Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe—Gary Snyder, “Axe Handles”
Not sure—if we met, would you still remember me,
if enough of my college self still glints inside this face
or if any of my poems were ever worth your praise—
did a line or image of mine burrow in your memory?
Though eager, my writing then was gawky and green,
as I was crafting my lines and earning my place
at the table with the others. Still, your genial gaze
encouraged the sonnet, sestina, and pantoum in me.
If we met, I would confess: this inner life isn’t easy.
Perhaps instead of poems, I should have written code,
for there are few trades for students of formal verse.
Even so, creative habits cost much, but sustain me.
Back then, I didn’t know the gifts that you bestowed,
and how teachers fade—yet follow us across this earth.
When I enrolled in the Creative Writing program as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Dr. Ronald Wallace was my first creative writing professor. In his workshop, he introduced us to a wide range of poetic forms. That semester, I wrote many traditional poems for the first time, including a villanelle, pantoum, sestina, and canzone. Though we were experimenting with formal structures, Professor Wallace always pushed us to make them feel and sound contemporary. He encouraged slant rhymes, enjambment, and the use of everyday language. I still remember one class discussion about the difficulty of using “McDonald’s” as a repeated word in a sestina and how such a contemporary term could strain against a traditional form.
For one of his poetry collections, Professor Wallace attempted to write a sonnet every day. During his morning runs, he would mull over ideas and emotions for that day’s poem, then return home and hammer out a draft. He admitted that many of these poems were “shit,” but believed some held real potential through revision. It was an early lesson in discipline, practice, and accepting imperfection as part of the writing process.
I will always remember Professor Wallace as a charming, humble, and deeply generous teacher, especially toward the immature and nascent writers, myself included, who passed through the Creative Writing program at UW–Madison. From him, I learned to love experimentation within formal poetry and to see form not as confinement but as possibilities. We could choose which rules to follow, bend, or break. Most importantly, I learned that writing is not only something done when inspiration arrives. It is also something you sit down and do when it is simply time to write.
Ronald Wallace is an American poet, fiction writer, scholar, and longtime professor whose work combines formal poetic craft with humor, warmth, and reflections on everyday life. Born in Iowa in 1945 and raised in St. Louis, he studied literature and went on to build a distinguished academic and literary career, most notably at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he helped establish and lead its creative writing program. His poetry often focuses on family, memory, aging, relationships, ordinary domestic experiences, and the emotional texture of daily life, treating familiar subjects with wit, intelligence, and lyric sensitivity while drawing on both personal experience and literary tradition. (Adapted from Poetry Foundation)
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