Thank You from John Palen

John Palen is one of my neighbors in Midland, Michigan. While he continues to teach journalism at nearby Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, he writes poetry and remains active in what goes on in Midland. Lois, his wife, is an accomplished cellist and actively promotes musicianship and music performances in Midland.

Mr. Palen graciously agreed to join our group at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Saginaw, Michigan on his birthday in the Spring of 2007. On March 8, a group of eight people met at the bookstore on Tittabawassee Road to enjoy a few of John's poems and to get to know something of the poet they came from. This man, origianlly from Missouri, is now working with a retired engineer and poet from China to translate poems from Chinese into English. Many of the poems they work on are hundreds of years old.

His own poems have been in magazines and journals since the early 1970s, including Poetry Northwest, Kansas Quarterly and Passages North. In 2005, Mr. Palen joined forces with Mayapple Press to publish Open Communion, a collection of more than twenty new poems and a selection of poems from his four previous books. Here is one of the new ones:

The Elderly Man

in the library reading room

keeps the cold away

with a jacket over a sweatshirt,

its hood bunched at his neck

like a scarf. He has placed

his cap at one edge of the table,

a folded overcoat at the other.

Together they prop a thin

newspaper, whose pages he

turns like a finicky eater -

accepting one story, rejecting

another, stubbornly choosing

among his meager options.

On his birthday, our group presented John with a birthday card and a store flier which contains an announcement about the event we held in his honor. It was an enjoyable evening for all of us. A few days later I received a Thank You note from John in the mail:

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for the birthday reading. It was an honor, and I had a wonderful time.

Warmest best wishes to you all, [signed] John Palen

Mr. Palen has our warmest best wishes for his continued success.

If you would like to get Poets Birthday Readings started in your area, jump right in. We've been hosting events since June 2005 and it has been a wonderfully rewarding experience.

Thank You from Jayne Jaudon Ferrer

Jayne Jaudon Ferrer is a poet who lives and works in Greenville, South Carolina. Happily married, she is the proud mother of three sons, has a vast array of friends who like herself are happy and besides all that she is a beautiful human being. She sent an e-mail to me somewhere in 2006 and we've kept in touch since then.

In Saginaw, Michigan, the River Junction Poets hosted an event in honor of her birthday on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 at the Barnes & Noble bookseller on Tittabawassee Road. We read from two of her four books: A Mother of Sons and She of the Rib: Women Unwrapped. I was surprised when the copy I ordered arrived at Barnes & Noble for me to pick up: it was a signed copy! Besides writing poems of her own, Ms. Ferrer actively promotes the appreciation of poetry. You can read more about her and her activities at her website. Meanwhile, here is a poem of hers I like from She of the Rib:

Connoisseur

Though my life is rife with complexities,

my heart celebrates simple joys:

a forsythia's first fragile bloom,

the sun's rays splayed through a stand of pines,

Vivaldi and Merlot on a May afternoon,

sleeping babies - any species at all.

And you, my love,

with your no-frills approach to life -

your keep-it-simple,

cut-to-the-chase,

bottom-line-kind of mind.

You are exquisite vanilla

in my too-many flavored world.

The night we met at the bookstore to read Ms. Ferrer's poems, we signed a birthday card and sent it to her in South Carolina with a store flier which had in it an announcement about our event that night. She wrote back in a Hallmark card:

Wow! You folks know how to make a girl feel good! Thanks so much for celebrating my poetry on my big day. My son & his friend were on hand when I opened your card & the B&N flyer fell out. They want to know why I'm not rich if I'm so "famous!" Indeed. [here she has drawn a smiley face] Love your work - love your levity - keep it up! [signed] Jayne

Happy Birthday, Jayne, and many more! Let us know if you'll be in Michigan; we'll have a warm welcome for you.

If you don't have Poets Birthday Readings in your area, you can get some ideas as to how to get them started here in this blog.

Thank You Note from Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck has won numerous literary awards in addition to serving as Poet Laureate to the United States. She currently teaches at Yale University. Without asking her permission, the River Junction Poets hosted a free event open to the public at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Saginaw, Michigan in her honor near the time of her birthday. Our intent was not to arrive at a perfect or ultimate understanding of her or her poetry but rather to read and enjoy a few of her poems and to learn a bit about her and about what she believes about poetry. I found a few things online prior to our meeting on the 17th of April (2007) which I brought with me. The articles I liked best were at the Modern American Poetry website.

The night we met at the bookstore, we had nine people in our group, two of whom are actually members of the River Junction Poets (Saginaw's poetry group), three others of whom are students. You know, to the students who join our group I say "God bless you" because I am sure there is nothing or next to nothing we do at our meetings that will help you on any standardized tests or final exams. Now that I think of it, that may explain why we never see any students a second time. Anyway, the night we met, we signed a birthday card and sealed it up in an envelope along with a store flier that indicated our event that night. A few days later I received a note from Ms. Gluck in my mailbox. She sent a card of heavy stock paper with 'Louise Gluck' (with an umlat over the u in Gluck) and a little leaf curling beneath her name embossed at the top and in the center on one side. Then she has handwritten the following note:

Dear Andrew Christ & friends - Thank you for the funny card, though April 17 isn't my birthday. But my father (who wrote verse) did, with his brother-in-law, start X-acto. Your list of readings stays on my refrigerator. Many thanks - [signed] Louise Gluck

Then she has beneath that drawn the outline of a figure of a person holding a flower next to which she has printed, 'POET, RELAXING.' The card we sent said to relax on your birthday.

In case you didn't know, Ms. Gluck has a page at MySpace.com. You might want to check it out.

If you don't have a Birthdays of Poets group near you, you can get some ideas as to how it can be done from this blog.

Richard Wilbur Sends Thank You Note

Good grief we do get busy though, don't we. The other day I received in the (snail) mail a postcard from Richard Wilbur. He wrote to say Thank You for the birthday card we sent earlier this month (March 2008). Specifically, he writes:

11 March 2008

Dear Mr. Christ,

I'm delighted to have been read at Barnes & Noble by the River Junction Poets. My thanks to you and your associates for the birthday card, and all power to your pens.

Sincerely,

(signed)

Richard Wilbur

Sweet Georgia Brown!

-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."

River Junction Poets Mission Statement

Happy Birthday Lisel Mueller

Lisel Mueller is passionate about poetry at age 84. Yes, it's true. And I have the evidence to prove it. Yesterday in the mail I received a card from Ms. Mueller. She responded to the birthday card we sent to her shortly after our event honoring her birth, life and poetry. She wasn't at our event, of course - actually she wasn't even invited - because the event took place at the Barnes & Noble bookseller on Tittabawassee Road in Saginaw, Michigan, and she lives in Chicago. We started shortly after 7 p.m. That was the night Dave attended with his wife Wilma for the first time. They are both retired English teachers. Maureen was also there. She is heading back to California for a couple months now to make some dough ray her.

Anyway, about the card. It's magnificent. I so want to find a scanner so I can upload an image of it here. The card is about 3 inches square and opens up and is blank inside except for Ms. Mueller's handwriting. She writes:

3/5/08 Dear River Junction Poets,

I was delighted and honored by your beautiful card with your generous words about my poems. I am so glad that you enjoyed them and that in our present world of internetprose there are still readers of poetry. I am truly grateful, and I hope that, with readers like you, poetry will continue to "live"!

Best wishes to all of you,

[signed] Lisel Mueller

Yes! I want to have this card bronzed. I want to erect a statue. You can send a card to her as well. The birthday card we sent was addressed to her at The Poetry Center of Chicago as follows:

Ms. Lisel Mueller
c/o The Poetry Center of Chicago
37 S. Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603

Her birthday is today, March 8. How are you celebrating?

-- "It is our goal to appreciate and improve our talents, to share our own work and to communicate the joys of poetry with others. Everyone's poetry is valued."

River Junction Poets Mission Statement