by Ryan M. Place

“I try to get students to think for themselves and create a very interactive community in the classroom.”

On April 19th, 1995, some 168 people were killed when Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front ofthe Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

“I was on my way to the Federal Building that day to the Social Security office inside to get a new card when, at the last minute, I decided to go home and take a nap. I worked nights and was exhausted. It was a great decision,” says EMU instructor, Tony Spicer.

Spicer’s brush with death back in 1995 pretty much sums up Spicer’s overall good fortune. He survived an intensely abusive childhood and has had many near-death experiences, like almost being shot in the face by his mother’s drunk boyfriend and being struck by lightning twice, of which he says, “There’s been a series of long-term effects from the second strike. The charge entered my foot but didn’t leave. I had electricity circulating through my body and couldn’t touch metal for a while without getting shocked, but it gradually worked its way out.”

Born in 1969, Spicer grew up in Northeast Arkansas near the Mississippi Delta, where he lived until he moved to Oklahoma at the age of 12. He later moved to Michigan, which he said was somewhat of a culture shock in terms of adjusting to the lack of southern hospitality and abundance of frigid weather and snow.

After graduating from Western Michigan University in 1999 with a master’s of fine arts in creative writing, Spicer began teaching English composition, poetry and fiction at Eastern Michigan University.

“It’s fun being a lecturer and getting to teach a lot of freshman classes,” says Spicer. “I really try to help diffuse [freshman students’] fears and help them through the adjustment process.”

In the classroom, Spicer is neither harsh not pretentious, and he doesn’t play favorites. His humble, laid-back, zen lifestyle and love of poetry makes for often crazy and hilarious, yet very challenging class periods. He says that he adopts a very nonlinear teaching style.

“I’m all over the place but I pull it back together—very similar to American Indian styles of teaching,” he says. “It’s unusual and effective. Most people are conditioned by others’ expectation levels, and I try to get students to think for themselves and create a very interactive community in the classroom.”

Not only does Spicer love EMU, but he also loves Ypsilanti.

“I’m very supportive of the burgeoning underground art community in Ypsi and try to help who I can when I can,” he says. “My favorite thing about Ypsi is the very straightforward, down to earth people here.”

Spicer is married and has been with his wife since February 1999. He loves music, writing poetry and growing his own food, citing Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and “Zorba the Greek” as his “spiritual guide books.” His favorite poets are Whitman, Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke.