When I was about 13 or 14 I had an English teacher who made a deal with me that I could get out of doing all of the year's regular work if I would write a short story a week and on Friday read it to the class.

Quite honestly I never had a desire to be an actor. I tell people I did not choose acting acting chose me. I never grew up wanting to be an actor. I wanted to play football. In about 9th grade an English teacher told me I had a talent to act. He said I should audition for a performing arts high school so I did on a whim. I got accepted.

My mother was an English teacher who decided to become a math teacher and she used me as a guinea pig at home. My father had been a math teacher and then went to work at a steel mill because frankly he could make more money doing that.

I had one companion. He was a teacher from the Ukraine who spoke English so we could communicate a bit. I learnt a few Russian words but it was hard to concentrate.

I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college as I was walking across campus one day I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.

Ironically for a few million people in the Far East I did become an English teacher through my music.

It was difficult being a teacher and out of the closet in the '50s. By the time I retired the English department was proud of having a gay poet of a certain minor fame. It was a very satisfactory change!

I didn't want to be the archetypal sponging brother-in-law so I didn't go into acting when I got to the States. I thought 'No I'll go to school and then I'll be an English teacher that'll be fun.' But I was horrible as a teacher. As hard as I tried I just couldn't inspire those kids to take an interest in Milton and Shakespeare and Donne.

Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

In my teens I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.