Dennis Brutus (1924 – 2009)

About a quarter of a century ago — when I was a young, impressionable Northwestern student wondering what I wanted to do with my life — I signed up for an upper-level seminar called "Writing Poetry."

It turned out that I was somewhat adept at deconstructing poems — and just plain awful at writing them. The person who helped me figure that out, and who gently urged me to apply what I'd learned in class to endeavors outside of poetry, was my professor — an extraordinary poet named Dennis...