Poetry Internacional, Springfield, Illinois

One of the rewards of most any blog, including Honey & Quinine, is touching people I would never meet, even if I could fly across oceans . . . even if I could ride in an airplane that would fly across oceans.  I subscribe to several WordPress poets’ blogs, and several poets, including two in Australia, subscribe to mine. One is Dennis N. O’Brien. Readers of any blog can respond with a comment about a post, and some respond regularly to poems I post with a “Like” and even comments and e-mail. Dennis responded recently to one of mine, and when I read a subsequent poem — “Poetic Persecution” –he posted I decided to share it — with full credit and bows in the direction of Australia — at Fourth Thursday Spoken Word Night at a visual artists’ cooperative studio and sometimes community arts sharing venue called The Pharmacy. For years, the building was known as Watt Bros. Pharmacy, one of five owned and operated for decades by real Watt brothers, all registered pharmacists.

Job Conger, USA reads Dennis N. O'Brien, Australia

I began my time behind the microphone by reading Dennis’ poem, and there were chortles a plenty from the audience, many of whom regularly commit the crime of rhyme.  He included in his WordPress post a counterpoint about the horrid legions who write un-rhymed poems as well, but I didn’t share that part aloud.
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I know that at least one of my poems as been read aloud to an innocent and unsuspecting audience in Arizona — maybe it was New Mexico. It’s nice to know that we are larger than we seem in our own part of the stage close to home.
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I encourage readers of this post to search for Dennis O’Brien’s poetry at WordPress. Ditto for Authored Angioplasty, a young woman assigns only numbers instead of titles. She seldom — maybe never — if ever rhymes, but I read every one. Not every poem read proves eye-brow or insight-raising and that’s okay. Even Ferlinghetti didn’t hit them out of the ball park every time. But I’m often glad I take time to read poets confident enough in their craft to share them.
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And I don’t always subscribe to blogs whose creators “Like” my rambling. My guarantee to those I like is that I will read them. I never criticize what I read, and sometimes I don’t comment about what I enjoy. I don’t want my perspective, made suspect by the near-total disconnect from acadeeeeemia, to unhappily influence the writing of a poet in Australia, or England or Chicago and to precipitate the loss of glory from my words that did more harm than good.
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Suffice to say that sharing poems from afar is a good thing. I enjoy it, and I wager you will too!
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Live long . . . . . . and proper.