that day I took the risk. At that point one boy said he wanted me to be his class’s Commencement speaker! I replied that I was not . . . luminous. And he replied, “Hey, it’s our choice.” And that is the odd anecdote of the sub who was asked to speak at Commencement.

1970 October Substitute Philadelphia Public Schools Philadelphia, PA1970 September

TEACHINGHigh-school English. I recall reading short stories from the New Yorker to rooms filled with the concentrated quiet of expectancy.


TERRILL SOULES(consolidated from overall work chronology, with the addition of teaching i volunteered .)CHRONOLOGY: TEACHING (CONTINUED)

TRAINER

1993 June

Trainer(Software: Word,

Excel, PowerPoint) O’Clarity Atlanta, GA1992199119901989

1988 January

TEACHING

Formed one-man training company, O’Clarity, training primarily for Appletree (today the much larger New Horizons Computer Learning Center). I got a lot of teaching experience and helped make Appletree’s first years prosperous.

Years as trainer: 5 Average number of classes taught per week: 2 Average size of class: 12 students Duration of class: 6 hours

Five years; 350 classes; 3,500 students; 2,100 hours.

I believe I was a popular and effective teacher at Appletree, able to complete the day’s lesson plan while accommodating the invariable broad ability spectrum, from novice to proficient.

VOLUNTEER2001 September TEACHING North Atlanta High School www.nah.org Atlanta

My wife and I co-chair the North Atlanta Website Committee. (Our son Clay Bolton is a senior at North Atlanta.)

We look forward to offering not only technical direction, but also perspective on content, design, information gathering, and interactivity.

2001 February TEACHING Spelling Bee www.tsoules.com/bee World Wide Web2000 January The Atlanta Orthographic Meet, 2001 and 2000.

Another example of my need to share information. I created my website, www.tsoules.com, in 1998, to advertise my freelance writing services. But my website is also an opportunity to teach. As a Committee member, I help devise and deliver what may be the world’s hardest spelling bee. Of course, the event is primarily entertainment, but the real competitors are very serious indeed, as I can attest, having been there. It seemed a shame to waste such a great collection of words, so I put the 2000 bee on my website, complete with audio pronunciation, letting anyone anywhere become a virtual competitor. I’ll be doing this every year.

2000 October TEACHING The Schenck School www.schenck.org Atlanta1999 October In what has become an annual event, on a day near Halloween I perform Robert

Frost’s long ghost poem “The Witch of Coös” for the seventh and eighth graders.My wife has taught middle school at The Schenck [pronounced SKANK] School for almost ten years, which is my connection to the school. Schenck is a school for children with learning disabilities resulting from dyslexia. One Halloween I decided to memorize Frost’s poem (it takes twenty minutes to perform—it’s almost a play), and once I knew the poem, I looked for an audience beyond my family to share it with. Last year I had a girl and a boy sit on the stage, representing the witch and her adult son—great idea.

1998 December TEACHING Divine Comedy Concordance www.tsoules.com/dante World Wide WebA long-term (summers-only) project is the translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I needed complete cross-reference to all words, found none, made one, then put it on my website for others to use as well.

I recently emailed the man I consider to be the dean of American Dante scholars to let him know about my online concordance. To my delight, he replied, “A very nice job, Mr. S.”

1999 October TEACHING Word of the Day www.tsoules.com/wordland.htm World Wide Web1998 October Purportedly to build Web traffic (but it was really a labor of love of language), I made Today in

Wordland a part of site, featuring Useful Words, Useless Words, Quotations, and the Daily Echo (literary allusions). In fact, it is a sharing of my love of language with the world.

Unfortunately, Wordland proved too time-consuming to maintain. If I return to regular additions, I will just do the Daily Echo, since I see nothing on the Web quite like it. However, designing the elaborate structure accommodating daily additions and access to archives was a valuable learning experience.

1998 August TEACHING Atlanta-Fulton Public Library Teen Day AtlantaLecture, complete with Old English recordings and generous samples of Lauryn Hill, showing how much in common Lauryn Hill had with the Beowulf poet.

I had been reading Beowulf and was looking forward to teaching in the fall. This was the summer of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. So I put the two together.


TERRILL SOULES(consolidated from overall work chronology, with the addition of teaching i volunteered.)CHRONOLOGY: TEACHING (CONTINUED)

VOLUNTEER1993 December TEACHING Georgia Area Radio Reading Service (GARRS) Atlanta

I volunteered (and passed the reading audition) to record a book for the blind. A chapter at a time, I recorded an anthology of short stories over the course of three months.

1993 September TEACHING The Schenck School www.schenck.org AtlantaWhen my wife was teaching fourth and fifth graders, she asked to me to give her class an overview of poetry.

I covered an amazing amount of ground in thirty minutes, from epic to haiku, translation to unrhymed. Well received. Great fun.

1986 April TEACHING The Paideia School www.paideiaschool.org AtlantaI agreed to teach a weeklong intersession class on the old Microsoft spreadsheet Multiplan.

1974 TEACHING The University of Maine Augusta, MEDr. Henry Pfifferling, a friend, asks me to fill in for him one night as teacher of his anthropology class at the University of Maine.

1965 June TEACHING Escola Natanael Cortez Crato, Ceará, Brazil1964 September

The year between high school and college I returned to Brazil and lived with my parents, missionaries in Brazil’s northeastern interior. My Portuguese is fluent to this day. I was asked to teach a once-a-week English class at the Church school. There were some fifteen students in the class.

CHRONOLOGY: PUBLICATIONPOETRY

1995 May 20 andBOOKS The Durians Open The Durians Atlanta

1995 April 29 Published by The Durians, a band of friends comprised of three improvising multi-instrumental musicians (Stuart Hoffmann, Mark Morse, and Steve Powell) and me. As I read or recited my poems, the band improvised accompaniment. The bound books contained the text of the poems performed, as well as the names of the jazz classics performed between poems, on Saturday, April 29, 1995 at King Plow Arts Center (The Durians’ first performance in public) and The Globe, in Athens, on Saturday, May 20, 1995.

1991 Earth Dreams self-published Atlanta19861984

Successive variously re-named self-published versions of a series of nine (originally thirteen) 100-line poems.

1983 The Selectric Poems Pynyon Press AtlantaFifteen years’ work distilled to 66 pages. The Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library made the book a part of its Georgia Collection.

POETRY1982

MAGAZINESRed Hand Book III Atlanta“Two Poems Set in Brazil” (“Amazon Tributary” and “The Borrowed Jangada and the Planet Overhead”)

1981 May 1 Atlanta Journal-Constitution [in the discontinued Sunday magazine] Atlanta“Looking for Something to Eat after a Divorce” [first appearance: Occasional Reader,1979]

1981 Bad Henry Review Brooklyn“Over Carta Blancas at the Big Deeper Night Club”, “Poem”

1980 New York Quarterly New York“Exercises in Poem Liking, 23”

1980 Red Hand Book II Atlanta“The Poet”, “This Poem Free with Fillup”

CHRONOLOGY: PUBLICATION (CONTINUED)TERRILL SOULES, TEACHER (404) 352-9571 PAGE 8

[email protected]

TERRILL SOULES1979 December Red Hand Book Atlanta

“A Reflection on the Love of Language”, “A Still from the Movie Jo3n”

1979 Spring Daimon (I was one of the editors) AtlantaIssue 12 “22 January 1974: Dear Dale”, “The Connubial”, “After Frank O’Hara. After Him!”

1979 Occasional Reader AtlantaVolume 1 “Looking for Something to Eat after a Divorce”, “Jo3n Retraces the Eightfold Path to

his Present Estate”

1978 Winter ataraxia Madison, GANumber Seven “Two Verbal Fables”

1977 December The Sun Chapel Hill, NCIssue 33 “Sadness”

1977 Laughing Bear Madison, GA# 6, Vol. 2 “In Grim Gymkhana”, “Lovers Not”

1977 March 2 Atlanta Gazette AtlantaVol. 3, No. 27 “Motel Gunplay” [This poem initiated “a new Gazette feature, quality poetry.”]

1977 [ =1976] Winter Daimon AtlantaIssue 3 “Audiophile”

1976 December San Jose Studies Discover America Poems 1976 San Jose, CAVolume IISpecial Issue

“Massachusetts Fantasy: The Doberman in the Dune Buggy”[Winner, third prize, National Bicentennial Poetry Awards competition, the anonymous entries being judged by Kathleen Fraser, Robert Hass, and Josephine Miles]

POETRY

1999

ANTHOLOGIESwhich includepoems by me Live at Eyedrum a compilation Eyedrum Gallery Atlanta

An audio CD. A selection of performances at Eyedrum during the first eight months of 1999. Track 10 is The Durians’ August 21, 1999 performance of my poem “Her Hair a Highway of Fire.”

1996

The Philomathean Society of the University of PennsylvaniaThe Philomathean Society Anthologyof Poetry in Honor of Daniel Hoffman Philadelphia“Water” It was a considerable honor to be invited to contribute a poem to this book. All contributors had read their work at Penn. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, I was fortunate to be a part, for two broadening semesters, of Daniel Hoffman’s Craft of Verse classes. A poem I wrote for that class won second prize in an undergraduate contest.

The anthology’s pantheon of contributors includes three Nobel laureates; several former United States Poets Laureate (Hoffman himself served as Poet Laureate 1973-74); David Bottoms, Georgia Poet Laureate; ten winners of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and four poets who then went on to win—contributors Charles Wright, Mark Strand, C.K. Williams, and Stephen Dunn won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, respectively.

1988

Charles Burden, Valerie Mock, co-editorsBusiness Publishing Division, College of Business Administration

Georgia State UniversityBusiness in Literature, 2nd edition Atlanta“Life in the Ashtray” (In the Organization as a Determinant of Styles of Life section.) This book has been a Georgia State University College of Business Administration textbook.

“This anthology of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction focuses on the organization person and organized life in literature.” Other poems in the “Styles of Life” section are by such familiar names as e e cummings, Robert Frost, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur and William Wordsworth.

CHRONOLOGY: PUBLICATION (CONTINUED)POETRY

1978

ANTHOLOGIESwhich includepoems by me

Finished ProductAn Anthology of Atlanta Poets The Poetry Factory Atlanta“Life in the Ashtray” (First appearance in print was in The Little Five Points Pub


TERRILL SOULESReadings, 1977.)

1977 October The Little Five Points Pub Readings—Costello, McNeary, Soules Ali Baba Press Atlanta“Jo3n and Wife at Table”, “Life in the Ashtray”, “Twenty Questions Minus Nineteen”, “The Housewives’ Holiday”

1970

The Writing Program,Department of English,

New Poets 1970 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia“A Good Marriage”, “Christmas Sonnet” Daniel Hoffman, editor.

POETRY

1999 November

POEMSby me

reaching the publicin untraditional ways Wingbars

Newsletter of the Atlanta Audubon Society AtlantaAtlanta Audubon

newsletter

“In Memoriam Anselm Atkins (1934—1999)” My dear friend had edited Wingbars for many years. (I was the Wingbars editor before he took over the job.)

1985 October 19 Shadow Puppets “Sleep . . . ” Jottay Theatre AtlantaOctober 18 Presented as part of “Blue Night and other Works for Puppets,” by Janie Geiser, at the Center for

Puppetry Arts. The most recent, and perhaps final, performances of “Sleep . . .”My 100-line poem “Sleep” became the entire script for the play for shadow puppets created in 1981 by puppeteer and filmmaker Janie Geiser and presented by her seven-person troupe, The Jottay Theatre, of puppeteers and musicians “recognized nationally and internationally as an innovative fusion of visual art, puppetry, music and text” (Walton Harris, curator of “Stories, Dreams and Voices The Puppetry of Janie Geiser,” Center for Puppetry Arts Museum, January 12—June 9, 1990, in his introduction to the retrospective’s catalog). An immediate hit, “Sleep . . . ” was performed, and revived, several times.

1984 August 21 Shadow PuppetsDresden, [East] Germany

“Sleep . . . ” Jottay Theatre and PolandJanie Geiser’s Jottay Theatre troupe performed “Sleep / Schlaf / Sommeil” (the poem had been translated into German and French prior to the performance) at the 14th Festival and Congress of the International Union of Marionettes (UNIMA).

The Citation of Merit “Sleep” received is puppeteering’s Academy Award. Returning from Europe, the troupe performed “Sleep . . . “ and other Geiser works for puppets from New York to San Francisco.

1983 June 25 Shadow Puppets “Sleep . . . ” Jottay Theatre AtlantaJune 24June 23June 18June 17June 16June 15

Presented as part of Janie Geiser’s “The Glass Dream Works for Puppets” (a production supported in part by the Atlanta Public Schools and the Henson Foundation).

1981 NovemberNursing-Home

Periodical The Duplex Planet Brookline, MAIssue 30 “Sleep” quoted from, with permission, on cover The Duplex Planet, a magazine of

interviews with the residents of the Duplex Nursing Home in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. The poem inspired the theme for the issue’s interviews.

1981 November 4 Shadow Puppets “Sleep . . . ” Jottay Theatre AtlantaNovember 5November 6November 7November 8

Presented as part of “Sleep . . . and Other Works for Puppets [by Janie Geiser],” at the Center for Puppetry Arts. The original performances.


TERRILL SOULES

CHRONOLOGY: PUBLICATION (CONTINUED)POETRY

1980 May Record Album Other MusicPrime Numbers Nth Records, a subsidiary of Dumb Records San Francisco“Blue” 5:52 by [my brother] Dale Soules

Other Music, an 11-member avant-garde gamelan playing instruments they designed and made, recorded Prime Numbers live at The Complex in May 1980 in San Francisco. Notes describe “Blue” (originally a nursery rhyme for my baby sister) as “a poem of the same name by Terrill Shepard Soules, which Dale describes as ‘jocular jeremiad regarding the intrinsic burdens of being a social creature.’ The . . . introduction, three verses and three choruses [are] derived from a twenty-eight-tone melody which is, in turn, derived from the twenty-eight Blues of the poem’s refrain. “Blue,” in addition to being the only vocal piece on this record, is the only one which utilizes all fourteen tones of the OMJ14 [a form of just intonation with fourteen unequal intervals per octave scale].”

1979 June 17

24 mirrorshanging from the

ceiling in the middle of a room Custom and Culture New York

May 3 “24 plexiglass [sic] mirrors”, “A collaboration of Michelangelo Pistoletto and Terrill Shepard Soules”, Michelangelo Pistoletto [regarded by some as the father of Italian Pop Art], the Blue Room of the U.S. Custom House on Bowling Green, New York City.

Photocopies of a five-page excerpt from a long poem by me appear on the backs of the mirrors hanging in the air, approximately one fourth of a typescript-page blowup per mirror back, the mirrors being suspended from the ceiling and forming a waist-high rectangle, mirrored surfaces facing inward. Pistoletto was one of the 16 visual artists chosen for the show, out of the 50 who submitted proposals.

ARTICLES1981 March

STAFFBrown’s Guide to Georgia Atlanta

Vol. 9, No. 3 “Rosie” Profile of the artist Rosie Clark, painter of humorous miniatures with punning titles. http://www.jtribbleantiques.com/html/rosie.html.)

1981 February Brown’s Guide to Georgia AtlantaVol. 9, No. 2 “Georgia’s Closet” Profiles and photographs (by me) of a cross-section of the people

of Georgia, with a detailed analysis of their clothes.

1981 January Brown’s Guide to Georgia AtlantaVol. 9, No. 1 “Snakebit” Profile of Bubba Russ, maker of snakeproof boots.

1980 December Brown’s Guide to Georgia AtlantaVol. 8, No. 12 “Strong Suits” Seven-page story on custom-made suits and the Georgia tailors who

make them.

1980 September Brown’s Guide to Georgia AtlantaVol. 8, No. 9 “The Bionic Buildings” Six-page story on historic preservation in Georgia.

1980 SeptemberFREELANCE

Esquire New YorkVol. 94, No. 4 “What to think about Gravity’s Rainbow” Four-page humorous (but no less accurate) glossary of

the very obscure words in Thomas Pynchon’s novel. A feat of pre-Web research.

1971 October The Pennsylvania Gazette Alumni Magazine of the University of Pennsylvania PhiladelphiaVol. 70, No. 1 “Of Seals, Newts, Mice, and Men” Six-page cover story on Pennsylvania’s poet in

residence Daniel Hoffman [Poet Laureate of the United States,1973-74].

CHRONOLOGY: PUBLICATIONLETTERS TO THE EDITOR

1999 Winter The Threepenny Review Berkeley80Vol. 20, No. 4

I praise a poem in the Fall issue by Seamus Heaney.

1999 April National Geographic Washington, DCVol. 195, No. 4 I compliment the aptness of a caption in a story (December 1998) issue on Winslow Homer.


TERRILL SOULESCHRONOLOGY: PUBLICATION (CONTINUED)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR1979 September 25 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta

“Slowpoke Twins” On the similar slowness of Marta and Post Office service. (Not to take credit for both organizations’ current efficiencies, but . . . )

1979 September 20 The Atlanta Gazette Atlanta“Four months, later, no” I submitted this letter set as verse. It appears as a poem in my Selectric Poems. Its subject is the receiving of a rejection for an editorial position with the word regretfully misspelled. Unfortunately, the point was somewhat lost on the Gazette’s readers, owing to several typos on the part of the Gazette.

1976 December 15 The Atlanta Gazette Atlanta“Giving It Away” Denunciation of a movie reviewer who revealed not just plot in general, but the ending.

CHRONOLOGY: HONORS, AWARDS, RECOGNITIONBY ORGANIZATIONS

2001 ongoingListee A Directory of American Poets

and Fiction Writers Poets & Writers Inc. New Yorksince1980 -1981 Edition

2000Highlighted

Performance MP3.com www.mp3.com1999 The performance of a poem of mine by the band I was a member of, the Durians’ “Her

Hair a Highway of Fire,” was selected for inclusion on MP3.com 10 Poem Essentials, a link to ten of the best performances of poems on the MP3.com site.

MP3.com is a free service, a website that makes the performances of music, in every conceivable category, by amateurs around the world, universally available. To put this recognition in perspective, MP3.com hosts more than one million audio files, of which 2,950 (as of September 19, 2001) are in the Poetry category. The performance recognized was Number One on the Poetry chart (every category has its chart) for most of December 1999, with Durian performances at one point at 1, 2, and 3. As of September 19, 2001, pieces performed by The Durians had been played or downloaded 8,664 times.

(As of February 7, 2004, mp3.com is quiescent, i.e., shut down after being bought by Vivendi. But not before there had been a total of 9,999 Durian downloads.

You can still find some of our pieces on some Russian and Japanese sites, for some reason.

1998 June 26 Judge Boys & Girls Club Regional Youth of the Year Atlanta“Youth of the Year Program, Sponsored by the Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. Boys & Girls Clubs of America Salutes Terrill Soules, Youth of the Year Judge, for assistance rendered in identifying, from more than two million youth, leading contenders for consideration as National Youth of the Year.”

1997 NovemberStrategist U.S. Department of

Housing and Development Neighborhood Networks Washington, DCInvited to participate in national meeting held to develop three-year strategic plan for HUD Neighborhood Networks.

1997 JunePhilanthropy

Catalyst HUD Secretary and Bill Gates Washington, DC and SeattleAcknowledgement of philanthropy resulting from my successful writing of a grant. As a Microsoft employee in Field Marketing, I conceived a way to provide funds and free Microsoft software for the Neighborhood Networks—computer centers located in HUD properties—of Florida.

Housing and Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo:“This new collaboration between HUD and Microsoft Corporation demonstrates how public-private partnerships can work to assure that no one is left behind in the information age.”

From the Bill Gates Personal Website, September 25, 1997:“To support increased access to technology, Microsoft and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development


TERRILL SOULEShave announced a partnership to establish “Neighborhood Networks” learning centers in HUD-subsidized apartment complexes throughout Florida.”


TERRILL SOULESCHRONOLOGY: HONORS, AWARDS, RECOGNITION (CONTINUED)

BY ORGANIZATIONS1982 April 21 Panelist

DeKalb Library SystemLiterature Symposium Avis Williams Library Decatur“Local Literary Renaissance—Poetry Reading and Discussion of Trends”, on panel of poets. The DeKalb Library System, recognized as first among 150 contesting libraries, won the American Library Association John Cotton Dana Special Award for their yearlong promotion (which included the April 21, 1982 symposium) of local writers, scholars, and publishers.

1981 April 23Guest Poetand Judge St. Andrews College Laurinburg, NC

I selected the winner of an undergraduate art contest, in addition to giving a reading.

1981Award Winner Union Internationale

de la Marionette (UNIMA) UNIMA-USA AtlantaCitation of Excellence for Janie Geiser’s “Sleep . . . “ The “Uni” is the puppeteering equivalent of movies’ Oscar. (I wrote the script.)

1976 December Prizewinner San Jose Studies Discover America Poems 1976 San Jose, CAVolume IISpecial Issue

Winner, third prize, National Bicentennial Poetry Awards competition, the anonymous entries being judged by Kathleen Fraser, Robert Hass [Poet Laureate, 1995-1997], and Josephine Miles.

CHRONOLOGY: HONORS, AWARDS, RECOGNITIONIN BOOKS

1991

MENTIONINGMY POETRY

The Artist Observed28 Interviews Chicago Review Presswith Contemporary Artists a cappella books Chicago

Book about Artists

By John Gruen. The “Custom and Culture show is mentioned in the interview with Michelangelo Pistoletto. (Please see POEMS BY ME REACHING THE PUBLIC IN UNTRADITIONAL WAYS—1979—JUNE 17: “24 MIRRORS”, Page 9.)

1990 June 9Museum Show

CatalogStories, Dreams and VoicesThe Puppetry of Janie Geiser Center for Puppetry Arts Atlanta

January 12 The catalog devotes a page to Geiser’s shadow-puppet play “Sleep . . . ” and records her recollections of how it came to be:

“Sleep . . . developed out of a desire to do shadow puppets, from a technical desire to learn an aspect of the art form. I was reading poetry to find possible ideas for a piece when my friend Terrill Soules gave me his poem ‘Sleep . . .’ [sic: the poem itself is simply entitled “Sleep,” without the ellipses] to read. It just clicked with the shadow ideas I was having. I worked on storyboards . . . and when Terrill felt that I understood his intentions for the poem he gave me carte blanche. It’s a very different show than most of our work. There’s nothing political, it’s just about beauty and time, just a show that is gentle.”

IN ARTICLES1995 February 4

ABOUT MECreative Loafing Atlanta

Weekly Tabloid Metro Beats: “Superior Vowel Movement” On my winning the 25th Annual Orthographic Meet at the Stein Club. (I put the 2001 and 2000 bees, in their interactive entirety, complete with audio pronunciation, on my website: www.tsoules.com/bee.)

1983 December 4 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta“Atlanta poet Soules clicks with his ‘Selectric Poems’” By Linda Sherbert.

1983 June 10 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta“Operation Switch—How doctors’ husbands cope with reversed roles” By Paula Crouch.

1981 September Magazine Atlanta AtlantaVol. 21, No. 5 “For Better Or Verse” By Barbara Street. On the marriage of a doctor (Virginia

Soules) to a poet (Terrill Shepard Soules).


TERRILL SOULESCHRONOLOGY: HONORS, AWARDS, RECOGNITION (CONTINUED)

IN ARTICLES1981 February 17

ABOUT MESignals Georgia State University Atlanta“Poet Heart Drips Blood of Justice” By Phyllis Lowe. Article, with photo, about my February 6 reading at Georgia State, that week’s reader in the GSU Winter Poetry readings series.

1980 December 16 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution AtlantaBy Gita Maritzer Smith. About my reading of December 15 at Seven Stages.

IN ARTICLES2000 Jan / Feb

MENTIONING MEOxford American Oxford, MS

Issue 31Magazine

“Spelling Bee” George Deman, in the Uncle Art column. Quoted as winner of the 25th, 26th, and 27th annual Stein Club [since relocated to Manuel’s Tavern after the Stein Club closed] Orthographic Meet (i.e., spelling bee). The Committee retired me by asking me to join them.

1999 October 16 Weekly Tabloid Creative Loafing Atlanta“CL’s Noted Acts for Saturday.16” Roni Sarig on The Durians: “Local avant/garde [sic] spoken word quartet celebrate the release of their eccentric debut, Music Is a Problem for Everyone.”

1997 World Wide WebBallard Institute & Museumof Puppetry University of Connecticut Storrs, CT“Cardboard, Paint, and Style: A Brief Look at the Work of Janie Geiser.” By Steven Tickell. Student paper for Trends in American Puppet Theater.www.sp.uconn.edu/~wwwsfa/Tickell2.htm

1994 April 11 Tabloid Katchewanooka Herald Lakefield, OntarioRussell Dodworth’s “Anybody out there?” column. About a conversation in Fort Lauderdale at a computer show. Dodworth and I envisioned a Microsoft product for adolescents devoted to etiquette, ideally to be named “Microsoft Manners.”

1983 June 17 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution AtlantaPaula Crouch recommends seeing Janie Geiser’s puppet plays “Glass Dream” and “Sleep . . . “

1981 December 6 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta“Weaving the strings of puppetry and poetry into a unified work.” Pearl Cleage Lomax [today, Oprah Book Club novelist and simply Pearl Cleage] devotes her column to “Sleep . . . “

“The performance, lasting less than 15 minutes, was delicate, precise, bold, adventurous, inventive and amazing.”

1981 November 6 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta“’Sleep’ Unique But Not Long Enough: A Review” By Helen C. Smith.

“The poem is highly original, the puppets (skillfully manipulated by Ms. Geiser, Jon Ludwig [for twenty years Center for Puppetry Arts Associate Artistic Director] and Alan Sugar) are unique, and the music . . . is both the underpinning and the cherry on top for this thoroughly delightful piece.”

1979 December 6 Newspaper Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta“Atlanta Poets Are Caught ‘Red Handed’” By Keith Graham. About the readings at Rizzoli International Bookstore launching the poetry magazine “Red Hand Book.”

1979 May 4 Newspaper New York Times New York“Artists of the Custom House” By Grace Glueck. Article on the “Custom and Culture” show. (Please see POEMS BY ME REACHING THE PUBLIC IN UNTRADITIONAL WAYS—1979—JUNE 17: “24 MIRRORS”, Page 9.)

CHRONOLOGY: EDUCATIONPOSTGRADUATE

2003 [projected] Georgia State University M.A. in English Literature Atlanta2001 August I am relishing the academic, uncommercial, atmosphere. Although on the pre-application

GRE English examination I placed in the 99th percentile, kindred spirits have been lacking.


TERRILL SOULESCHRONOLOGY: EDUCATION (CONTINUED)

COLLEGE1970 May University of Pennsylvania B.A. in Classics Philadelphia1965 September With a major in Greek and a minor in Latin.

HIGH SCHOOL1964 June The McCallie School for Boys Diploma Chattanooga1961 September

1961June Harbor High School freshman year only Newport Beach, CA1960 September


my life story, as falsified by an excess of accurate data shepard soules vita.doc · web view“my...

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