Lynne Thompson: Lawyer to Poet Laureate

That's so interesting because when you were describing early on, you were articulating that being a poet is something that other people do.

Yes.

And that you couldn't identify yourself as a poet at that early age.

And so you ended up pursuing a degree in an identity as a litigator and as an attorney.

Yes.

where you ultimately, for some period of time, that was your identity.

But it almost didn't feel right.

Like you almost sort of, throughout that whole process, you went through and it was challenging and you did all the things.

But it's just so interesting that your identity took a different shape and sort of like it didn't connect with what you visualized it at an early age.

Yeah.

And I think when you asked me about pressure, I think the pressure arose more when I graduated from college and the family question, well, what are you going to do next? Mm-hmm.

I think that the family – so one of my brothers is a physician, retired now physician.

One was an economist.

My brother Sidney was the superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District.

My oldest brother was retired as a captain in the Navy.

So this was an ambitious group, right? And so what I would call – less degreed jobs, a secretary, a clerk in the drug store, that felt not up to the standards of my brother.

I think I felt pressure to do something more.

I have a poem where I talk about having a regular job.

That wasn't going to fit the family scenario.

So I think that that's where I felt the pressure and said, let me go to law school.

It's something I think I can do, that I have the intelligence to do, and it's interesting.

And so I did that, I think, as much to please the family as I did to please myself.

I'll put it that way.

And

it was great.