Dear Doctor Whoever-You-Are, this adult thanks you still, not for the note so much, though that’s what the boy wanted, but for your acceptance, your tacit recognition of that kid’s courage, or at least his nerve. You are a good man.

And I’ve met another good man, too, a poet—unlikely encounter!—who’s entered my life in this way.

I’ve enrolled in an acting class, at Shirley Raskolnikov’s School of Dramatic Arts. Shirley R. is a somewhat blowsy British expatriate, given to pointy little high-heeled black boots from which she balloons upward into a generous frame, usually swathed in polka dots. The picture’s crowned with a roostery shock of blond hair which proudly announces its divorce from the natural. She studied, years before, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and indeed one of the things that fascinates me about her is the intensity and focus with which she pronounces the five-word name of her alma mater, the Rroy-ahl ah–cah–duh–mi, each syllable invested with a glamour only her carefully preserved London accent could reveal.

Classes meet in a wood-framed Old West style–theater in a clutch of buildings called Trail Dust Town, an approximation of a frontier village given over to restaurants and shops, places where you can get your picture taken in cowboy clothes. Shirley assigns improvisational exercises to us: You have been presented with a bouquet of roses, and a bug in the flowers has flown up your nose. You are a machine designed to make children happy.

Our task, for one class, is to bring something we’ve written ourselves and perform it. I memorize one of my poems and say it for the class, but Shirley says, “No, it’s supposed to be something you’ve written.”

I protest that I did write the poem. Shirley looks at me thoughtfully and says, “Do you have more?” I show her my notebook, and by the end of class she has formed an idea. She asks me to give her a selection of poems because she’d like to show them to a poet she knows, one who teaches at the university, who’s published books of his verse.