Nearly five years after writing ‘The Nil,’ I was in a very unique place in my life. I’d anticipated having some great success the previous year, in 1988, when I was 22. Alas, it was one of the most difficult years of my life. But I came through it in a good way, learning to find my own way and apply what talents I had with thoughtful determination. I continued writing and submitting poetry, and collected a lot of rejection slips. I also started writing a humor column for my college newspaper not too long after this date. But on…
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It was almost two months after I graduated from Oak Ridge High School in Orlando, Florida… which was my fourth different school in as many years. At last, I was on my own, and headed… somewhere? All was very unclear when I wrote this. Having moved out of my mom’s apartment within a week of graduating, and moved in with a fellow ’84 Oak Ridge grad, I was trying to figure out how to become an adult. A couple of years after writing this, ‘The Nil’ was published in the 1986 American Poetry Anthology. The Nil by Roger Darnell Accepting…