The Garden of Verse: Bio notes and Poems of Growing up

 

          Editor Jim Lewis calls October's special issue of Verse-Virtual " a deeper look at the contributing editors and columnists who have been the quiet foundation of every month's journal, almost from its inception. I invite you to take time to read the expanded bio notes and poems from this group of people I am pleased to call my friends. " 

        The issue features "expanded bio notes and poems." Here's how my bio-note began:

         "I grew up in a brand-new postwar neighborhood in suburban New York, my childhood a modest example of that era’s unacknowledged white privilege. My parents had experienced Depression childhoods, my father dropping out of high school to support himself. My mother’s family twice lost their home when breadwinners died and she went to work after high school, rather than to college, to support her mother. Because my father was a war veteran, he was eligible for GI loans that enabled him to buy a house in a new neighborhood and paid for his “night school” college education. I attended a couple of newly built public local schools and, when the Ivies were seeking to broaden their student body by accepting students who graduated from a public high school and were not related to alumni, received a needs scholarship from Yale. I majored in philosophy, but realized my true love was literature.

In addition to those "expanded bio notes" on growing up in a new postwar subdivision home my parents purchased with a GI loan, my offerings included a poem about the central role "going to the beach" played in my Long Island childhood. A poem about being "Bobby." A poem about the role of "My Mother's Music" in our childhood. And a poem about raising our own children in Plymouth, MA, called "America's Hometown."

Please take a look. Here's the link: Bio Notes and Poems 

Anne Meyerson, my wife, posing under a statue of the goddess of  female strength and wisdom in Paris. Here's a quote from my notes:

 

Sonya Meyerson-Knox, our daughter, who lived and worked in Lebanon after graduating from Mt. Holyoke College. From my poem "America's Hometown": At the corner of Massasoit and Mayflower,/ where Winslow relieved a sachem of a serious hurt,/ we settled in a white-wood tower/ to raise our kids on Plymouth dirt."

"While living in Boston I met, married, and started a family with Anne Meyerson, my personal bridge over troubled waters and Here's a piece from the poem "America's Hometown": 

At the corner of Massasoit and Mayflower,

where Winslow relieved a sachem of 

a serious hurt, 
we settled in a white-wood tower
to raise our kids on Plymouth dirt... "

Saul Meyerson-Knox, who 

earned a master's degree in classical guitar performance.

From that same poem:

"Our young spread their 

wings 

in open space.
We kept them warm with 

history tales,
moral precepts performed 

with passing grace: 
Uplift the Fallen, 

Save the Whales. "

Sonya visiting with her grandmother, my mother,                                                                        Jean Doris Congreve Knox. This is from my poem 

My Mother’s Music

Debussy? my wife guessed. 
Rachmaninoff, I suggested.
Both names sat at times on the plinth above my mother’s keys,
certain moments, themes, quick-stirring romantic throbs,
the instant cereal of childhood’s stirrings emerging, here again
all these decades after those first imprintings. 
The babyduck follows ever after – 
and followed whatever else she played... 

 

In addition to those "expanded bio notes" on growing up in a new postwar subdivision home my parents purchased with a GI loan, my offerings included 

a poem about the central role "going to the beach" played in my Long Island childhood. A poem about being "Bobby." And, per the above, poems about 

the role of "My Mother's Music" in our childhood and a poem about raising 

our own children in Plymouth, MA, called "America's Hometown."

Please take a look. Here's the link: Bio Notes and Poems