Poetry

I am from a family of poets. That may seem to be unusual to some but I think it was perfectly natural to us. When I heard other kids complain about not liking poetry I was amazed. I just didn’t see what there was to hate about it, besides hating it would seem somehow disloyal to my roots.

My mother is so skilled with words that she can make a poem out of almost anything. She has a poet’s mind. Poets just look at things differently. They think in a different way. I am not sure if I can give it justice, so you will have to believe me when I say poets are just different. My mother had a huge influence on us and even my father (who didn’t get it genetically) was a poet in his own way.

Growing up I was surrounded with words. My mother was always sharing a new poem with us or reading aloud one someone else had written. Poems were all around the house. In those days, before computers, poems were usually composed with paper and pencil and then typed. It was even before correction fluid so typing a poem was tedious simply because you did not want to make a mistake and have to start over. Erasures were unsightly and so getting it exactly right was critical.

Mother’s poems have been published in books, in magazines, and in the newspaper. She is well known across the state as a frequent contributor to the juried publication, Lyrical Iowa. The most exciting time was when they would read one of mother’s poems on the radio. WLS in Chicago did that sometimes. WHO read Mom’s poems once in awhile and a station in Omaha also did. Just before it happened the station would send us a telegram telling us exactly when it would be read.

It seemed like many of them were read on Sunday evenings. I can remember the whole family gathering around the radio and anxiously waiting to hear the poem. The radio was in the corner of the dining room by the kitchen door. When it did happen we would be so excited that we hardly paid attention to the poem and then it would be over. There were no replays in those days and I think Mom was sometimes disappointed that we missed part of it. My mother is a woman of great patience but I am sure that tested it.

Sometimes one of mother’s poems would be in the church bulletin or the newsletter. On a few occasions the pastor read one from the pulpit as part of the sermon. One of mother’s poems was put to music and sung in church several years in a row.

Mother belonged to a writing club called Scribblers for at least 70 years. The group meets once a month at someone’s house to share writing. At 93 years young mother still attends the meetings and shares her poems with the same enthusiasm she did when she first joined the group.