Matthew M Cornett

Tag: books

  • Solsbury Hill

    For this week’s blog, I need to take a break from talking about my book.

    This past Wednesday, while driving to work, a song came on and I have to admit that I teared up. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. In fact, it was quite affirming. Let me explain.

    If you don’t know by now, I am going back into the classroom. For the past five years I have worked in hospice. In January of 2020, I walked away from 24 years of teaching high school English in Lexington, KY, to run a hospice here in South Carolina. During those five years, I worked with many families in this area and even wrote a book about those experiences. By May of 2025, it became very clear to me that it was time to move on and on June 2nd, I walked away from the past five years of my life. Two weeks later, I interviewed and was offered a job with the absolute best high school in this area.

    The past few weeks have been about onboarding with the school district, attending New Teacher Orientation (feeling like Billy Madison sitting with the younger students), and then district PD, learning very quickly that things have really changed in the world of education especially in terms of technology. But learning all of the new stuff has been fun and exciting and I am ready to get started.

    So what was up with the morning drive on Wednesday? Well, I was letting my Spotify DJ pick the music that morning. About halfway to the school, Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” came on and it was perfect. If you don’t know, that song is about Gabriel leaving the band Genesis. He helped cofound the band in 1967 and finally left in 1975. Looking back, it makes complete sense. Both Gabriel and Genesis went on separately to even greater accomplishment and fame, but leaving terrified Gabriel at the time. 

    “Solsbury Hill” tells the story of a man who climbs Solsbury Hill, sees an eagle, and has a spiritual experience. He hears a voice and with his heart beating furiously, the eagle finally speaks to him and says “Son, he said, Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.” After the experience he resigns to keep quiet about it but realizes that he was “in a rut” and something had to change. By the end of the song, he finally states “You can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.”

    In the Billboard article “10 Reasons Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill is One of the Greatest Songs of All Time,” the writer states “The story of “Solsbury Hill” — of personal epiphany, of hard decision-making, and of breaking free — was unsurprisingly interpreted to be inspired by Gabriel’s split from his old group, and the singer-songwriter has explained, “It’s about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get, or what you are for what you might be. It’s about letting go.”

    I’m dorky enough to have already known this and that’s why listening to that song made me emotional on that drive, but it didn’t stop there. At 9:30 am that day, we had Freshman and New student orientation. I met so many young students and their parents and both groups seemed terrified but I had the opportunity to smile, connect with them, make them feel better, and reassure them that everything will be alright. Teaching truly is a noble profession and I am honored to be part of it. 

    Like Gabriel, coming back to this point was about hard decision making and letting go but when I walk onto that campus tomorrow, I won’t just be walking into a new school, and a new classroom, with new students to teach. No. I know exactly where I’ll be.

    I’ll be back home. 

    Billboard Article

    Solsbury Hill New Blood Version

  • “Year of the Cat”

    I’m going to start out this week by making a confession and I don’t care if you laugh. I one hundred percent have a “soft spot” (pun intended) for 1970’s Soft Rock and I know exactly who to both thank and blame. Give me a sappy 70’s love song soaked in pop sentiment and polyester, and I’m right back there in that front room on Northside Drive, sitting in my mother’s lap in that ugly exorcist green chair, listening to her favorite 8 track cassette tapes on a rainy Fall day in 1976. Those kinds of moments probably made me the sappy 53 year old I am now but I’m good with that.

    I’m the youngest of four kids. I was born in 1972 and my sister is two years older than me which means that she started kindergarten in the Fall of 1975. From that moment until I started Kindergarten in the Fall of 1977, it was me and my mom during the day. Those days were spent playing, reading, listening to music, watching The Electric Company, and napping which I hated. Making me sit still was the worst punishment and I think my mom invented “time out.” Thinking back, I couldn’t have had a better childhood. I define my life by the beautiful memories I have and those are the earliest and most self-defining. What a gift my mother gave me. 

    The music that stands out to me from those days comes from artists like The Carpenters and Barry Manilow (again, I already said to go ahead and laugh). Hearing them and basically any mid 70’s Soft Rock song immediately transports me back to those days. To me, those songs feel like a warm cozy blanket on a lazy rainy day. If you don’t get that from some kind of music no matter how corny, I feel sorry for you. I do have a couple of playlists you can check out though so let me know!

    In chapter 6 of my book If We Never Meet Again, I tell the story of Hannah. She had terminal cancer and was only a few years older than me. As I stated early in her story “Hannah was the one patient who changed everything for me. The others before her were powerful experiences that taught me about hospice but Hannah changed me. She imprinted herself on my soul” (41). When I go to patient homes, I always end up looking at the pictures they have around and the older, the better. I’m fascinated with older pictures of times gone by. When I went to Hannah’s house for the first time, I noticed this picture of “Hannah and her sister dancing outdoors at some celebration, each with a gorgeous smile on their faces laughing right at the moment the photo was taken. Hannah was dressed in silk like material that glistened in the camera flash” (42). The photo was a beautiful moment and I don’t think I will ever forget that smile on her face. 

    As fate would have it, somehow I ended up at her house one night so her brother could get some rest out on the couch. I didn’t know it then but she was actively dying and I was there holding her hand:

    “As I tried to settle back in the chair to keep her company while her brother rested, Hannah stared straight up at the ceiling. A tear started out of the corner of her right eye and then she looked over at me. I could see that she was terrified. She opened and turned her right hand toward me. I placed mine in hers and patted her lovingly with my other hand doing my best to give her my most comforting and sympathetic smile. Our eyes were locked onto each other, hers filled with fear, and mine attempting to be strong. “It’s going to be alright Hannah. I’m here with you and I’m not going anywhere. Close your eyes and try to rest.” She never did. We sat there for at least three hours locked in that embrace with her eyes going from mine, to the ceiling, around the room, then back to mine again. Everytime our eyes met I smiled at her trying my best to comfort this woman I did not know (45).”

    When it came time to choose a song from my playlist to represent Hannah, it was an easy choice because of that photo of her. I have always loved Al Stewart’s “Year of the Cat” from 1976. Al Stewart is a fascinating Scottish born musician. If you get a chance, watch some interviews he has done. He is a genuinely down to earth guy that you could hang out with at a local pub. According to the video “Al Stewart talks Year of the Cat” you can find on Youtube, he grew up wanting to be in rock and roll like Duanne Eddy who inspired him to pick up the guitar but felt his early rock and roll work was awful until Bob Dylan came along and “saved his life.” He says “He (Dylan) couldn’t play and he couldn’t sing either but he could do things with lyrics that were magical.” He set off to be a folk singer and found success in the late 60’s and early 70’s. He was later influenced by Paul Simon as well. He eventually found himself on tour in America supporting Linda Ronstadt. He began work on what would become “Year of the Cat.” He based it off a warm up riff his piano player kept playing. The record company didn’t like his first version about a british comedian who had committed suicide and they asked him to rewrite the lyrics. His girlfriend at the time had a book on Vietnamese Astrology and the page was open to a chapter called “The Year of the Cat.” He thought to himself, “that to me looks like a song title.” Casablanca was on the television and he “started playing with it.” The rest is history. He felt the song wasn’t that great so he made it the last track on the album but the song was a hit and resonated with listeners. 

    I have always loved the song. Its opening piano riff that takes its time to build up to the moment is a masterclass in pop musical set up. Modern music with its short attention span desperately trying to catch the listener’s attention within the first 15 seconds could learn from him. When it finally kicks in to the drums, bass, and electric guitar it has a perfect feel and flow. And I have always loved its sound: crisp, clean, and pure. It sounds like a less perfectly engineered Steely Dan recording, which is not a putdown in any way. By the time he sings “On a morning from a Bogart movie” you realize that this is truly something special. But what really gets me is when he says what I think is one of the best lines from any pop song to ever describe a woman:

    She comes out of the sun

    In a silk dress running

    Like a watercolor in the rain

    Don’t bother asking for explanations

    She’ll just tell you that she came

    In the year of the cat 

    That line is mesmerizing. “Out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.” The alliteration sun and silk…the rhyme of sun and run…the image of a watercolor in the rain. Dang. It’s Shakesperian. It’s as perfect a line as I’ve ever heard in pop music. In my text I wrote “I don’t have any idea who Al Stewart was describing in those lines but it should have been Hannah in that photo” (42). 

    The ladies group at my mom’s church back in Lexington, Ky, read my book for their book club and I had the privilege to go back home there in March for their meeting. One of the women asked me which death was the hardest on me. Without a hesitation I said “Hannah…it was like watching my own sister die.” At the end of the chapter, I wrote:

    People come in and out of our lives for all kinds of reasons. I think Hannah came into mine to truly personalize it for me. When Mr. Miller died, it was simply a culmination of a life well lived and there was comfort in knowing that he was at rest. Hannah wasn’t much older than me; she could have been my sister. Her death felt more tragic. In the world of hospice, you start to see death so much that it just becomes part of the job but even after all this time, I’m still not over her. I hope I never will be. 

    I can honestly say that sitting here writing this, I’m still not over her. Her sister-in-law was right. I would have loved to have known her before the brief time that I did. But I can honestly say that her death was one that influenced me to begin writing these stories. It’s not much, but it is her legacy and that makes me happy. 

  • “Love Untold”

    This week I am skipping ahead a chapter because I messed up. To prepare for my weekly blog, I start out on Monday thinking about the upcoming topic. I spend the week thinking about it off and on and come up with an approach to take. The problem is, I was thinking a chapter ahead to “Love Untold” and have been working it out all week. It’s fine and I’ll backtrack next week starting tomorrow. 


    I have always been a fan of the underdog in life and I spent this week wondering why off and on. Whenever I want to understand something, I think about it, read about it, talk about it, and eventually make sense of it for myself. In the Psychology Today article “Why do we love Underdog Stories? Psychology Weighs In” by Matt Johnson, the author said something interesting that really made me think. Halfway through he argues “The underdog story is one of the most classic storylines with a universal appeal, reliably driving feelings of empathy. They tap into the qualities we like best about ourselves and find most admirable in others.” I have to admit two things here: I am naturally a very empathetic person. I don’t know why but I have always been able to connect with people who are going through something and I promise, it’s genuine. I’m sure people can fake that but I genuinely do feel for people and their experiences so that makes sense to me. But the other issue is even more personal: I guess I have always viewed myself as an underdog too. 

    It’s not because I had a tough life or anything. Sure, we weren’t rich, but we certainly weren’t poor either. I had nothing like that as compared to my father. He grew up genuinely poor. I remember hearing stories about him growing up so poor he and his buddy would hunt for pop bottles to sell so they could buy a school carton of milk to split for lunch. He didn’t want the other kids to know he was poor so he wouldn’t eat the free lunch they gave to the poor kids and thought of that breaks my heart. Nobody expected that poor kid to do anything with his life. He was from the wrong side of town and a true underdog, but that boy grew up, joined the Navy, married the love of his life, made something amazing of himself, and has a family that loves and adores him to this day. How can you not respect that?

    When I was in 5th grade,  The Outsiders movie came out and it changed me as a kid. It cemented what would eventually become my identity. I became obsessed with it. I read the book over and over, watched the movie everytime I could on cable, and even did a book report wearing rolled up jeans, high topped Converse, and a cut off purple sweatshirt just like Ponyboy. I connected with those boys and now that I’m older, I know why. It’s because that’s how I imagined my own father’s experience. In my mind, my old man was born “grease,” and that’s what I was too. No wonder, I loved Elvis and The Outsiders. Heck, by the time I was a Junior in High School, I was greasing my own hair (actually moussing and hair spraying it…go ahead and laugh) and pulling it down in the front. I honestly looked like some scrawny Elvis/Rebel Without a Cause/Cry Baby rip off in the late 80’s but it was my identity and it stuck.

    So I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the kid no one believes in, the kid who had no shot at success, yet somehow overcame those odds. Rocky Balboa, Daniel LaRusso, and Marty McFly…those guys were my heroes. And that love for the underdog even made its way into my musical tastes with one specific band- the greatest band that could have and should have been-The Replacements. They were a bunch of slackers from Minneapolis who formed a band in 1979. The problem for them was that everytime they got close to really breaking out into the “big time” they usually committed some act of self sabotage. Their early stuff was happily loud, obnoxious, and quite drunken. Their music matured by the mid to late 80’s much to the discontent of their early post punk fans. From 1981 to 1990 they made 7 albums and finally broke up in 1991. 

    I wasn’t introduced to them until the Fall of 1990 when I was sitting in ENG 101 class there at the University of KY. My TA’s name was Ben Webb and he was a really cool guy who made a comment about being excited for the new Replacements album (1990’s All Shook Down) which coincidentally was to be their last as a band. I checked it out and fell in love with it. Now some purists would say that doesn’t make me a true Replacements fan because by that time, it was basically a Paul Westerburg solo record and I understand that argument. But for me, I started with that album, then moved back to 1989’s Don’t Tell a Soul, and finally to 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me. I loved those three albums and their “Bash and Pop” sound which bassist Tommy Stinson would later call his own band in the early 90’s. Paul was the genius behind that sound and he went on to have an amazing solo career as well. I personally believe that he is one of the finest underdog lyricists of my generation. His ability to write about everyday experiences in such poignant and playful, thoughtful and irreverent ways still blows my mind to this day. He writes about loners and losers, people who never had a chance or blew the ones they had. And he does it all with conviction and self deprecation. 

    A perfect example of this is the song “Love Untold” off of his 1996 album, Eventually. It tells the sweet story of a bashful couple who were supposed to meet but never did. He sings:

    They were gonna meet, on a rocky mountain street

    Two bashful hearts beat in advance

    Their hands were gonna sweat, it was all set

    She ain’t showed up yet, still a good chance

    It’s a love untold

    It’s a love untold

    As he sings the first verse, it’s hopeful and you can imagine these two getting ready with the sweet excitement of that first meeting. But as it develops you find out that it never happens. Ever. For some reason, they never meet or fall in love. By the middle of the song you get a sense that it was doomed from the start with “Games will be played, Excuses will be made, The stupid things they said, In their prayers, All about a love untold.” For whatever reason, it just doesn’t work out. By the end of the song the narrator seems crushed: 

    They were gonna meet on a crummy little street

    It never came to be, I’m told

    Does anyone recall the saddest love of all

    The one that lets you fall, nothing to hold

    It’s the love untold

    It’s the love untold

    Once upon a love untold

    To me, this song illustrates his genius. He takes these nobody characters that nobody cares about and turns their story into a tragedy, using it as almost a warning to us all. I love it and when it came time to pick a song for Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Chapter 7 of my book If We never Meet Again, this song was perfect. If you haven’t read the book, it’s a chapter about a time I lied straight through my teeth to get a saintly woman back into the ER to see her husband one last time. It was right at the beginning of COVID, and she panicked, called 911, and he coded on the way to the hospital. They stabilized him, and put him on life support. I went with her to the hospital but they weren’t about to let her back in there to see him. I took matters into my own hands, and somehow after waiting there for hours well into the night, I talked the doctor into letting me take her back to him. We walked back there and I helped her stand there beside her husband so she could kiss him goodbye. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

    Let’s face it. Outside of their circle, they were nobodies. No one would ever hear about their love story. No one would ever care. Theirs was merely another story that was destined to be a “love untold.” But just like when they told that sweet woman she couldn’t see her husband, I wasn’t about to let that happen. The chapter ends with:

    “I was glad I didn’t take no for an answer from the hospital, and I am still glad and completely unashamed to this day that I lied to get her into that room to see the love of her life one last time. I have told some big lies before that I truly regret but not that one. I will gladly pay whatever price I owe for it and do it again without hesitation still to this day.”

    It’s one of the best things this underdog has ever done. And I think Westerburg would love that irony.

  • Themes, part 2

    I was a high school teacher for 24 years and had some great experiences all along the way. For the last 14 years of it, I taught Dual Credit English (ENG 101 in the fall and ENG 102 in the Spring). The curriculum determined that we had to write 3 specific types of essays each semester. The textbook was divided into chapters that discussed the essay type and then provided examples that could be discussed and analyzed. When it came time for my students to write their essay, I never dictated the topic. For me, they could write about whatever they wanted as long as it was the type of essay required. 

    I always tried to make my classroom a fun place. For me, it was my home away from home so I decorated it to reflect my interests. The walls were covered primarily with my main interests- literature, film, music and art. I had quotes from classic authors, movie posters, classic rock albums, and art posters I picked up from various art museums (mostly Van Gogh but others as well). To be honest, I loved that classroom and most of that stuff is now hanging up in my garage. I enjoy going in there and reminiscing about the “good old days.” 

    Everything in that room had its purpose and I designed it as such. When it came time to write a specific essay, something in the room on the walls provided a jumping off point for that essay. My favorite essay was the Rhetorical Analysis from the Spring Semester and I tried to make it as fun as possible. Rhetorical Analysis is simply an analysis of the text of any work where you explore the various things used by the author to shape that text. For example, in my MA Thesis, I analyzed 3 Aurthurian poems from the late 14th Century, and discussed how each poet used the concept of Medieval Warfare to shape their own vision of King Arthur and his knights. It was kind of dorky but I loved it.

    To make the Rhetorical Analysis essay more interesting for the students, I developed a unit where we analyzed popular song and I even had a research article to back the approach up. Essentially, I had the students pick a song and analyze it rhetorically. To get them started, I gave each of them a song of my choice (which none of them had ever heard) and told them to determine its meaning. I forced them to go through three stages: Interpretation, Context, and Authorial Intent. First, I told them to listen to it and then guess what they thought it meant. Then, I had them dig into the background- who the author was, when was it written, and what events were going on at that time. Then finally, I had them look and see if the author ever stated what they intended. 

    By the end of the assignment, we had some great discussions. Some of the best ones were how things can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on your own experiences, how works can speak to new generations beyond their own place and time despite their own limitations, and how something can take on its own meaning beyond what the author intended if they ever stated it in the first place. It was always fun helping them realize that the world was a much bigger place than they ever imagined yet they also had a voice to contribute.

    When it comes to discussing the theme of any work, we are immediately faced with a problem. How do you determine “the theme?” First of all, there are always multiple things going on in any work. On top of that, how do you really ever know? Also, as an author, do you really want to dictate what that theme is, especially when readers will interpret it based on their own experiences? I know what I intended, but if you get something else out of it does my intention change that? For me, not at all. We all bring ourselves to any work and if a work can speak beyond its intention into an entirely different area, that is the beauty of any art. I love how a song can mean something to me the author never intended and I can only hope that my book could ever do the same.

    If you want to know what the theme of my book is for me, start with the cover. More on that next time.

  • Themes, part 1

    I went to college at the University of Kentucky from 1990-95 (yes, I was on the five year plan). My major was English Education which allowed me to become a high school teacher for 24 years. The first two years felt like high school part two with a few interesting things thrown in every so often. The high points for me were always the English classes. Reading, writing, thinking about, and discussing literature were the things I enjoyed, although I did have some good History and Philosophy professors too. Math and Science were necessary check boxes and although I still wish I was smarter in those areas to this day, they just never clicked for me. 

    Graduate School was where I really geeked out. It was all literature, all the time but it became much heavier. Back then, you had a week to read the novel, go to the library and check out the research the professor had on hold (yes, internet was relatively new in 1997 so you had to check out a physical copy), familiarize yourself with the research, and be prepared to participate in discussions which were brutal, especially if you weren’t prepared. And trust me: you never really were prepared enough and the professors always knew. Some were more gracious than others and it was tough but I loved it.

    Today, if you google “theme in literature,” AI gives you the classic definition in its overview: “the central idea or underlying message that an author explores throughout a story.” It lists examples such as “love, loss, redemption, power, coming of age, and identity.” If you read some of the greatest books ever written, you can see these kinds of concepts developed throughout. The question is how did they do it? There really are only 3 options: it was either (1) planned all along like a storyboard that becomes fleshed out, (2) it just kind of grows and develops as the writer naturally tells a story, or (3) there’s a mixture of the two. I have a feeling that in most cases it’s the 3rd option (it certainly is for me as a writer) but I’m sure it’s possible that there are some talented people out there who plan it all out and then simply execute. 

    For me, I like to see where it goes. Yes, I have a general concept or even a plan when I first start out but then I go where it takes me. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, which is where revision comes into play. I learned this when I was writing my MA Thesis at the end of Grad School. I remember coming up with the concept, talking to my professor, and then going off for two weeks to write what would become the second chapter. I “finished” it, gave it to him, and then came back about a week later to hear his accolades for my work. I can still hear Dr. Hill in his quirky little voice saying “Well, Mr. Cornett, this is a good start to what will be a fine chapter.” I remember thinking, “Start? What the heck is he talking about?” I called my wife on my Unidon Brick cellphone with the retractable antenna and said “I don’t know what this man wants from me! I can’t do this.” She calmed me down, told me to read his comments and go from there. I went to the library, sat in my usual spot on the fourth floor, and realized that he was right. I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture, and I am proud to say that with his guidance, I was able to create something that went somewhere I never intended and I am truly proud of it. Ever since then, that has been my approach. Plan things out the best you can, execute that plan, but allow for the twists and turns to take you where it is meant to go. Sometimes you just have to get out of the way.  

    My initial plan with If We Never Meet Again was to collect the stories that people seemed to love to hear me tell. Moving from High School English Teacher to Hospice Associate Administrator doesn’t seem like a typical career path and trust me, that was never the plan. Whenever I would go home, people would always be interested in my new job, and I was always ready with a great story about typical hospice stuff completely foreign to most people. The more stories I told, the more people seemed intrigued. Little by little, the idea of the book began to take shape. Eventually, I had a plan and I went with it but it took me to a place I never intended. 

    More on that next week. 

  • Writing Style

    Bob Dylan was a master of messing with the press. Throughout his early career he was constantly hounded by them wherever he went. He was playful, sarcastic, and often bewildered by the constant attention. While on tour in Australia back in 1966, someone asked him why he wore such “outlandish clothes.” In a typical sardonic Dylan reply he said “I look very normal where I live.” Style is a fascinating subject, especially when you start thinking about it in relation to writing. When I taught writing to my high school seniors, inevitably, the topic would always come up. To me, writing styles are like flavors-some will naturally appeal to you, some can become an acquired taste if you stick with them long enough, and others will never connect with you no matter what you do. Trying to argue with someone about liking or disliking a style is like telling someone they are wrong for preferring one flavor over another. 

    I always told my students that style needs to suit the purpose. If you are writing something formal, then it makes sense to stay within that confine, but if not, then the style is up to you. I often joked with my students that there were English teachers who would correct the great writers of the past. If Hemingway sat in a modern writing class, most teachers would say “Ernie, could you maybe connect some of these short, terse sentence structures so things could flow a little better?” Hemingway would probably punch them in the mouth and go win a Pulitzer Prize. The same would have gone for Faulkner. “Hey Willie, do you think you could stop with the long, overdrawn sentence structures? I have to read some of your paragraphs twice for them to make sense.” He would ignore their suggestion like a southern gentleman, and go win a Pulitzer Prize of his own. 

    As an English major, I was exposed to all sorts of styles and I truly enjoyed discussing and analyzing them but when it comes to thinking about your own style? That’s a whole different experience. Remember, my belief is that style suits the purpose. I could have elevated the style and written a totally different book but that wasn’t my purpose. I wanted to convey my true experience so to be honest, this one is completely me. One thing that I have heard people say (especially those who have known me personally and professionally) is that when they are reading my book, they can hear me saying the things that I have written. That is certainly because in writing this book, I didn’t just use a conversational writing style (which is how I would describe it); it really is me “naked as a tree” as David Gray calls it in his 2015 song “Back in the World.”  

    I think that’s why it freaked me out a little early on. When they finally released it in mid January, it was only available for pre-order. A lot of friends and family told me that they had ordered theirs and I was very excited but no one had the book yet. It really didn’t hit me until my Aunt Leslie texted me the Sunday after its release. She said she had bought it on Kindle and was reading it at that very moment. Hilariously, I wasn’t ready for that. I got nervous, my hands started sweating, and I started pacing around the house. My wife asked me what was wrong and I said “Leslie’s reading it right now! She’s actually reading my book!” To calm me down, my wife lovingly asked “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Of course, it was what I wanted but for some reason the knowledge that someone was actually reading what I had worked on for the past year and a half terrified me momentarily. Thankfully, she loved it and she really went out of her way to encourage me which really helped ease my mind. I never thought I would be so neurotic about it but it was touch and go there for a moment. 

    When you write a book about your own experiences, you can’t escape the fact that there will always be a self-serving aspect to it. The sheer act of putting it out there is a supposition that people will be interested in your experiences. You run the risk of being pretentious and maybe you can never truly escape that. But I wanted my focus to be on the stories of the people I encountered who changed me and I hope that’s what has come across. And I wanted to share these stories to help others who have been or will be going through similar experiences.

    But where did this conversational style come from? In college, I took two “Modern” literature classes at the University of Kentucky. The “Modern British Novel” and the “Modern American Novel” both of which got me into literature from the early to the mid twentieth century. Of all of those writers, Hemingway probably influenced me the most. I love his simple, yet profound sentences that contain worlds. One of my favorites is “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Simple, direct, and everything you need to know, yet it leaves you with a world yet to be discovered. 

    I’m not arrogant enough to compare myself to Hemingway or any other great writer. I’m just honest enough to admit that what appeals to us is probably inescapable in its influence, consciously or not. 

  • 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.