I've been thinking about creating a blog for some time and trying to organize my files this summer confirmed what my subject would be: poetry. I will ramble some, sharing thoughts, possibly my poetry, mostly other's, maybe family history or stories or who knows. I hope there will be a fine thread connecting these poems and thoughts, at least for myself and possibly for a few others. A part of my Magnum Opus perhaps.

Poetry because I'm a poet? Not really, more of a poet's accomplice or a poet by chance. I have been enthralled by poetry since I was very young in Oakland, Iowa where I attended most of my early grades in school and was inspired by my 4th grade teacher Mrs. Miller. By going through my files I discovered that I have been collecting poetry books and clippings for a very long time. Some of it is grown-up poetry and some of it is in the form of nursery rhymes. So this will be an eclectic collection suited for my eclectic mind.

When I decided that January 2013 would be the beginning of my blog I knew that my first poem would be, "I Carried With Me Poems," by Gail Dusenbery, Possibilities of Poetry: an Anthology of American Contemporaries, selected and introduced by Richard Kostelanetz, Dell, NY 1970, page 264.

This book was a gift to me from my friend Sandra Bracken and for my choice to make sense I must include the first paragraph of her inscription before I share the poem, with Sandra's permission:

February 21, 1971

Happy Birthday dear friend-

     The primary reason I bought this book of poetry for you is on page 264. As I first read it, it was so much you, I shivered a little! Incredibly strange, when I read this poem to Pete he saw me in it. Do you suppose we can be together in a poem?

     ....With Love-Sandy

 

Gail Dusenbury

 

I CARRIED WITH ME POEMS

 

I carried with me poems, poems which spewed out of everything; I saw

   poems hanging from the clotheslines, hanging from the streetlamps;

   I saw poems glowing in the bushes, pushing out of the earth as

   tulips do;

I felt poems breathe in the dark March night like ghosts which squared

   and wheeled through the air;

I felt poems brushing the tops of chimneys, brushing by in the dark; I

   felt poems being born in the city, Venuses breaking through a

   shattered sea of mirrors;

   I felt all of the poets of the city straining,

   isolated poets, knowing none of the others, straining;

I felt that some gazed into the March night, looking, and finding;

and others were running down the steep streets, seeking, and seeking to

embrace;

and others stood in empty bookstores turning over pages of fellow poets

 whom

   they loved but didn't know;

and some pondered over coffee growing cold, in harshly lit cafeterias, and

   gazed at the reflections of the eaters in the wall-to-wall mirrors;

some dwelt on what it was to grow old;

some dwelled on love;

some had gone out of time;

some, going out of time, looked back into time, and started;

 

I felt all these lives and existences, all with poems at their center;

I knew none of these poets;

but I felt these intimations augured well, for me, and for poetry;

and my steps grew big, giant steps, I bounded down Parker Street;

a tall, taciturn, fast-walking poets' accomplice.