alumniACCOLADES Harvey Magazine highlights alumni accomplishments or upcoming events for our alumni. This can be in any of the many artistic endeavors or as recognition for service or awards. Send your stories or events, or those of another alumnus, to alumni@harveyschool.org. In this issue, we feature Ted Millar, Harvey Class of 1993.
Ted Millar ’93: Living His Passion in Poetry The first poem Ted Millar ever saw published appeared in Avatar, the Harvey literary magazine. “Today,” he says, “the thought of it and subsequent poems I wrote throughout my high school and college days makes me cringe, but they, nonetheless, kindled an unabated passion for verse that literary journals are recognizing.” Since May, the arts and culture magazine Chronogram, and literary journals Aji, Wordpool Press, Brickplight and The Artistic Muse have published seven of Ted’s poems—an accomplishment, he says, that fills him with enormous confidence. After Harvey, Ted earned a BA in English with a literature concentration from Marist College and an MA in teaching with public school certification from Manhattanville College. In teaching with New York State certification, Ted spent a year at van Wyck Junior High School before moving on to Mahopac High School in 2002, where he has taught ever since. Since 2005, Ted has been an adjunct instructor of English at his alma mater Marist, teaching courses ranging from freshman composition to Shakespeare and creative writing. This spring he will teach a new course there titled “The Art of Poetry.” During the summer, he returns to Harvey as a production teacher, writing and directing plays for the Cavalier Camp. Poetry for Ted is an “indefatigable passion” for which he receives inspiration from just about everything—watching his two children, Madelyn and Patrick, blow out their birthday candles; reflecting on the simple life as a middle-class husband/father/ homeowner/teacher; contemplating current events; and the seemingly banal daily minutiae poetry has a unique ability to elevate, like in his poem (see right) “Riding My Bike to the Library,” published in Aji this fall. “Poetry is how I try to make sense of all this mess,” Ted says. “I agonize over every word, punctuation mark and syllable. I enjoy it now more than ever. There’s nothing like the satisfaction of having worked so hard at creating something and finally seeing it recognized. It’s reassuring, and humbling, too.” Ted was kind enough to permit us to share one of his poems here. To read more of his poetry, visit our school website at harveyschool.org and go to the link for this magazine.
Riding My Bike to the Library
I’ve just an hour and a half before my wife returns from getting the kids’ haircuts, but I could pedal all day through this quirky farming village, down the goat trail , past the old train station, up Cardiac Hill, toward the bottling company chuggling round the clock with tractor trailers, out the North Road, orchards buzzing with their inchoate harvest. Today, though, I’m not out for air, basking in the rare freedom from domestic stress. I yearn this moment to be ensconc ed among the spines of the most saga cious minds, the novels that challenge, philosophies that probe, poems that hum with dactylic flow . In a previous life I might have bee n a medieval monk pondering the judgment over a doctrinal tome, or a Tibetan youth steeped in Buddha dharma. A room with books is all I need for nirvana. Call it heaven or Sha ngri-La. Call it anything you like. My bike is slower on the return. The added weight makes my thig hs burn. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that bald old man resembling Socrates on his porch before, his eyes shut, lips curled around “Blue Moon of Kentucky” filling the hollow with radio. I wasn’t aware there were so many wild flowers nodding to the breeze. Normally beer cans in the dirt are all I see. If I pump a little harder maybe I’ll make it home in time to settle into my deck recliner and the first chapter. If really auspicious, maybe I’ll doz e off and dream about my next life The Harvey School 53 as a librarian.