Blue Rain
Syracuse
1991
I had just started teaching at Syracuse, and, one day a first year undergraduate student walked in my office wanting an independent study in poetry. There was an intro class I told him. He said both of his parents were poets. He felt he was beyond intro. Adam Cohen was his name. We talked more about poetry and poets and then about Greece. Suddenly, I thought to ask, “Cohen?” I asked. “Your father is Famous Blue Raincoat Cohen?” “Yes,” he answered. I had been hired as a prose writer. I was still learning the ropes there, but I signed him up for an independent study class in poetry. He said, “Cool.”