I went to New York City because in 1959 it wasn't socially acceptable, for a million reasons, for a girl frcollege in the country, kept me spiritually alive while I had miscellaneous jobs and later, when I
moved to my parents' house in order to get my master's degree in elementary education. I lived for the mail. It was my only contact with life: a card from Corso in Rome, Whalen in San Francisco, Creeley in New Mexico, McClure. On my twenty-fifth birthday, I happened to get a note from Allen Ginsberg in Benares, India, and
the coincidence reassured me for weeks.
By the time I began to teach the fifth grade, 1962, it was easy for the poets I was working with to get readings and it had become a dreary task for me, so I stopped doing it. But I kept in touch, and Paul Blackburn, in fact, visited me in school one day and read to the children -- to the shock of the very straight principal. After one year in that public school, I ended up at a marvelous place now called Educational Development Corporation. I had heard about it and knew I wanted to be there, somehow, and got a job for the summer of 1963, running the mimeograph machine. For the next two years, I helped develop teaching materials for elementary school science teachers. It was George Cope, the photographer who took all the photographs for the books EDC turned out, who handed me a camera and showed me how to use it. He was the perfect teacher for me, making photography seem accessible, not unduly complicated, not very special. It was June 1965. I think of it as a miracle still.
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