Tag Archives: Poets

The Math of Living

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I’m heading down the home stretch of what’s been an intense writing project. It’s rearranged my routines, including writing (like blogging), reading, and my usual Monday through Friday regimen. Then, I’ve also inherited additional assignment deadlines for my class, too. I’m very busy.

Speaking of routines (and rhythms): taking a few minutes every morning to read some poetry is a great way to start the day. I’m grateful to poetry.org for delivering a poem to my email inbox every morning.

As I mentioned, April is National Poetry Month. Because I’m keen to this block of 30 days where I’m a bit more focused on writing I don’t normally read enough of, I’ve tried to be more intentional in taking time to slow down enough each 24-hour sweep of the clock to let a poem or two wash over me.

Today’s spoke to me. Robin Coste Lewis captures life’s randomness, and the injustice inherent in living, especially if you aren’t one of the the “special” people that America seems to bless, while cursing many of the others. Continue reading →

Poems All Month

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We’re 10 days into National Poetry Month and I’ve not made one mention of it. That’s a damn shame!

I never paid much attention to poets as I’ve alluded to before. Then, Mark was killed and I wanted to know more about why he was attracted to poetry and certain kinds of poets.

Someone wrote me that he thought poetry was “a thing” and maybe I should glom onto that. He didn’t think much of my “diary of grief” style.

I’m not a poet and never will be.

Did you know Herman Melville wrote more poetry than fiction? I didn’t until this afternoon when, after spending most of the day on my writing-for-hire, I employed my speed-reading prowess I first learned back in the day at LHS, from Mr. Barton. I managed to tear through three books on Melville, Ambrose Bierce, and Walt Whitman.

Melville was a poet: “Melville His World and Work,” by Andrew Delbanco

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Show Me Your Bona Fides

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Small acts to remain sane in a world of madness, with mad men trying to burn it all down.

  • Music
  • Healthy food (for me and my house, it’s plant-based: thank you!!)
  • Books
  • Poetry

I could have left poetry off my list and had a perfectly-bulleted trifecta. That wouldn’t have done justice to James Tate and his strange book, The Ghost Soldiers.

Poetry as a means of remaining sane.

I use “strange” in a laudatory manner. This is unlike most of the poetry I’ve ever read. While not a connoisseur of this element of literature, I’ve read more poetry over the last year than the previous 50+ years of being a reader. Poets are also a different animal than the other writers I fill my reading for pleasure time with. Continue reading →

A Month of Poems

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April is National Poetry Month. Thirty days for celebrating words, wordsmiths, and the poets who subvert the status quo.

Do you think Donald Trump reads poetry? Maybe he should put the Twitter down and pick up some Walt Whitman. Whitman wrote,

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Mark was a poet, an award-winning one. While he was out walking across America for something bigger than himself, he was writing poems, like this one: Continue reading →

Making Stories

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A year ago in August, I was contacted about writing an article. The woman who emailed me read my Biddeford article for the “big city paper,” The Boston Globe. She liked it and thought I had what it took to tell her story. It was about a town that had stopped making paper.

In 2016, I was in a funk. I told Mark that “maybe I should quit” the writing game.

Part of this was self-pity. But part of it was also feeling like my writing was going nowhere. At the time, it wasn’t.

Mark’s response was, “keep doing what you’re doing, dad.”

I told the woman that I couldn’t do it.

Then, Mark was killed.

In January (and February, March, and April), writing didn’t seem to matter. Yes, I was blogging. This was more about simply pouring out my pain associated with loss and grief. I was shocked that people actually read my posts.

A decision was made to reconnect with the woman who reached out to me in 2016. She was pleased to hear from me. She was also sorry about Mark.

One year after she first contacted me, I made my first trip down the coast. I’d make several more.

I talked to people in the town. The town had lost a mill. A mill that had been making paper since 1930. I also met a man with big ideas about logs not needed for making paper. Continue reading →

Poets

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I wish I was better-versed in how to read and understand poetry. Part of that longing emanates from a place of loss and grief—Mark was a poet—as well as being an activist, a performance artist, and one special human being always in search of his better self. His writing and poetry was part of his process.

The Tragically Hip had a song called “Poets.” When I was thinking about this post while making like a fish in the pool this morning, the song was in my head (and has been much of the day). I’m sad to say that we lost another poet and always-evolving human when Gord Downie “shuffled off this mortal coil” a few weeks back.

I was stricken with The Hip the first time I heard the opening chords to “New Orleans is Sinking.” Then, I went to Canada, their homeland where they were rock gods. Mark was probably five at the time. Downie’s poetic ruminations, framed by a rock and roll backbeat captivated me for more than a decade. So maybe I was more familiar with poetry than I thought. Perhaps Gord and Mark are somewhere reading together. Continue reading →

Travel on Foot

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In 2010, Mark Baumer crossed America on foot in 81 days. While my research isn’t extensive (or exhaustive), I’m not sure anyone’s completed a coast-to-coast journey across the U.S. sans gasoline any faster than he did six years ago.

Mark is a writer and poet. He chronicled that first trek in a new book that has a very limited print run. The book, I am a Road, will be available to purchase for another week in print form, so don’t miss out.

Two weeks ago, Mary and I learned that our only son was being beckoned by the road once again. This time, his latest cross-country trip will be done for something larger than what motivated Mark during his first walk. Oh, and he’ll be doing this without shoes, too.

Since Mark’s taken the time to articulate and frame it in narrative form (much better than I can), I’ll send you directly to him, so he can explain the “why” of his latest journey.

Mark Baumer will cross America on foot, once again.

Mark Baumer will cross America on foot, once again.

Dreams and Songs

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I’m not a poet. Many years ago I wrote some bad poetry and sent it into the college literary magazine at UMO. This was during my freshman year, and my poems got soundly rejected. I now leave the work of poetry to my son, Mark.

I mention poetry and a particular work of poetry for a reason that will soon become apparent.

John Berryman was a popular poet during the 1960s when it seems poetry was ubiquitous in America. That period was many things—both good and bad. It was a time when artists (and poets) had more cultural cred, or so it seems now in retrospect.

"The Dream Songs," by John Berryman

“The Dream Songs,” by John Berryman

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