In Case You Didn't Know

Lawrence Ferlinghetti turned 90 yesterday. There are three poets that made me want to be a poet and not just a reader of poetry. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Pablo Neruda, and Walt Whitman. Then E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and Gertrude Stein came along and challenged what I thought about poetry. The rest has yet to rest as I keep on writing.

Happy Birthday L.F!

Because Today Is Nothing Like I Expected It To Be

LII
by E.E. Cummings


life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose: higher than have
--but beauty is more each than living's all

multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest mediations of mankind
cancelled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)

or does some littler bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete; past are unborn
(here less than nothing's more than everything)

death, as men call him, ends what they call men
--but beauty is more now than dying's when