I always wanted to have my own literary journal and, thanks to the internet, I have one --  the r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal -- where this poem -- Space Time is Curved -- resides.  For wikipedia's entry on Spacetime, click here.

Most of the poets and writers I publish are strangers to me.  They find the journal primarily through Poets & Writers Magazine, which has an inexpensive classified ad section.  Or they know other people who already published in r.kv.r.y.  Having the journal allows me to publish the work of my friends, all of whom are better poets than I.  Joe Mockus and Richard Wirick, for instance, whose work I've recently mentioned and who only happen to both be attorneys.  

The best thing about writing poetry, for an amateur like me, is that it slows the world down.  It makes me look more carefully.  It sends me to the bookstore to purchase Audubon Guides to the trees, flowers and birds I've never learned by name.  Curlew, whimbrel, nuthatch, and, yes, even booby, brown and blue-footed (sula leucogaster and nebouxii)  for those times when your poem needs a little whimsey.   Sycamore, hawthorne and laurelcherry trees.  Valerian, elder, thistle and honeysuckle.  It recalls the time when people had the time to notice and name the world around them.

As Shakespeare famously wrote:  a poet gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name.

The second best thing about writing poetry in mid-life is reading it again.  Kinnell and Creeley.  Berrigan, Bishop and Bukowski.  Wright and Collins and Neruda.  Dickinson, cummings, Levertov and Auden.  Merwin, Sexton and Graham.  You could live your entire life inside the poems of just this handful of great  20th Century poets.  

r.kv.r.y. has a "favorite poets" page and we invite you to send us yours.  

This is a lazy Saturday post, waiting for my husband to arrive home from New York City.  And before the cleaning and shopping for Monday's Seder begins.  

I hope you're having a pleasant weekend too.