Literary Inspirations

In preparing for this blog entry, I have come to the conclusion that I am truly the sum of everyone who has influenced me over the years. The people in our lives, the events that take place, and the time into which we are born are things that are both defining and inescapable. They make us who we are, both for the better and the worse. Yes, we make choices and we eventually develop as our own individual, but can we ever escape those early influences? Thankfully, I have no desire to escape mine. I embrace them as they were and celebrate what they are.

I love literature and have from an early age. When I think back to those times, I remember the people who shaped that love for me. It all started with my Mother. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on her lap and her reading to me. There’s a warmth in those memories for me and the lifelong gift that she gave me. I remember reading circles in 1st grade with Ms. Locker. Other than recess, that was my most favorite time of the day. In second grade there was Mrs. Bowles who made me memorize “When the frost is on the Punkin and the fodder’s in the shock” which I still proudly remember to this day. The sing-song nature of Riley’s language imprinted on me. By the fourth grade it was Ms. Fox who read The Hobbit to the class…a chapter a day, and that was life changing.

Around that time, my older brother Andrew took over. He’s five years older than me and was always way cooler so naturally, I wanted to imitate him. One thing about Drew is that he was a reader and his room was full of books. He had The Empire Strikes Back novel which I devoured as a 9 year old kid. He also had the Narnia books, Tolkien, and then eventually, he had the entire Conan series that they republished in the 80’s. I was probably drawn more to the girls on the covers initially, but then I started reading those as well. By 1984, he bought the Dune collection and took me to that movie as well. I read the first three but then it got too weird by the fourth book for me. He shaped a love for sci-fi and fantasy that I still have to this day.  

High School in the 80’s had a more prescriptive approach to English classes so it was mostly grammar with a little literature thrown in every so often but Mrs. Waller let us do book reports on whatever we wanted. I remember reading a lot of Shakespeare on my own my junior year. In 1989, I had the fateful job of working at a movie theater. We got a movie called Dead Poet’s Society, and the rest was history for me. I bought a book called Poems that Live Forever (which I still own) and began devouring works by Byron, Shelly, Tennyson, Thomas, and Frost. Those poets changed me. I started listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and began trying to write and publish poems of my own. They set me on a course that I’m still on at 53 years of age. 

When I went to the University of Kentucky in the Fall of 1990,  I thrived in my literature and writing courses. Intro to British Lit and Intro to American Lit created a love for the classics. I ended up being so dorky with the classics, I even wrote my Master’s Thesis on Fourteenth Century Arthurian Poetry and I loved it. When I got to the point it was time to choose a career path, I realized that literature was one of the things I was really good at so I started teaching.

As a high school teacher in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I had to eventually morph into a writing teacher so I didn’t get to teach much literature. And as for reading? All I read were essays. Six classes of 25 students each, three major essays a semester, and rewrites which were necessary for my students to grow as writers. Seriously…during the school year I ate, drank, and slept college essays and they always hung over me like an impending rain cloud. If I had free time, I had zero desire to read anything. People would always ask “So Cornett, what are you reading right now?” My answer was always “Essays.” 

But moving to the beach and starting a second career where I didn’t have to read college essays every time I turned around allowed me to rekindle my love for reading. If you look closely at the picture on my webpage of my bookshelf you can see my inspirations. For my classics, I love Hemingway, Steinbeck, Dickens, and Wharton. My more “current” stuff is Chandler, McMurtry, and right now? A lot of Pat Conroy. I live in the perfect area for reading him on the weekends sitting down by the water. 

Like I said, I am the sum of everyone who has influenced more over the course of my life. If you have people out there who did the same for you, reach out and thank them. You are more indebted to them than you may realize. I only hope that I have had that kind of impact on others as well and that they will pass it along to continue the cycle.