He introduced us to little magazines and literary periodicals by bringing a box of them to class one day and passing them around so that we could acquaint ourselves with their names, see what they looked like and what they felt like to hold in the hand. He told us that this was where most of the best fiction in the country and just about all the poetry was appearing. Fiction, poetry, literary essays, reviews of recent books, criticism of living authors by living authors. I felt wild with discovery in those days.

—Raymond Carver on his teacher John Gardner in 1983 issue of The Georgia Review, “John Gardner: Writer and Teacher”; stumbled upon in Shannon Ravenel’s Five Points essay, “Wild with Discovery”