Drill sergeant finds his muse in retirement

By Ms. Demetria Mosley (Fort Jackson)March 9, 2017

Poet
(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

You can't tell by just looking at him, and that's how retired Staff Sgt. Tony Pickoff says he prefers it.

A little over a decade ago, Pickoff had been the epitome of the Army turning civilians into Soldiers as a drill sergeant at Fort Jackson's 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment.

Now that he's retired, he spends his days drilling the thoughts in his mind into stanzas of poetry.

"There's more of me than what you see," said Pickoff.

"It gives me satisfaction to surprise people that I'm not what they thought I should be."

Pickoff joined the Army immediately after his high school graduation in 1985. Distracted by his tall, stocky frame, he says most people can't believe he's a poet.

"They absolutely don't put it together," he said. "Unless they are people who really know me, they would never guess that I'm capable of doing this. I love it."

Pickoff started writing poetry in the 11th grade. After turning in an assignment that he rushed to do the night before to finish, his teacher accused him of plagiarism.

"It was my first attempt at writing poetry and my teacher, a college-educated woman thought I copied it out a book," he said. "That told me I had something to work with and after that initial one came out, I was writing two or three a night."

Since he started working in June in his small yellow boxed office located on Fort Jackson's mulch site, Pickoff has written over 150 poems on a variety of topics. He keeps a notebook on his desk to help pass the time and get his ideas down on paper.

He's been thinking about compiling his work into a poetry collection and naming it 'Thoughts of a Soldier.'

"Poetry is a way to get something that might be an inflaming topic out to other people in a way that's not going to piss them off. I mean, let's just reduce our political debates to a poetry competition," he said.