Reunion Poem

I've just been notified that "Chiaroscuro", the poem I wrote for the 45th reunion of Coughlin High School, Class of 1968, in honor of our classmates who have passed away, will be published in the Spring or Summer issue of The Lyric.

Founded in 1921, The Lyric is the oldest magazine in North America in continuous publication devoted to traditional poetry.

Keeping Busy

 

 

 

 

Abundantia (ca. 1630), by Rubens

I've had a productive late summer/early autumn (so far) and have written fifteen poems.

One-way Street (four sonnet sequence)
On the Folly of Persuasion
Chiaroscuro
What She Kept
Ante Meridiem
Zeeman's Paradox: Imagining Edward Hopper's Sun in an Empty Room
Confluence
Reunion Muzak
On the Razing of Sandy Hook Elementary School

+ three sonnets (no titles revealed here) for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award competition.

Soon to be and recently published:

Composure (Measure) - finalist for the 2012 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award
On the Folly of Persuasion (Light)
Exhuming Neruda (New Verse News)
When (First Things)
Intervals (Measure) and (Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's)
Horizons (Rotary Dial)
Ribbons (Mezzo Cammin)
White Night (Mezzo Cammin)
Wherein the Snow is Hid (Quadrant)


+ four sonnets in The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (an anthology of sonnets)

My next project is a sea ballad.

Thank you, Muse!

Today was the perfect day to recite this poem, one of my favorite Robert Frost poems. It's almost like a prayer.

October

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

Tomorrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow.

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know.

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away.

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

(by Robert Frost, from his collection A Boy's Will)